Painting the Weather

The weather has been very strange lately hasn't it? It's been driving me mad this week while I have been desperately trying to get on with Baby Can Bounce. 

Fortunately, my desk is under a couple of lovely big veluxes. Unfortunately, they are south facing. Each time the sun beams down, I am blinded by the brilliant light reflecting off my white drawing board, so I climb down from my gas-lift chair, climb up onto the step-stool, pull down the blinds, climb back down off the step-stool and up into my chair. Two minutes later, the sun goes behind a huge, black cloud, so I do the whole operation again, in reverse. But no sooner have I put pastel to paper than - you guessed it - the sun is back! Grrrrrrr..... 

Poor John has got fed up with hearing me swearing and ranting!

However, this fast-changing weather, with its curious light, looked very beautiful through the window of the train which brought me back from the YLG conference last week. I couldn't resist trying to capture it in my sketchbook.  Luckily I had my paints in my bag, as it was so much about colour.

It was tricky, as things were so transitory, but I was really pleased with the results, so I thought I'd show them to you. 

The theatrical business of painting on a train got me into yet another lovely conversation with a couple of fellas (quite hunky ones actually...). One was sitting opposite me and I'd sketched him when I first got on:

The other had been sneaking looks from across the aisle for a while. He turned out to be a squaddie just coming on leave from a tour of Afghanistan, so I found out loads about army life.