Back to first love.

I can say I have grown holding a pencil or a brush, since I was just a little child about fourty years ago; mother could "forget" me at my little desk drawing, colouring, cutting and pasting paper for hours and hours.

Then when I was about ten aged, I was used to help to reorder the kitchen and sometimes wash the dishes after lunch to get some very little money that I saved to buy coloured felt pen o coloured pencil sets...so I learned very early that one has to work and save if wants to have something, good lesson !

And at fourteen old, I got my first wooden easel, oil colour, brushes and canvas, it was a like a dream but that wasn't my way.

My real love was born any years later when my husband gifted me my first watercolour paintbox and since then this has been my favourite tecnique. 

Getting older, I have also studied many years the art of painting on porcelain but when I was finally good enough, Fibromyalgia stopped my run as pain was too much because that kind of painting  requires an incredible concentration and it is a real fatigue.

So I dedicated my attentions to embroidery "thinking" it was something relaxing and you all know eveything about the last years.

But embroidery is not relaxing for me, I love the planning, the start and the finish of a project but not what's in between ! I easily get anxious when something is not like I would or bored when a work takes ages to be completed and that's probably why have so much works on the way but just sporadic finishes.

Recently really felt the need to do something truly relaxing, something handy that doesn't require much materials to be made so what best that painting again using my old watercolours and just a brush and a glass of water ? but as always I'm not so easy, I love botanical subjects and reading Blogs here and there about Botanical painting I discovered an incredible and old material: CALFSKIN VELLUM ! yes, the one used in old manuscripts. So I ordered some samples from William Cowley in UK which is a very old manufacturer of parchment and vellum and here you can see my first adventure...there is a world behind this tecnique, YAY ! I have a new play ...and IT'S relaxing too !

So now you know where my crazy brain has been in the last five months...

Adapted from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta Folio 52 -
10 x 10 cm

 still don't feel ready to paint live subjects but by now  it's ok too.

I could not resist to sew a  wallet for my brushes using William Morris fabric tied with a fingerloop 

braid !...this means that I won't stop being an embroiderer too :)