All hail the Filbert

Ha-ha. Paint shopping online with my earnings. Having spent some cash on pens the other day to enhance my drawing experience and turned into a pen geek in the process, today I spent some quality time in selecting some new paints and brushes, egged on by Stu, who likes to encourage me in my art purchasing. The problem with being on a budget and proud of my frugal spending abilities is that it feels bad now to indulge in retail purchases, even when they are of a necessary and practical nature. Spent the latter half of today feeling weirdly bad, having spent the princely sum of £36 in discountart.co.uk, a worthy online art shop who succeeded in ferrying (literally) paint to Arran overnight when I ordered from them. Kind of freaked me out that actually, I found myself looking out the window after the postman half expecting to see art sellers disappearing into the undergrowth where they keep their secret store.

That reminds me, last year on Arran we worked in a reasonably un-built up place; just a courtyard that used to be a farm but had been turned into a kind of rural retail complex. Twice in this location after dark, when we were pretty much the only inhabitants save rats, cats and bugs, sightings were (breathlessly and genuinely pretty rattled) reported of a large-dog sized black cat lurking in the dark. Both lads met it around the shed where we kept supplies, which made sense, and reported surprising the animal which spat defensively and legged it into the night scaring the blue willies out of them. No searching has revealed any other sightings, so are we the only living mortals to witness the Beast of Brodick. I thought I should record this just in case someone else stumbles across it one day while in possession of wits and a camera; you never know.

Well, that was a tangent-and-a-half. My brain is still processing the year on Arran, which was intense personally and workwise, so many tales still to be told. I am woken each morning by our little souvenir, Twig the kitten, who was born in the next cottage during our stay and came to torment my sleeping hours five weeks later; gawd bless her, we love her though.

So, Filberts. These are paint brushes which are longish and flat with a rounded tip and are in my humble opinion one of the most useful brush types known to man. The springiness is good, the bristles are short enough to control the line they produce and the slight taper means no nasty sharp edges to the line. Turn them sideways and the same applies, but finer. I have ordered another bigger one for myself as I find increasingly that the larger the brush size I can get away with, the better the result as it stops me falling into fiddly detail and outlines. The Filbert is a great tool for sketching in areas of colour but also finer detail, but in a relaxed, non-technical way. Get a round brush in my hand and lo and behold I am producing lines, not areas of colour, facets, planes. I have started a new picture that popped into my head in the bathroom. I confess to reading the odd magazine whilst in there and I came upon a piece about a house in the French seaside town (village?) of Ille de Re, all nautical touches like the figurehead on the locally (very French) cafe, exposed wood, faded aquamarine paint. With this in mind I adjourned to the shower, where a story took shape of a lady who lives on a fishing boat travelling the seven seas conversing with the angels. Thus the narrative of the angels continues; they live in trees, mischevious and all-seeing, flying the world's oceans and cities at night to see the big picture of what humanity is up to. Meanwhile my immortal, mysterious lady, the 'Angel Whisperer' (Stu is supposed to be naming her) travels with her sausage dog meeting the angels at dusk.

'They come to me gently

While mist still hugs the water;

Tell me the world's ills..'

And so I started the next of the angel story, essentially a seascape introducing us to Madame...

in her crinoline aboard her trusty vessel just off Ailsa Craig. Where we sail beyond this I am not yet sure...