One thing leads to another

Beautiful sunshine again today. Yesterday's brief spell of rain has only teased the plants with a few drops of the water they need. Put seed in the bird feeder (tried to clean it as something strange seems to be growing in the bottom...) and did a bit of pottering round the flower beds. There are large gaps where I have lost quite a few plants due to the two severe winters we've had so a visit to the garden centre is on the cards. I've mail-ordered hardy gerberas and a dwarf buddleia 'buzz'.

This will replace the buddleia davidii which had grown so large we had to dig it up. I do miss it but it really was taking over.

My pottering led me to the summer house where I flopped in the chair and started reading Frida Kahlo's Diary. Had bought this last year and stuck it, unread, on the shelf among all my other art books. I'm still not sure what to make of her work but I did feel inspired to put the book down and do something! Looked through my portfolio again and found a few more sketches from the past. Back in the day I really loved drawing the human figure - maybe I should pick this up again. Also came across my paintings from an experimental art class I did in 2003. All very strange. I remember we had to paint while listening to various pieces of music, just playing with colour and shapes and seeing what came up. So sorted everything into (roughly) date order and debated what to do next. Acrylics were right there in my line of vision, along with texture paste, structure gel and a glazing medium. With no definite outcome in mind I mixed reds and yellows with the structure gel and created random shapes on paper using a palette knive. Also played around with the texture paste and different colours - just having fun and making a mess. I did eventually have to put on the CSI gloves though!