OMG

I don't often post links to music, it being such a personal thing and difficult to really give people an idea of what they will listen to, but today I feel I must bring this woman to everyone's attention.

Her name is Laura Marling and she is just wonderful.

Listen to her latest single here.

There's lots more of her music on youtube. Try her out. You honestly won't regret it.

I have to add that I am SO enjoying the recent new folk music. And now I sound really old.

The Human Form 2

So painting is hard. I'm struggling, but I've borrowed some books from the library and I'm trying to read everything about painter's techniques and them put them into practice. It helps when I can see the paintings in the flesh.

Just that happened on Tuesday when I went to the Graves Gallery in old Sheffers town. I'd been peering at a Walter Sickert painting for hours trying to figure out how he'd painted it from the description of his technique and it just wasn't going in. Then I stumble in that very painting when I'd gone to see something completely different. Joy, happiness and wonderment as I actually got to be an inch away from the painting and got look really look at the brush strokes and how the underpainting was visible in places, the lightness and looseness of the top painting. Fantastic. I'm never going to assume local libraries and galleries don't have something worth seeing in the end.

This is the painting I was looking at. It's just astounding in real life. Its called the Soldiers of King Albert the Ready. Painted in 1914 by Walter Sickert.

This is my latest painting. I've clearly got a very long way to go. I'm gong to try some underpainting in the style of Walter Sickert. Eventually I will get it, it's just a matter of persevering and practicing other people's techniques.