On Monday I had had my first go at Wordle. This is a bit of a fad at the moment. My first attempt was pretty successful. Results are usually shared in this form:
Wordle 219 3/6
On Tuesday I was even more pleased... I had started with the word GAMES and then from that guessed SUGAR.
Wordle 220 2/6
Lots of people are posting these results on Facebook, but I don't want to get overexcited or be seen as a show-off so I will stick to putting it on here...not that it means anything!
Later on I went with Bunnykins to her netball practice. She now has some kit, though she wouldn't let me get a photo of the team t-shirt.
We tend to get there early, she was drawing on her phone.
So I had a go too...
Thursday was a busy day, but I did fit my wordle in during lunch... I was pretty impressed at my level of guessing luck on this one...
The curtains arrived for the front room during the day. I had decided to get them made professionally, as the fabric I wanted was velvet, which I know from experience is very difficult to sew. They were quite a weight and I couldn't lift them to check sizes on my own (Mark was out at the office). When everyone was back in the evening though, Mark and Woo worked together to get them hung up.
Woo thought they would make a great ballgown...
I was so chuffed with how well they fit (I did measure for them like a hundred times 😄😜) and how lovely they look.
Woo said they were like the illustrations for Where the Wild Things Are. Which I don't disagree with or mind at all!
Ben was over and we sat serenading the workers as they put the curtains up, then carried on with some new classics (Sweet Caroline, Sweet Marie, Stuck in the Middle with You, Moondance).
The weather in the week had been a bit warmer, but Friday was another frosty start. I dropped off the girls and then went for a run. I know I say it each week, but it really was a beautiful morning.
I came back and sat by the radiator to warm up and have my breakfast. A mist descended across the park which didn't lift until the afternoon.
I nipped out in the morning to pick up some painting supplies then went across to the hatch with Mark for lunch. We met Ben there and had a chat while I darned a hole (rather 4 holes!) in one of his jumpers.
I joined his ukulele group, which was nice, then went home to start a new project.
I tend to find that a neutral expression works best. If you draw or paint an emotional face: smiling, angry, surprised... if any of the lines of the face (the ones that make up that particular expression) were slightly off - it would look weird. It would definitely look drawn and probably drawn badly. The eye and brain understands so deeply how to read the human face for meaning and expression. It tells the difference between a scream and a squeal of joy. It's like it can read a finger print and know who the person is just from that combination of ridges. If you get it wrong, even just by a tiny bit - the brain knows. It doesn't know why it's wrong... but it knows something isn't right. So with a neutral expression, there is less to get wrong! And it also then tends to be more mysterious, more open to interpretation, so I usually like the mood of that kind of picture.
Woo has been getting some online tutor help for science with her great Aunty Marian. She speaks to her on a Wednesday, but she had also sent some books which Woo received on Thursday. She was really chuffed so I made a little gif...
After the framing adventure last week, there was a beautiful frame that I really wanted to use that would suit a portrait. I haven't painted in oils since before the girls were born. I loved using oil paints for my A-Level in art and in our hall is a portrait of Mark and a picture from a painting taken when we travelled to Porto during our inter-railing when we graduated. I think the last picture in oils was a painting of a flower that I did while living in London, (Mark was in America). Then they all got packed away in a box.
Particularly with Woo doing GCSE art, she has expressed an interest in learning about oil paints, so I decided to freshen up my supplies and have a go. My intention is to paint a portrait of each of the girls that I can then get framed.
I had a good candidate photo of Bunnykins, so I printed that out to start with her.
My first task was to draw it out on the canvas.
Feeling happy with where I had got to, I left it so that I could paint at the weekend when Woo could join me if she wanted.
Time also for a Wordle..
Saturday morning started with a Wordle, but a massively frustrating one! 😄 like, why would you choose a word with so many possible first letter options! 😝 Maybe it's not such a relaxing game! 😂
In the morning, the girls and I walked down to the library to change our books. Then Mark, Bunnykins and I walked up to Staple Hill high street while Woo got on with some homework.
In the afternoon, we all walked down to chez Dickson for a bit of an unveiling on their new kitchen. I was really excited for Hannah, and them all. Living in a building site is no fun, but it is worth it when you get such lovely new space.
Hannah had cooked chilli for us in the slow cooker. We sat around chatting which was lovely. Bunnykins and M were off entertaining themselves.
But after a while, they joined us and there was some Just Dance fun....
On Sunday morning Woo and Mark were having a go at putting the roof rack on the car.
Woo was too busy with homework, but I got on with my painting.
I was absorbed in it for a good number of hours in the day. I am not sure how long really, but I was pretty tired when I finally came out of my painting trance. I am not happy with the lips, so I will probably come back to that, but I loved the process of working with oils. Portraits were always my favourite. Mixing skin tones is quite interesting. For my skin tone it is always lots of white paint, then yellow and/or ochre (as it gets darker), some red, but also blue. There is always a bit of blue needed to take the colour down. I start with the palest tones and work around the details and contours. I enjoy the concentrated process of looking at parts of the face. Not seeing the whole, but seeing lines, shapes, colour, tone, and most of all the relationships between these aspects and how they change across the features.
I felt a little worse for wear after the consumption of prosecco the night before, but this in no way influenced my choice of words...
I didn't have a candidate photo for Woo. I have lovely pictures of her, but I hadn't taken anything suitable since she had her new hair cut. She posed in front of the new curtains. I will probably go with the first one.
not this one 😄 though I love it!...
we rounded off the evening with some family Sherlock time and then it was time for bed and the end of another week.
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