Summer rain Can be a pain I’d like to complain But who’s to blame? For lack of sun it’s becoming a mission To continue our summer cyanotype tradition…
…but continued it anyway and took any sunny opportunity with the kids to make magic blue pictures…
…I also can't choose which I like more, blue or green. There is a Chinese word, 青 qing, which means blue green, or green blue, or sometimes light green, or sometimes black! (To not embarrass my family I didn't go out with odd shoes, don't worry.) Sometimes the colour of the 'dirty' water pot I wash my brushes in turns out to be the most beautiful colour. I also fell in love with malachite all over again in early August. I'm painting with it currently for the Art of Attention: Court of Gayumars project. Places are open for the next 3 months starting from September...
…And painting fantasy orchids was fun. https://www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com for more Flowers. I like flowers that have different looking petals in the same flower. Peonies are like this, and you can also eat them! Or drink them in tea - I just had white peony tea this afternoon. I also had these during our annual afternoon tea, which was also our first real proper outing after the pandemic...
…and I'm really enjoying spending time with my children - and, willingly clichéd enamoured mother that I am, I also want to paint them. To gear up to it, I'm painting childhood. Starting with babies. This mama looks completely relaxed*. This is the dream - to be reclining on a golden throne and actually dreaming and feeding while clouds pass by in the sky and a happy baby suckling. Breastfeeding mamas should be given thrones, yes, and not be hidden away in toilets and shooed out of cafes. Unintentional at first but now I like it: the imperial yellow cloak mixed with my talismanic shirts that I painted 2 cosmic circles in - breasts as twin universes...
...An old quick Rorschach style painting I dug out at the beginning of the month, and something that caught my eye on a shelf in B&Q. Making the lightning fast connection between 1001 and 1001 Nights via Aladdin (which isn't technically part of the 1001 Nights but a later European addition) and flying carpets (which are in the Nights but not technically in all Aladdin versions unless you count the Disney one [which is fabulous {Robin Williams vs Will Smith - can't choose!}]) and you arrive at... 1001 Carpet Machine Solution. Targets Tough Stains. I might get it one day. Visiting B&Q or any DIY store has become one of our favourite family dates. We all love it! And rarely leave empty handed. I love the colour samples of course (as a kid going to Homebase with my mother I'd regularly embarrass her by taking Every. Single. Colour chart sample... you know how they have colour samples of every single colour imaginable in paint, and you're only meant to take the ones that interest you... well, what if they all interest you? So I just took the lot. Took a good 20 mins to systematically work my way through all of them but I just needed... all of them). So many screws, so little time... we just work our way through aisle by aisle, up and down, and rarely leave empty handed. It's much cheaper than afternoon tea but almost just as fun...
...and I am working my way through fabric samples for a PhD project. I ordered so many from the website one weekend, around 50 in total using different names and email addresses to get round their system till I'd exhausted them, that the company called me during the week to check it was a real order and not spam - and then just sent me their whole catalog, so now I have 350 samples to play with. Yippee!! Habotai vs Dupion, I'm learning a lot by feel and touch alone. There are some people with, let's face it, some niche niche interests, and I'm glad to meet them and for them to meet each other during our monthly meetings related to miniature painting - niches within niches.
… And we'll see how my brushes paint on said fabric. Will report back later! (After I've been through 350 samples, which also include some crazy ones such as dissolvable fabric, although I do think that is just really cool. Half of it dissolved when I added the starch size, and what's more surprising is that I was surprised when this happened!) https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk ...
...*Breastfeeding isn't always relaxing, especially in the early days when you need loads of help. Breasts in art also aren't new...
...Can't latch won't latch. Maybe that's why she looks so grumpy, as does he...
...That's more like it. A real Virgo Lactans...
...Twiddling is banned. Babies aren't allowed to fidget or fiddle or get distracted at all...
…because when they do it hurts, which is maybe why this monkey mama looks so pissed off. My own two monkeys are happily painting with mini paint sample rollers from Dulux. Then they found my bigger adult rollers when I got distracted and I wasn't looking. Then they painted their legs.
Mischievously yours,
Vaishali Prazmari
