Saturday 18 December 2010

18/12: SNOW WOES

Our day was planned with great precision .... deliver a Christmas portrait at a pre-arranged rendezvous point quite close to where our parents and daughter (with new grand-daughter) live so we could do all the family visiting and also see my horse who is retired at a wonderful yard nearby.

We set out in sunshine but as we approached the portrait delivery venue we were driving in blizzard conditions.   Our meeting with the client was therefore very brief as we were all concerned about getting trapped.   We decided the safest option was to head back home without making any visits ... the journey should have taken 45 minutes but because few of the roads had been gritted we got home nearly 5 hours later.    Luckily we had mince pies in the car which had been intended for sharing with the parents ... so we didn't starve!

Our house and garden looks very pretty ... we've only had about 5 inches of snow but in the UK that is more than enough to create total chaos ... so airports closed, major shopping centres closed on the busiest shopping day of the year, roads gridlocked with broken down vehicles and lots of 'crumpled' cars ... its amazing how stupid some drivers are - despite the icy conditions they still try to overtake, drive too fast and brake too hard!

Anyway, grumbles over.  We're safely home.

Here's the mastiff I started working on yesterday - I outlined him and put down a basic layer of pastel to place his 'wrinkles' and work out hair direction etc., I've had to use flash photography here so it isn't a great picture but I need to show it to give me the motivation to crack on with it tomorrow.    I don't think we'll be venturing out of the house unless the snow disappears overnight.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, we have the snow too! Its so deep and so much fun! Well i think it is anyway, but we're on our college christmas holidays so don't have to go anywhere and therefore enjoy the snow.
    this new art piece your working on is going to be amazing - it already looks brilliant :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you :o)

    Three days ago we were in the Canaries with average (shade) temperatures in the mid 20degs - so its a bit of a shock for us.

    Early this year when we had snow I got really excited and spent hours at the nearby 'Tankerton Slopes' by the beach where everyone was having great fun on sledges ... but I can't get enthusiastic this time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. had more snow here today, supposed to get more, so people will probably panic again :/ I will never understand why a lot of people in this country act so surprised when it snows and things close when there is hardly any snow on the ground.

    great start to the mastiff :D lovely looking eyes

    ReplyDelete
  4. We have a similar story here and the worse thing was the ice underneath it, it made for nasty driving conditions despite the fact that everywhere had been gritted.
    Wonderful start on your pet portrait, he looks full of character already :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting my Blog. Let me know what you think :-)

I have disabled the Captcha requirement at the request of followers who find it irritating when posting comments. However to stop the subsequent flood of spam posts I can no longer accept comments from Anonymous sources.
Apologies if this is a problem
Thank you
Sue
x