January 2024
By now you probably know how much I like to wander about, my head full of silly songs and musings and my backpack filled with pencils, watercolours and a sketchbook.
Luckily I am house and cat sitting this couple of weeks in the beautiful Languedoc, France, staying in a tiny medieval village and enjoying some warmer weather than back in the UK. Here it is dry and around 20 degrees but as you can tell by the video it’s been pretty windy.
Today I wandered and wondered and shot a little film to show you where I walked and the gorgeous studio (of cousin John Baldwin) I come back to for working on a little bit of gouache painting. I went about 6 miles in all and then ventured out again to stand and draw in the little square.
I have peace and quiet and sole use of the house – just me and my mind. It’s always interesting what that gets up to when alone and keeping off social media mostly. I enjoy observing its monkey tricks !!
At the end of the day I went along to one of the village squares and stood to draw where I encountered an elderly man who enjoyed telling me about his paintings and a young woman called Nancy who has illustrated children’s books. So friendly – and they didn’t even laugh at my French!
France is very wabi-sabi, there’s always beauty in the nooks and crannies of back streets. Here’s my favourite example from a door today – god only knows what kind of technology this is!!
I painted this little scene from the bench by the bridge – the medieval buildings are suitably wonky enough to be painted in a gale! Afterwards the cat came to give me her autograph…
Next time I come I will bring my harmonium – it needs a little work doing to it’s coupler mechanism… a useful industry in a teeny village…
Back in the studio in the middle of the day I played with gouache – needed to use the pink to capture the chill of yesterday…
Anyway I may work into this a bit tomorrow when it’s light.
This was the original drawing I did on my knee in the hills – so far I prefer it to the painting but then that’s not complete and I’m sure I will warm up!
My greatest pleasure though is my lovely new sketchbook – a Pith – lovely smooth and strong paper and good for watercolour and other wet stuff at 200g paper. I have suddenly become a big fan of smoooooooth paper!
I will try to post some more here over the next couple of days – thank you for dropping by!!
Clare Wassermann Art 