Brrrrr

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)

This part of Brittany does not suffer from excessive snow, yet we have seen plenty of snow fall this winter leaving us with white dangerous roads. Now we have howling winds and rain, closed petrol stations (a strike) and winter is becoming a little tiresome! Still to cheer myself I have been playing with paint and doodling with pencils, any pictures in magazines that inspire me are thrown into a box so I can sit and sketch while cooking dinner.

I recently joined a new forum for artists, photographers, writers, musicians, it is called Total Art Soul and if you are that way inclined do check it out. On a wintery theme here is a painting I did for Illustration Friday, not far from our woodburner.

Wilderness

Fun with frozen puddles the chilled photographer, I must say that I prefer it to all this rain!

~ The Beast ~
Frozen and then never seen again

Hope all is well where you are, and that you can beat the winter blues!

To have the blues is ~ avoir le cafard. (Cafard is actually cockroach)!!!

Adrift

Every day you spend drifting away from your goals is a waste not only of that day, but also of the additional day it takes to regain lost ground.
Ralph Marston

I have joined a group called Illustration Friday on Flickr, last weeks subject was called Adrift, and I have been a bit adrift myself, days taken up visiting a garage, the police station, and our Insurance shop, several times!!! But I must put that all behind me and move onwards.

Adrift for Illustration Friday
Blu confusion

The French word for adrift is dérive
Goal in French is but sounds like BOO, note that there are muliple entries for but!

Boom

Life is like a downhill ski run!!! goes much too fast and unexpected bumps sometimes catch you out! ~ Blu!

Sorry that I have not been around much but something unexpected happened, which will be consuming my time for the next few days. No one was hurt but a car may be written off!

Needless to say that the car below is not mine, there is a man nearby who collects vintage cars and organises the occasional rally!

A beautiful car.

délit de fuite ~ hit and run ~ failure to stop after an accident!

I recently received an award from Carol and we need to quote some favorite things
~ One of my favorite things is driving a car!

Picture a memory.

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser" ~ John W. Gardner 1912 - 2002 American Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.Although I think that I am more of a painter I am now enjoying making a few rough sketches. I was recently bought some wonderful artists pencils, and I am now enjoying sketching and drawing all sorts of things, and now just for fun I have a couple of journals where I draw really quickly an image of that day, they will help me remember where I have been!

Blu's Memorydoodles

On the subject of pencils!!!
Nicholas Jacques Conte (1755-1805), French mechanical genius, chemist and painter, born on the 4th of August 1755, from a family of poor farm labourers. At the age of fourteen he displayed artistic talent painting a series of religious panels, he then took up portrait painting. He was also passionate about scientific studies. With the supply of plumbago (a native English graphite) cut off by the war between England and France, Conté devised a mixture of clay and graphite used to this day in pencils, and took out a patent in 1795 for the form of pencil which still bears his name.

At the weekend I made a mixed media collage, inspired by a talk we had at our French class about India, in French Inde.

Aromatic Lands

Etymology for the word pencil.

The French word for pencil case/box is a plumier.
The French word for eraser or rubber is gomme.