Day 6: painting

 It is really weird trying to recreate someone else’s way of painting, and I’m not sure I’m doing a good job at it, but so long as it echoes it a bit I’ll be happy.

It was a good day, alone in the apartment listening to audio books and painting Castle Fraser. When I got frustrated in the afternoon and was tempted to scrub the whole thing out, I cleaned my brushes and walked up to the museum to have a look at some of the landscape paintings, instead. 

Help

Talk to me about those trees, Giles

Feeling more like I was on track, I went down to the shops and picked up something to make for dinner and a few more tubes of paint, cutting through the churchyard to read the headstones. So many dead women and babies. A wife, 38, who died in childbed and was laid to rest with her infant daughter, who died 2 days later. A wife and husband, buried with their 14 children lost in infancy. Every grave held the bones of babies and mothers. I thought about that woman who died in childbirth at 38, and had been “rightly loved”. There were no other children named. Had they been married a long time, and always hoped for a baby? Were they excited when she became pregnant so late, or did they know it was a death sentence? Did she hold her baby before she died? Did her husband have to make the choice to save her or the baby, only to lose them both? Did she tell him to do it? Every grave is a story, and I felt sorry for the stones that had become eroded and lost their names.

To stop myself from ruining my progress as the light faded, I left the painting alone and started sketching a few “personalities” until the man got back from Loch Ness.

I am feeling a bit better now that I’m not power-walking through a cold. Resting and drinking tea works, huh.

Another painting day today, with more breaks to visit the shops if I feel like it. Walking out onto a street lined with cathedrals and bell towers is never not wonderful.