#1512 theoldmortuary ponders

June 2026

June is making herself very hard to love this year. Recent mornings she has turned up with a very November look on her face. The word greige and June have no reason to appear in the same sentence.

I thought I would share a local weather explanation.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HDtV9JwQH/

More of the same today!

Last year our yard was vibrating with heat and colour.

It is hard to think that yesterday the weather stopped any serious yardening and the only time I crossed the yard was to take washing to the tumble dryer.

It did not look this pretty.

The day was not without some colourful excitement. One of my hybrid images from my Meddled Photographs x Watercolour project has been chosen to be printed onto glass to create a unique splash back in a recently renovated kitchen.

The full description of my project is here.

I am sure there will be a splashback reveal soon. Currently there are many blue squares of wall adhesive on the freshly delivered glass.

It is the Meddled Photograph of the same location as the glum picture at the top of this blog.

Then late in the afternoon a conversation starter was posted on one of my arty Whatsapp groups.

My comment is the green one. What I love about this brief, arty exchange of ideas is that it is timeless.

Artists of all types would have had just this type of discussion throughout history.

As someone who has always had to embrace new technology. I am used to the challenges and the.convoluted thinking that these things often require. I would be really interested in what anyone who reads this thinks.

As it turns out,  a greige day was quite the fertile place for creative thinking.

#1504 theoldmortuary ponders.

There was never a plan to paint yesterday.

#1503 theoldmortuary ponders

Tennis Club admin, rat eradication and emails were my target for the day.

Pest control took a little longer than planned and a Summer rain storm soaked me through. For reasons that I can’t quite put a finger on I decided that a rain storm was exactly the moment to paint a sea pool in a heatwave.

I am physically painting a lot less this year, and yesterday was an absolute joy. This painting is a mixture of traditional water colour and water colour pencils.

Water colour pencils are my quick/ holiday/travel medium of choice. A pencil case and a sketch book take virtually no space in a bag and water is always easy to find.

The other travel tool is my smart phone. Digital manipulation  can sometimes rescue a failing painting. The Sea Pool at Conleau did not need rescuing but I did have a little half hour of tweaking.

To be honest I dont think these digitally tweaked images have a huge amount of value. They give me the slight AI ‘ick’. But looking at them gave me some ideas on how to improve my painting. They offer a different perspective. Just one digital manipulation pleases me.

A much simpler less vivid image. Not at all Conleau in a heatwave. But certainly a nod to the 1930’s history of the emergence of Conleau as a tourist destination.

Digital dabbling is a great learning experience and I can do it on my phone whenever there are a few spare minutes in a day

But nothing beats creating art using my hands and art materials. Who could possibly pass up sharpening pencils. Such a satisfying task.

#1357 theoldmortuary ponders.

Diamonds in the street after a morning deluge, with a bright blue sky reflected on Tarmac.

What a morning of changing weather, one moment serious raincoat weather and the next a walk with no coat is entirely appropriate.

Puddles to stamp in for a three year old and sandals for me.

Other rain induced illusions appear on the road

Pretty funky when double exposed together.

And onward to another week .

#1282 theoldmortuary ponders.

© Jenny Tsang

Oh the loveliness of concatination, and having friends in High Places. This shot from a TV shows my friend Jenny, standing on the outside walkway of the lighthouse on Plymouth Hoe. A T.V crew getting a much better view of the goings on at the Hoe yesterday than I did. She watched the T.V in case she was on, and she snapped this pic.

She and I were chattering because I was suspicious that I had also caught her up a lighthouse in one of my meddled photographs. ( A sentence I never expected to write)

‘I caught my friend up a lighthouse’

©theoldmortuary

It is lovely when serendipity and concatination come together.

Then on my way home nature got all serendipitous. Look at this beautiful pansy making the most of a difficult location. Now just as I went to the Hoe and saw nothing yesterday,my pansy growing is not the most successful, slugs believe I am their artisan food producer. But leave a pansy out of my direct control and they manage very nicely just growing away in a drain.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing.

Concatination equally so.