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What was your fasting blood glucose? (full on chat)

Strange day all round here in the centre of the country, also where did it go? Answer, blooming technology! I occasionally get Music arrangements from a Mandolin Player Simon Mayor and a piece called Buttermere Waltz see below link. Paid for it, tried to download it onto iPad, but zip file so failed twice, went to laptop, message 'downloads exceeded' phoned him up and because musicians have no work he answered, lovely man, interesting chat and sorted out the problem. Came to print and my printer ran out of ink, thank goodness for MR Amazon, I can print it Sunday. Looking forward to learning the piece and Mrs MC can play the accompliment on guitar or Recorder as there is a second part. For now reading music on our iPads.


So daily painting lagged behind, new cold pressed Canson Paper, not so rough and quite like it. Watercolour A4 and still lots to do. This is a pool on Cannock Chase, I did a watercolour sketch Plein Air during lockdown so this will be the proper painting. Will finish Sunday if I don't get completely absorbed on my Mandolin.

 
The paper does look a lot smoother. I hope you enjoy using it.
 
good evening all

4.7 Thursday, 4.6 Friday and 4.2 this morning

We have had a wet and windy couple of days here, waves breaking right over the harbour wall

My anxiety level has defnitely gone up since Katy went back to mum's, must be missing all that fiddling about with her wool whilst she sat on my knee and I find it more difficult to motivate myself in cold wet weather I'm afraid

I have sorted out some more wardrobe items today and got things ready for dinner at mum's tomorrow, it's going to be a mild chicken curry followed by a fruit crumble and custard for mr gee and mum with LC sponge and yoghurt for me.

Hope your day is treating you kindly

@gennepher - an interesting digital work again with an insight into the process your commission work is very effective and the recipients should be delighted.

@Muddy Cyclist - I love your latest completed painting it worked really well, the composition, the depth of field and the textures of the stepping stones. Will be interested to see how you find the differences with the new Canson 'smooth' paper.

Art catch up -
I must say that I'm still finding it instructive working at emulating other painters or using their hints and tips.
no 1 - tried from a lesson on painting the sea by John Lovatt who suggests using white gouache for contrast, the area around the stones was left more lightly painted in the usual way and looks better to me than the area I added gouache to which is hardly visible as a contrast - I really like the colour pallet though


no 2 - had another go at painting the milky way, don't know that it worked any better (though it is less violently purple ) I'm feeling a bit dischuffed with my own art just now but that tends to happen, two steps forward, one step back I guess

 
Thank you very much for the compliments @geefull

You said you used white gouache in painting number one and you weren't very happy with it. I don't know what white gouache you used.

White gouache can be very useful. But I find the only one that's any good is an artist quality white gouache e.g maybe Windsor & Newton. I have a glass jar of their white gouache. It is not particularly cheap but it is well worth the money.

When I use it I do not dilute it very much. I do use it with watercolors but I don't mix the watercolor with it. I use the white gouache neat with a fine brush, or with very little water. It might be to highlight something on flower petals. I tend to use it more when I'm painting water and waves and I use it to get that white bit on top of the waves, that foamy bit, and the white lines in water. I think I am saying basically I use the white gouache when I need that extra bit of fine detail in the watercolor. Where you have done the dark rocks, underneath them, you have your little wavelets. What I might do on my paintings is to use a fine brush and put a few dots of neat white gouache here and there to give a tiny bit of detail to show the wavelets breaking.

Or, on some distant land in the sea, or over the other side of a lake, where the land meets the water, there is often a fine white line there. I try to remember to leave the whiteness of the paper for that white line, but I forget, so this is when I might use the fine white line of white gouache.

You can use a Caran D'ache white watercolour pencil for some white effects, especially for the white line I mentioned above.

My partner J used to show me this stuff which he did on his watercolour painting.

I hope you don't mind me saying all this. I apologise in advance if I have said too much @geefull

Number 1 is a good painting.

I like the green rolling landscapes of number 2.
 
Sorry to hear you are feeling anxious and missing Katy, I agree weather is not helping our moods, and it's sad you are disgruntled with your art.

I agree with you about the white on your seascape, I always choose to leave the paper rather than add white works much better. Wasn't so sure about your milky way, personally I would go for more dramatic be bold with the dark, perhaps splattering the paper with some masking fluid before starting and letting the white paper shine through then dark land but let the sea shine out, easy for me to say as I find it hard to let go but get abstract and I think it will turn out really great.

You are doing so well with your art, coming on in leaps and bounds don't get despondent just enjoy the creativity.
 
I really like the colour palette also. The more I look at the painting the more I like it.
 
Fbg 6.9

Temp 35.1

There was a beautiful dawn with a duck egg coloured sky.

And then the cloud cover came in so now we have an even dull gray monotonous sky.

There is a wind playing with all the trees and it's cold out there.

Cat is under the fleece blanket. He says it is too cold.

I think I will do it digital painting today, too windy outside. I need something to wake me up mentally so that will probably do it.

Catch you later....
 
Good Morning and 5.2 for me today.

Dull but dry today, a day of video calls to sisters and extended family and MIL in the Nursing Home.

Find some peace and enjoyment in your day whatever chaos it manages to throw at you, take care.
 
5.0 this morning. Very grey day - just starting to rain.I

Yesterday started with good intentions. I was going to get the invoices etc. sorted so that my friend Hilary, who has been doing the bookkeeping for 20 years, can reconcile the May bank statement. The second job was to pack up the stuff the accountant needs so he can submit our self assessment paperwork to HMRC.

What happened instead was that I couldn't put the new book I had just started reading down. So zero work done - and I had a lovely relaxing day instead.

My excuse for not doing the work was that I had to keep turning the computer off because of the intermittent thunder.
 
Good morning everyone from an excitedly wet and windy morning in the dark and dangerous north. The badly taken image is of a squirrel sitting on a fence in the rain.

The wonder wheel of cauliflour cheese with buttery cauliflour greens came in at 4.9 this am

Mrs Miggins has had to go and look after her twin sister. She is a single foster carer and has an infant in charge but was taken into hospital in the wee hours of Saturday morning and discharged several hours later with a load of morphine. Luckily they had both recently had had Covid-19 tests which came back negative. I am doing my test at 0700 tomorrow at home and a courier has just been booked.

@gennepher, loved your painting. It reminded me of the story of Zeus who turned into a swan and seduced Leda.
@geefull - great paintings all round, liked the way that you depicted the milky way.

Have the most wonderful day that you can, I, for a change will probably be staying indoors and drinking koffy.
 

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Krystyna23040 said:
My excuse for not doing the work was that I had to keep turning the computer off because of the intermittent thunder.
Click to expand...
I'll remember that one krystyna I have the teeniest tiniest bit of paperwork to do it's been sitting there for over two weeks.
 
Morning...Matt Hancock on The Andrew Marr show not that I particularly wanted to watch the show just couldn't be bothered to reach for the remote & switch over after the news...cold here & I have succumbed to my soft southerner sensibilities & switched on the heating on & take the edge off...not a bad sleep considering our Charlie did not come in when called last night so there I was in PJ's with torch freezing up & down the garden calling him...had to wait until after 1am until he sauntered up the garden path as if nothing was wrong no idea what he was doing but clearly it was more important than coming home...so not to bed until well after 2am...woke to a 6.5
 
Good Morening Ladies and Gentlemen.

Today was another unsurprising 6.3, but I am very wary of that meter, it is planning something.

So thousands of protesters it seems, are immune to this dreadful virus, I wish I was a protester, if I was I wouldn't have had to in lockdown since early March and Mrs J wouldn't have had to be furloughed.
Strange old world we live in.
Have a good day folks.
 
Charlie will be off on his romantic midnight endeavors now...
 
07.06.2020
9.40am FBG 5.4
overslept just a little. Am usually up earlier than this. It was raining quite hard so went up to the loft where I found that the loose flashings are letting the water in and it is trickling down the side of the chimney. It's much too high for me to reach and I have no idea what I can do about it, except watch with dismay it's progress. At the very least MrSlim will perhaps get something useful from my observations. The ten day forecast is for nine days with variable amounts of rain.
The stray cat who has been my constant companion for several days, even walking round the garden with me, is not on the doorstep. Perhaps she got tired of waiting for her breakfast?
It would be good to know she has somewhere else to go.
Looking for indoor jobs today. Perhaps a wardrobe overhaul? Have a vast amount of clothes that no longer fit. When I started losing weight did expect to put some of it back on, but after two years this size seems to be the new normal.
 
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