Given the warmer and weather and the lack of looky-loos I’ve returned to night painting. (Previously the rubbernecking people who come up to you while painting was just an annoyance, it is now a real danger in the age of COVID-19). The first painting ‘Ghost Ship #2’ was a late night addition to a previous drawing session but I found that as good as the Seawhite A4 pad is, heavy watercolour leaks through to the other pages (and a little ink, but oddly it was mostly the watercolour). So light washes and watercolour it is then! If you didn’t know, this is a sequel to this piece – not intentionally until the swan glided by and I added it.
If you like these, you’ll like this 5PM Challenge painting ‘These Days’ after the Jackson Browne song, which will appear here eventually in a 5PM roundup, but not yet.
The second piece I think is better – the piece that not only inspired the new name of the River series – ‘River Man’ but also provoked the title of this work – Lilac Time might be a band, but it’s a quote from Nick Drake’s River Man. And given the lilacs are out, and the ‘blossom’ or ‘lilac time’ is upon us despite the current state of the world, that topsy-turvy nature seemed appropriate to name a night black piece after white flowers that grow in the day. And in Japan, an inspiration for a lot of my drawing and ink work, white is the colour of the dead.
For as the flowers grow and the sun shines, people are dying and I am hiding in the night. The virus blossoms and like Lilac Wine, or eating the Lotus I want to forget it.
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