Than you Victoria and Robert

I was very touched and surprised to read such nice comments from both of you this morning. And due to your requests... I will put up more of my pictures later on today. Lately, I'm painting flowers but I also enjoy doing portrait painting commissions, not just of people but of pets too and I am also a landscape painter which is considered the most difficult of all, since the weather changes in seconds and where you could minutes before see a fluffy cloud, moments later it has disappeared into thin air or a sunny spot or an interesting shade has gone when the clouds above moved away with the wind. And you have to resort to your memory of what was it that inspired you when you first saw the scene in the first place, since what was at first a sunny wonderful day does change into a grey rainy scene and nothing to what originally led you to paint it to start with. Landscape painting is very challenging but very rewarding too. Lately, I have been doing landscapes where I have allowed my imagination to dictate the colours which are not naturalistic, exaggerating the colours of the shadows with mauves and the hills with orange where its warm. But I still love to do landscapes from nature when the weather allows, tricky here in Britain where your easel can be blown away by a gust of wind or... be chased out of a field by a cow ! That was very scary. The cow ran towards me so fast, I had to scamper out of this field without having any time to collect my things, I got safely to the gate and closed it, then I watched the cow sniffing the paint brushes thinking to myself, this is the moment when my picture will get trampled with mud, but no, after she had smelled the paints brushes and noticed there was nothing that moved, she glanced at me and the cow walked back to the end of the field where she had her two calves. The moral of this story, is never get in a field where there is a cow with calves. The farmer who owns the land told me that cows can be as dangerous as bulls when they are looking after their calves.

I have had a lot of pleasant but also scary adventures when painting outdoors. One of the other episodes was when I was painting beside a lovely stone bridge, concentrating in the ripples of the water when a lady stopped her car and she shouted: ' haven't you heard the warnings above you ? ' I said: No, where ? she pointed up at a helicopter hovering around us, she said they are asking people to stay clear of this area since there is a rapist on the lose and the helicopter above is chasing him along this river, whilst the police on the ground were trying to catch him with sniffer dogs to track him down somewhere around here. The lady told me to please pack my things and leave as soon as possible. I thank her very much for her advise and that was a landscape session interrupted for the day. They did catch the man.