Figs

I've learned that we are living and gardening in Zone 9. This has helped a great deal in working out what sort of things to plant, when to harvest etc.

But some things are pretty obvious. The big fig tree on my patch - at least 50 years old - is fruiting quite abundantly.

You can tell easily when it's time to pick them because they turn quite dramatically from green to dark purple, and are ready when they've started to soften and droop downwards.


I asked Annamaria for advice on picking, and instead of lending me a ladder she showed me her trick for making a fig-picker.

























You cut the bulbous top part off a water bottle and stick it on the end of a broom pole.

It can be a bit tricky to get the knack of it, but you sort of use the sharp edge of the plastic cup part to cut through the stem, and the little blob of goodness plops down into the bowl.

The first big fig harvest a couple of weeks ago.

Found the wasp nests in the rosemary bushes under the fig tree. They must only use them for rasing their young because just a couple of weeks before this I'd seen them full of wasps, all snoozing in the mid-day heat. Just a short time later the nests are empty and abandoned.

I'm extra proud of this zucca. It's starting to turn orange now and has quite a hard shell. Must weigh at least 15 lbs. I go out and give it a friendly pat every day to encourage it.

I transplanted the seedlings after they just sprouted up spontaneously from one of the pots we rescued from the garden in Norcia. I started them from seeds I saved from a bit of zucca I bought in the produce shop there. So this is the second generation. Now the plants are enormous, covering ten meters of ground. It produced a few fruits, but this one is the best.

The weather finally broke last week and the temps are down to a more seasonally normal 80 F. or so. We haven't had the promised rain though. The forecast is for more tomorrow. Keeping up the prayers for an end to the drought, and still saving dish water for the terrace pots.

Some of the pumpkins and a young version of the big zucca. Very sweet and dense flesh, and of course very good for you. The pumpkins turned out well but all quite small because of the heat.

In the background you can see the two pots of sweet potatoes - that likes it as hot and sunny as possible, and the basil that also likes a sunny spot.

The flowers and herbs on the terrace are doing OK, but the heat has been very hard on the flowering plants. The rose - the last survivor of the six I had in  Norcia - produced three flowers that immediately dried up.

I found an acanthus spinosus, a beautiful flowering plant that I've always wanted in the garden, but they like cooler temps and shade, so it produced a beautiful flower spike which was lovely, but after the heat got started in earnest it more or less gave up. I've cut off the dead stuff now and am happy that it seems to be bouncing back. But it's getting moved into a shady spot in the garden proper when we've turned it over and finished preparing the beds.

The morning glories are doing much better now that the heat is going down a bit,



and the passion flowers - another survivor of the quakes that I started from seed - have begun to produce more buds that I hope will flower soon.

Lots of vines and quite a few buds, but a lot of them just dried up in the terrible heat and never opened, no matter how much I watered the pot.






























In other news, I was very happy to be able to join the Italian SSPX's annual pilgrimage for the feast of St. Pius X. They walk every year from Bevagna to Assisi, with an overnight stop in Foligno and a Mass in beautiful Spello on the way. It was the first time I got to meet the nice sisters from Narni face to face, and we got on famously. They reiterated their invitation to come down to stay over on Saturday evenings to attend the Mass on Sundays. This will be much more doable now that the bus and train service out of San Martino has started again.

This is the Mass on Sunday morning in the church of San Andrea in Spello. I took the train down to Foligno and stayed over in a B&B and joined the pilgrimage to walk between Foligno and Spello, but that was as far as I was going to make it. The group all carried on to Assisi, but I had to go home and rest.

This church has a Pinturicchio altarpiece in the right hand transept. I tried to get a few photos, but the picture is so huge and the space so small you can't get it all in, and the light reflects onto the surface no matter where you stand. It's a pity because this photo from Wiki does absolutely no justice to it whatever.

Having discovered Pinturicchio recently on a trip to Spello with a friend in June, I think I've found my new favourite Italian painter. Even greater than Filippino Lippi, in my opinion. And it's just sitting there, above a neglected transept altar, usually in the dark, in an all but abandoned church in one of those hill towns that has been turned almost entirely into a theme park. As soon as the Mass was over and everyone gone off to the next leg of the pilgrimage, it lapsed instantly back into being a rather shabby and neglected little museum where a few tired tourists wandered now and then. But I think maybe this winter I'll go do a little art-pilgrimage of my own and just go and look at it for a while.


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The figs reminded a friend of mine about this little meditation from the late great Cardinal Bacci, one of the few at V-2 who tried to stop the train going over the cliff.

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
1. Today’s subject for meditation is the parable of the barren fig tree in the Gospel of St. Luke. “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit thereon and found none. And he said to the vine-dresser, ‘Behold, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down, therefore; why does it still encumber the ground?’ But he answered him and said, ‘Sir, let it alone this year too, till I dig around it and manure it. Perhaps it may bear fruit, but if not, then afterwards thou shalt cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)

Perhaps Jesus has come many times to us also looking for the fruit of our good works, and has found none. Perhaps He has continued to bestow favours and blessings upon us, and perhaps He has waited many years for us to correspond with His grace by performing acts of penance and of expiation.

We may have made good resolutions many times; but what became of them? Temptations of various kinds may have caused us to neglect these resolutions, which remained like branches without any fruit. We must remember that although God is infinitely good and merciful, He is also infinitely just. The day could come when He might say: “Cut it down. Why does it still encumber the ground?” In that case what would become of us?

An episode described in the Gospel of St. Mark should induce serious reflection. Jesus was walking from Bethany to Jerusalem and grew hungry on the way. He saw a fig tree beside the road but on inspection found that it was barren. “And He said to it ‘May no fruit ever come from thee henceforth forever!’ “And immediately the fig tree withered up.” His disciples, we are told, were amazed when they saw this happening. (Cf. Mt. 21:18-20)
How terrible if God should ever pronounce this severe condemnation upon us.

2. One morning after they had fished in vain throughout the night, the Apostles saw Jesus appear on the shore of the lake. “He said to them, ‘Cast your nets to the right of the boat.’” (Cf. John 21:6-11) They obeyed and caught so many fish that the net was in danger of breaking.

While the Apostles were working without the help of Jesus, they caught nothing. When they worked under the direction of Our Lord they caught a miraculous draught of fishes. In the Garden of Gethsemane, however, the Apostles could not summon the strength to watch and pray with Jesus for even an hour. As a result, they abandoned and denied Him.

For love of gain the Apostles worked throughout the entire night; for love of Jesus, however, they were not able to watch and pray for even an hour, and so they fell miserably.

3. We should learn two lessons from this meditation. We should work always for Jesus and with Jesus. If we stray away from Him Who is the way, the truth and the life, we shall get lost, and our efforts will have no value for eternity. Without Jesus, our spiritual life will grow dry. As long as we are with Jesus, everything will be good and holy, even humiliation and sorrow, and all our actions will gain merit for us in Heaven. Furthermore, we must take care not to make the same mistake as the Apostles, who spent the whole night working for material gain but could not watch and pray for even one hour with Jesus. We should consider it our most important obligation in life to work always with Jesus and for Jesus. Only in this way shall we find contentment in this life and happiness in the next.

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What I'm doing while I'm not blogging

I know.

For the first time in years and years this blog's daily readership has dropped below 300 a day. I understand.

It's just that, well, the innernet is such a bore! Real life is just so much better than spending days hunched over the computer.

I'm sorry. I know you guys have been very, very loyal over the years.

But just to show that I'm not just swanning about wasting time, here's my latest painting I finished this week.

It was a new cover for an old book. 

The book spine

That's Henry, leading some mice astray. 

The monks lent me a book for Lent last year. It was just a little cheap paperback edition of some desert father or other. As I was reading it, the cover fell off. So I made a new one. 

It was just a fun thing, a means of getting some practice in and doing a few experiments with materials and whatnot. Having a bit of fun, really. The red pen work on the smaller capitals is OK, but it's all tilted wonkily. Could do with a bit lighter colour on the strawbs. But apart from that, I'd say it was OK. 

I gave it to Fr. Benedict the other day after Mass. He seemed to like it.



And here's me raking my leaves. The sound of drums in the background is nothing to worry about. It's actually just drums. The Norcia drum corps practices every week across the valley and the sound carries really well.

I've got four large and very lively oak trees in my garden. They like to produce leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. The kitties had a ball all winter romping around in them, and they protect the wildflowers from frost, but if you leave them too long, they cut off the sunlight to the stuff underneath, and they also tend to encourage papatacci, a bug worse than mosquitoes, if it can be imagined.

It took about 20 tarp loads to get the whole garden clear. But I wouldn't trade it. I love outdoor work.



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Dreaming of professional development

Painting restoration courses in Florence.

One-year course

This course offers a comprehensive and accelerated program, giving a unique opportunity to acquire a wide range of knowledge and techniques related to your field of study.

　Along with practical classes of your major subject - combined with challenging homework and assignments – our Basic Art Lessons will provide you with fundamentals of arts and design.

　Furthermore, you will broaden and enrich your artistic experience - looking beyond the borders of your specialty – through our weekly guided Art Visits and monthly Art Stages.

　Through this program, you will not only acquire a solid foundation in your study area, but also develop specific, advanced skills, immersed in a stimulating learning environment. Moreover, you will have the chance to learn basic business practices, to start up you career as young professional. Diplomas are issued to those who pass the final exam.

At least I'd be able to save the airfare.



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So, didjer 'av a noice Christmas or wot?

Mine was fun because all the good buds came up from Rome and Dingleterra and all manner of other places and kept me'n'a kitties company. We ate much and drank much and had many fires in the nice camino.

Yeah yeah... I know. I thought about it. I thought about ditching the blogs entirely. I think we're done over at WUWTS, and around here we might be good an done with ter whole Francischurch thing and well done. Who cares. Me n' my buddies have been trying to warn everbody for freaking decades, man. Those who were going to listen have listened by this time. If you want to keep hearing about it, go read the Remnant. I'm on there now and then, but strictly for the money, you understand.

What I did do in the last month that I'm actually happy about is I finished my first big painting. It's in the monks' shop and they've put a pretty respectable price tag on it, but it occurs to me that there is a wider audience for my stuff than just our local Nursini and the tourists.

I had a huge struggle over it, and mostly the kind you have between your ears and your ribs. I didn't actually really think I could produce something worth looking at, the sort of thing I saw in my brain-o. What I came up with was not perfect, but was a good deal better than I had been expecting at the start. The other big struggle was with the medium, since I'd never really painted before except with oils and very briefly and under close supervision in Andrea's classes. I'd certainly never used gouache before, and had a heck of a time getting some reasonable level of mastery with it.

It's quite terrifying to put brush to surface when you're aiming at the thing you're doing being at least some level of quality and you don't really know how to do what you're doing. I realise the solution would have been to do a number of little studies and smaller practice pieces. But as I was going along, I figured it would be a pretty good lesson to do the hardest and most complex thing I was capable of right off the bat so once I was done it, I would have crammed in as much knowledge and skill as possible in one go.

It's a lesson I learned from fencing. I used to play safe and only fence with people mostly at my level. One day I was asked, "Wanna fight?" by the son of the coach, a boy whom everyone acknowledged was heading rapidly for the BC Summer games. We fought furiously all day, and from then on I only fought with him at every practice. (I also had a terrible crush on the handsome and suave fellow). I never once got a touch on him. Not one. But after three weeks of fighting Oliver, I kicked the asses of everyone I had used to fence with without even trying. I remembered that.

Reach waaaaaay higher than you think you can go. It won't matter at all if you miss that goal; you will get to the top of your own set in no time.

This is the first of my "sort of medieval" paintings for sale. I didn't want to do anything very formal. There are already a number of artists in town who do very formal and correct by-the-book icons and they're very beautiful. But I wanted to do something a little more friendly and informal. I wanted it to have a sort of fairy tale look and remind people perhaps of their childhood or of Narnia. It really follows no rules at all for anything, neither the iconography nor the style. It's vaguely based on a number of 13th - 15th century manuscripts and is an amalgam of styles. I guess I could say that I was mostly messing about and experimenting and wanted to end up with something cheerful and nice to look at, both from far away and close up.

It's done on an old terracotta tile, the kind the Italians have used to build their walls for centuries. Treated with a layer of plaster and then gesso. I dug it up out of the ground at our community's "old monastery," the property the monks are renovating up on the side of the hill. It's impossible to date the tile, of course, since it's exactly the kind that have been made forever around here, but the monastery dates to the 13th century. It was mostly knocked down by earthquakes in the '70s. (Yes, I got permission! Shee, what d'you think?)

Here's some pics.

The text turned into rather a disaster. The thing with calligraphy is the ink has to sink into the paper or parchment a bit to sort of stick. But since I was working on ceramic tile treated with gesso, it just sat there on the surface and got messy. Next time I'll just do the text in gouache which will look much tidier. The red-pen work around the D had to be completely redone in gouache, since the Windsor and Newton "scarlet" ink came out much too orange. It was a bit of a struggle, and took quite a few tries and my studio is festooned with little slips of paper covered in spidery red pen work.


I think the little cinghialino looks a bit more like a rabbit, but I guess it's pretty medieval to have the animals look a bit wonkey. 

At about the time I started the painting part, there was a great population explosion of coccinelle in town, and the little critters were all over the house. 

I have been drawing butterflies and bugs for some time now, and they were so fun that next one is going to be all bugs and vines and gold. 

It's a pity the camera can't pick up the glitter of the gold on the wings and elsewhere. I was very liberal with the gold, which, sadly, is just paint and not real. Real gold would have required me not only to learn a whole set of skills at the same time I was learning just to control the paint, but would have pushed the final selling price way past what I was aiming for. I want people to actually buy the things. 

I kept thinking, "What if we treated both the vines and the clouds as real? Which would go over top?"

I was told by one of the monks who knows lots of formal rules about medieval art that Benedictine monks are not usually pictured in adoration. I shrug. Time to correct the oversight, I think.

Apparently the monks have been discussing which of them was the model for my little fellow here. But he's none of them. An amalgam. He does look quite a lot like Fr. Basil, though his beard is more like Br. Augustine's. 



And here's the red-pen work in the original orangey-ink. The test with gouache that you can see here brought it up to a much richer scarlet.

I'm especially fond of this angel. He will be appearing again and again. I was just going to do one little flower, a lily, at the angel's feet, but it turned almost by itself into a field of wildflowers. 

I was very pleased with the way the border turned out. In the real medieval manuscripts, the blue would have been decorated with white lines and swirls, and I've done that but was worried it would end up looking too busy. But the borders were so fun that the next one is going to be all border and bugs. 


























The background is supposed to suggest Norcia and the Valnerina. The only thing I added from life were the mountains and the cross on top, which we have here, and the mist that rises from the valley every morning and hangs about the hills. For at least some of it, I just looked out the studio window and more or less painted what I was looking at.

I learned a great deal, and when I started I'd never used this medium before, gouache. I think I've mostly got the hang of it now, and I'm moderately pleased with the results. And as a friend kept saying all through my process of agonizing over it, "This is the worst one you will do. After this, it will be better and better every time."

Either way, I know that as I was doing it, I kept getting bright ideas for more and more, and when I was done, I felt sort of at a loss as to what to do with my time, and wanted quite badly to start another one right away. Which I will do just as I've caught up with a couple of writing deadlines.

It's in the shop right now. If you want to buy it, send me a pm. The monks say it will probably go pretty fast.

Marginalia

This is a capital from a 15th century graduale (in the British Library,) with a little miniature portrait of St. Benedict and there's a hedgehog. Why is there a hedgehog? Because they're cute and people like 'em, that's why.

That's the middle ages.

























I'm getting better with gouache, and having fun with marginalia. This is my version of a 12th century bunny playing an oboe.



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A world forgotten...

When I was a kid, my mother and I were surrounded by quite a wonderful collection of oddballs. Only a few of them were horrible hippie/feminists bent on world domination (sadly, these had a rather disproportionate influence). Quite a lot of them, it being Victoria, were highly educated older English people of the first half of the 20th century, who themselves were influenced by William Morris's Arts and Crafts movement and were great lovers of history and art. I was educated in large part by my mere proximity to these intelligent and cultured people, who showered me constantly with books. (Books that are today, I see from Amazon and Ebay, quite valuable collectors objects themselves...Oh well...)

A few days ago, I tried out my new calligraphy pen and to my surprise could still cut a halfway decent letter. I noted on FB that I was surprised both that I could do this, and that I had somehow forgotten that I could. Not only had I all but forgotten that I knew how to do this, but I had obviously completely forgotten where I picked up the skill.

Last night, in my digging around the innernets for stuff about medieval manuscripts, I discovered a heretofore forgotten book that has been made available in its entirety online by the good offices of the Kelly Library at the University of Toronto. As I flicked delightedly through, I realised instantly that I recognised every page of it. This was one of the books that I had been given by my mother's older friends as a child, and it all came flooding back to me.

Once I showed an interest, they also gave me materials, and I now remember hours and hours sitting at the dining room table on hot afternoons just like this one, poring carefully over the illustrations and meticulously copying the letters and forms.

Writing Illuminating and Lettering, by William Johnston, who is known today in the circles as the "father" of modern calligraphy, who almost single-handedly revived the art, and contributed enormously to the early 20th century revival of interest in all things medieval that was to strongly influence Tolkien. The book was first published in 1906, and I'm fairly certain that I had one of the early editions. 

It was a strange experience flipping through the pages electronically, and seeing again the images that had been completely dug into my synapses before I was ten. It transported me back to a time when I was very certain about who I was, and who God was,  before my teenage apostasy and the near-ruination of my life, the derailment from which I am only now recovering.

It's a strange thing to realise that you were more right about the universe, more authentically yourself and more in line with the genuine ordering of All Things, when you were ten than when you were 35.  And equally strange to start going back to those original mental conditions in middle age. But it's a strange world we've created, and it confuses the young. 

The other day I was chatting with Fr. Cassian on the steps of the Basilica after Mass, and we fell to lamenting the terrible effects of the anti-culture on young people. I said that I felt terribly sorry for them, and that I mostly wrote with a mind to helping them avoid the great fallacies and Fantasies of our time. He said, "Oh yes! I remember being young, and it was awful." We both agreed that it was much better over as soon as possible, so one could return to the sensible and straightforward things we first learned. 

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Practice, practice, practice...

I had, of course, forgotten the sublime pleasure of spending hours practicing calligraphy. I'm working on developing a style to use with my Saint Paintings, that is turning out to be a combination of half uncials and mid-Gothic.  I'm finding the "d"s quite tricky. 

Of course, as with everything else in our times, if you want to learn something, there's a YouTube video to help:

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Art and Fear

I told a new friend here in Norcia about the plans for the Saint Paintings and said I was feeling rather intimidated by the whole thing. The notion of actually making a living as a painter is ... well... it seems a little fantastic. She gave me an excellent suggestion, saying that I should think of it as "doing crafts". It's a perfect solution. I know how to "do crafts"! We all do, right? We did it in kindergarten. It's easy and fun. 

Sometimes you just have to learn how to trick your brain. 

I'm revisiting a book one of you all sent me a few years ago called Art and Fear, a little slim volume that addresses that stuff your brain does to you when you want to make art but are so afraid of failure you don't try. It's been translated int an astonishing array of languages and has had 12 printings, so it seems it's not just me.

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Technical stuff...

I'm also having quite a wonderful time mucking about with a new medium. I'd taken a little weekend workshop in illuminating when I was about 11, and I remember for many years practising with Windsor and Newton drawing inks. The instructor said that the best medium available in modern art suppliers, the one that most closely approximated what the medieval scribes used (and wasn't too expensive) was gouache, but I never tried it at the time. 

But when I started this project, I saw that the local stationer's here in town had a good supply of gouache tubes, and that it wasn't very expensive, so a few weeks ago, I dug them out of the art cupboard, and I'm finding that they're fantastic. Exactly suited to this project. Easy to use, opaque colour that you can use like oil paints or dilute and use more like watercolours. When they dry on the palette you can reconstitute them with a drop of water, and they dry in minutes so there's no long waits between painting sessions. You can paint over mistakes quite easily, and do exactly the same techniques of colour mixing as with oils. 

For glazes and washes they're not so good, because once you dilute it too much, all you really get is the chalky medium and very little pigment, which turns out just sort of a ghostly, chalky pallor. I've figured out how to deal with this, however, and will finish the main parts in gouache, do a coating of fissativo to set the gouache, and then use pure watercolour as a light glaze over top to deepen the colours.

The dull matte finish of gouache doesn't really appeal to me much, having been trained to paint with oils, and because they stay "active" more or less forever, you normally have to put gouache paintings under glass; a single drop of water on them can ruin the painting even years after it's finished. I don't want to bother with framing under glass, and don't think the ceramic tiles would do well in such contraptions anyway. But I've solved both of these problems with the simple application of an acrylic varnish that brings out the beautiful jewel-like colours that it had when wet, and gives it a nice low-gloss finish and protects them. 

But in general, these little drawbacks are nothing compared to the ease of gouache as a medium, and it's affordability. A 20 ml tube of artists' gouache goes for 4 to 10 Euros, compared to comparable oils that can be as high as 50 E a tube, and sometimes more.

Here's a nice American chap who has taught himself to paint and did most of his landscape work in gouache...

And here's someone else who mainly does gouache and watercolour, plein-air, which I've not yet worked up the nerve to try.



You can see that the medium's very "dry" appearance lends itself brilliantly to the style of the 19th century realists. It's very Sargent-y.

~

Also, I wonder if someone couldn't perhaps see their way to making me one of these.

Or this one would do, 

These, apparently, are miniatures, but I could do with one full size. 

Thanks.

~

First painting

Look what happens when I don't renew my home internet connection



I'm having to teach myself how to use water colour medium. Guache and acrylics, how they go together, and how they don't. I picked a pretty difficult subject, but I figure do the hardest thing first and learn the fastest.

Next one will be less messy.

And yes, that's Winnie, looking down from cat-heaven.



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Drawing

A while ago, a friend of mine asked me "how far you can go" with pencil drawing. I am still more or less afraid of paint, and I've almost always preferred the pencil drawings of the contemporary realist artists I like. Drawing is indeed an art form all by itself, and is not limited to producing preliminary drawings for paintings.

Of course, sticking with drawing because of giving in to my fear of paint is no good, but it's also OK to like drawing for its own sake.

And as for "how far you can go"...


One of the prize winners from Artists' Daily "Shades of Gray" drawing contest.



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How it was done

Back when a book was a precious work of art.

In monasteries, novices were never allowed near a psalter book. Part of the training of a young monk was to memorise the entire psalter. Once he could recite it all from memory (in Latin, of course) he was taught to translate it. He learned the chant by rote.


Only a small group of monks in any monastery were chosen to form a "schola" in which they would learn the difficult parts of the Office, the hymns and complicated antiphons for the big feasts. In the schola, the single large song book would be placed on a tall lectern and the monks would gather 'round and all sing from the same book, with one monk given the task of turning the pages as they went along.

This is what our monks do here in Norcia, though of course, novices are no longer required to memorize the entire 150 Psalms.



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Oooooooo! Puuuurdy!

Doing a bit of research. It looks like there's other people who like this stuff.

Stuff like this:




(These go by way too fast, but, you know, there's the pause button...)




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Patience

This is egg tempera, one of the major techniques of the middle ages. Ever wondered how these paintings get their astonishing depth, subtlety and translucence of colour? Layers. Layers upon layers upon layers.



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What's next

Well, maybe never mind hiatus. I kind of feel like chatting with y'all.

~

Woke up late this morning, and realised that I had been unconsciously waiting for my little furry alarm clock to come in and walk on my head and demand her breakfast. The first moments of waking up are going to be confusing and difficult for a while.

Am I being dumb that I can't stand the idea of putting away her food dish?

For the last few months, Winnie had been having trouble jumping up onto the armchairs and sofa, so I built a little cat-ladder by piling cushions next to her favourite spots. I had become so used to straightening and restacking the cushions next to the chairs that I just found myself doing it again. I've put them away now.

Honestly, I feel terrible. And I feel dumb for feeling terrible. Not very British all this maudlin mooning about over a cat. (Though I think most British people would agree that cats are usually nicer than people.)

~



So, I've had quite an offer. The monks have said that I can sell my saint-paintings in their gift shop, and have even offered to let me collect some of the old (five hundred year-old) ceramic tiles from the ruined monastery they own and are slowly renovating and use them as the canvases for extra value-added awesomeness. I'm told the tourists will eat them up like chocolate pancakes. I am not going to call them icons, since icons are a very specific process and style that I know next to nothing about. They're just paintings of saints. With local wildflowers in the margins, like a manuscript, and maybe some local landscapes... with monks.

The fact that I haven't actually painted any saint-paintings seems not to have deterred Fr. Directore Spirituale one bit who seemed to be quite enthused about the idea. He said he'd seen my drawings and had every confidence. (And of course, if I can't do it or they're dreadful, they have the option of not putting them in the shop.)

Maybe it will just be tourist kitsch, but I'll do my best to make them nice. And if I practice long enough, and learn enough skills as I go along, maybe some of them will be thought of as art some day. But they will at the very least be genuine devotional items. Really made by an oblate of the monastery while praying and thinking about the saints and God and whatnot. He said that we can pitch them as being "by an oblate of the monastery who came to Norcia to live a more contemplative, semi-eremitical life." The tourists/pilgrims all have very romantic notions about monastic life, and think of hermits in the way you and I think of fairies and elves. I hope the reality doesn't disappoint. I'm working on my levitation skills.

I've been looking at and copying the saint-paintings of some of the medieval and early Renaissance masters. I think I like these better, for all their technical primitiveness, than the later polished glories of Leonardo and Michelangelo (and who has time for the silly overthetopness of the Baroque?) so I'm sticking with the medieval frescoes, of which, fortunately, there are quite a number all over town. Frankly, I see nothing wrong at all, at least at the beginning, with straight-up copying them. I've always loved miniatures and the lively and bright little paintings in the old manuscripts. I don't expect I will ever rise to the heights of the sublime Daniel Mitsui or the incredible technical prowess of Randy Asplund. But the thing is to get started. To paraphrase Bilbo, you never know where the road is going to take you.

I'm not sure what sort of materials one uses on ceramic and terracotta tile, but I figure I can try a few different things with what I've got in the art-cupboard and just see what works best. I've been up to the old monastery a few times, and the tiles are all over the place there, half buried in the soil, so there's no shortage of them to work out the details. But of course, I'm ready to hear from the experts. Now that I've not got Winnie to care for, I can take a little trip down to Florence to visit the Greatest Art Supply Shop in the World. I'll take a tile with me and just explain what I want to do and buy whatever they tell me to buy.



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Still life with cliche

I just realised I'm a sucker for a particularly formulaic genre of still life painting, which I only just noticed is kind of cheesy: Stack of Old Books.



The genre comes in several variations:

There's...

Stack of Old Books with Candle




probably more than any other...





seriously, I could have gone on all day...


Stack of Old Books with Fruit (usually, but not always, an apple or a pear on top of the books)



(Yes, yes, we get it... snake, apple, knowledge...)




Stack of Old Books with Other Old-Timey Desk Stuff





Stack of Old Books with Tea Cup seems popular



The latest thing seems to be Stack of Old Books with Birds





And of course, my favourite, Stack of Old Books with Memento Mori,

good old "Vanitas"


I've already succumbed to the temptation once. But in my defence, it was a class exercise.

Of course, it might be a bit harsh to call it cliche. In some sense, these subjects and styles are more or less obligatory for artists.

I've got a lot of books, and some of them are appropriately decrepit and dusty. I've also got tea cups, candle sticks, some odds and ends of spooky-looking Dickensian desk stuff and even a skull or two.

Please remind me never to put them all together in a still life.


I'm working on a new skull. Not this one.




One of the sheep skulls I found on my walks. I was thinking of adding a book, but now maybe I won't.



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