An "Artist's Date" with Paint.

Today I indulged in a little painting with the acrylic paints and children's palate I bought myself last weekend. It was a good day to do so, as today would have been my Dad's 81st birthday, and he used to paint as a young man and boy.

This is a painting he did when he was aged 16 or thereabouts, I think he said he copied it from an original.

He didn't do much painting as he grew up, in fact I can't remember him ever painting or drawing at all. He always encouraged me with art as a child, but I too stopped as I grew up, only really being creative as part of my work as a teacher.

Since leaving teaching a few years ago, I rarely get the chance to do anything creative and I miss it. So today I played a bit with the paints and some pebbles from the beach. I thought I would paint each pebble with one of the four images from the "Pebble for my Pocket" meditation  I blogged about last week.

Beautiful shapes.



New brushes and a clean palate.

Taking care not to wash my brushes in the tea.

Mixing just the right shade.

Wondering how it will go.

Satisfying.

Experimenting.

What fun!

Finished.

Mountains are going to be tricky.

Loving the colours.

Finished.

A lake and reflections were a little bit tricky!

It's hard to shut out the reality of the outside world, however a little time today spent concentrating on tiny details, colours and shapes; on mixing paints with the tip of a tiny paintbrush; and on beautiful photographs taken by others, really managed to take it all away for a while.

The fourth pebble was "Space" and by then I'd lost my patience! May have another go at that one!