A drop of the pink stuff

I adore that pink! It's the navy blue of India ~ Diana Vreeland

Saignée

I do love a drop of Rosé especially from Provence. The Romans called the area nostra provincia ("Our province") which gave the region its name it was the first Roman province outside Italy. Wine has been made there for at least 2600 years when the Greeks founded the city of Marseille in 600 BC.

Rosé wine is usually produced as a by-product of red wine fermentation using a technique known as Saignée, or bleeding the vats. To produce more color to a red wine, some of the pink juice from the wine must, is removed at an early stage. The red wine remaining in the vats is intensified as a result of the bleeding, because the volume of juice in the must is reduced. The pink juice that is removed can be fermented separately to produce rosé.

Blu's abstract art, based on a fuchia.

Pink fuchia planet

The word for remaining or remainder in French is restant.

The word for a drop of liquid in French is goutte.

That old black magic.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.
Author Karl Kraus

I sat down the other night trying to paint a picture of the forest, but something was wrong and after about two hours, I gave up sloshed some white over it and turned the paper upside down. I looked in astonishment because I could see shapes and colours which looked very like a picture in my library book.A painting by Cezanne, The Chateau Noir!

Link to an image of the Chateau Noir by Cezanne HERE

So I set work again, and finished with a picture that had the same feeling to the image in the book, I later found brighter images on the internet than the colours in my library book.

Une Grande confusion coloree. Cezanne produced many paintings of the château which was built in the 18th century by an industrialist from Marseilles, who manufactured lampblack paint. Apparantly the interior walls and furniture of the château were painted black. As a result, the house was associated with black magic among the local people, who believed that the château was also home to the devil.

The house of the devil!

The unkept grounds were full of pine trees and the house was empty for most the year.

Link to Wikipedia about Cezanne HERE.

You could use the French word négligé for unkept or uncared for.

The word for devil is Diable!

Sing sing sing

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. ~Henry van Dyke

Ever thought that we spend too much time holding back, because we think we will look silly because we are not good enough, but good enough for what or for whom? Have to say that I am enjoying sloshing paint around, doodling on notepads and discovering what I can do.

And so now on my trips to the new bibliotheque I am searching through the books about artists and paintings, the only thing is I need more days in the week, I keep forgetting to do my French homework!

Painted by Mother Nature, she is quite good!

Brushed with Light
Back soon Blu xx

The French word for homework is devoirs.

The French word for except is sauf

Serious thoughts

People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Life has been a little bit serious recently, and so I found it difficult to blog, sometimes the words just do not fall out of your head and if they do they may seem very gloomy.

"There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky, there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul" ~ Victor Hugo

A man with serious thoughts Victor Hugo.

I have been able to paint and take photographs, and doodle and sketch, some of it not very serious at all.

Little Belinda Bubbles, head full of random thoughts

Seriously folks I hope that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Ordinary Moments

There are no ordinary moments ~ Dan Millman

Recently I have been doing ordinary things, like up to my eyes in paperwork, constantly chasing fluffy tumbleweed (dog hair) with a vacuum cleaner and just getting on with the mundane. However when I was walking around the village with the dog I realised that sometimes an ordinary moment can light up in front of your eyes.

Morning Beauty

Ordinary Moments

I hope that you see something special today during your ordinary life.

Buried in paperwork is ~"crouler sous la paperasse"

For the mundane the French can use banal.

A kind of magic

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. ~Aaron Rose

I have visited the Mont Saint Michel many times before but at the beginning of this week I literally saw it in a different light. We wanted to show MIL the MSM but it is not really suitable if you cannot walk very far. So a driving tour around the baie ~ bay was just the thing.

People in the summer take guided walks across the treacherous sands, the tide goes out a very long way and it can be a very dangerous place.

Far from the madding crowds

I love the coast after the summer visitors have left, the sun was blinding and it shimmered across the wet sands, giving us a spectacle I have never seen before. So now the baie, has become rather special to me.

So now I see the tourist attraction really has some magic!

Once upon a time

Beach art

Read more about the Mont Saint Michel HERE.

You could use the French word scintiller for shimmer and sparkle
The French word for tide is marée

Mystery tours

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. ~Pablo Picasso

I have recently started to paint again, and it must be well over 30 years since I had picked up a brush, several people inspired me to try again, and on the whole I am enjoying it. It is like starting a journey but without an intinery, never really knowing what I will see at the end. A complete mystery.

I started just before we went to the Vendee and have tried my hand at various scenes since the middle of September.

On our short break when we walked around St Gilles Croix de vie I came across this delightful information board it was about an artist Charles Garabed Atamian (1872-1947) who was born in Constantinople.

When he was 13, he was sent to Venice to study at an Armenian school, where he was very interested in painting, so the school administrators had him enroll in the studio run by the teachers Paoletti and Tagliapietra, with whom he studied until 1894.

When he returned home to Constantinople, Charles worked as a designer in a ceramics studio belonging to the court of the sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, however he left two years later because of the persecution of his people (the Armenians) ordered by the sultan. With great difficulty, he was finally able to flee to Paris in 1897-----where he set up his permanent residence.

There are many images of Charles Atamian's work for sale on the Internet.

I don't produce pictures like Charles maybe I am more like Van Gogh, tee hee a bit wild with a glass of wine in my hand!

I am mainly choosing forest scenes since I have so many pictures to work from.

Decembre on the tapis rouge.

Bien Encadre

A Fresh morning

A French word for scene or place is lieu
A French word for enroll or register is inscrire

PS.Many thanks to Carol and Sally for inspiring me to dabble with paint again!