22 December 2013

mid-lothian

BF_fernbirds sketch underpainting a
Revisited an old composition this afternoon and started the underpainting in oils. The materials have that lovely 'library smell' and are nice because they dry slowly (the drawback also being that they dry slowly).
I listen to fluff books while painting and picked the audio of Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds' because it's a mystery that doesn't involve a murder and was surprised by coincidences with my recent activities. In the book are musings on Georgian architecture, which I was recently reading up on, the art expert in McCall Smith's story is a controversial figure in a non-fiction book I'm currently reading (about a set of possible forgeries), the family in the story lives in a country house in the exact area of Scotland that I've been concentrating on in my dad's genealogy, and their ancestors were also Jacobites (I only recently found this out about my family).