Finger lakes this morning for 30 minutes. Pencil, ink, watercolour. One of the first warm spring days with the sunlight seeming to open and pull everything upwards. Banks of white cloud behind the ivy-clad trees. Many walkers on the green path between the Finger Lakes of Bedford's Priory Country Park. Setting out across the lake, the ducks leave a widening wake which refracts sky, cloud and shoreline. Terns and gulls scream and scatter in the air, then bob about on the surface. The nesting ducks and geese behave more sedately, even coming to graze among the near reeds while I painted, on the bank, in the sunshine. In the afternoon I visited AF Blakemore's warehouse on Manton Lane. From the second floor windows you can see west, under the banks of spring cloud, over woods and farmland towards Milton Keynes. There's hardly much colour left in my palette but I managed to find some dregs for these pale, horizontal bars of colour. |