Tag: Fandangos One Word Challenge

Digital Colour Corrections

~ Ruth ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes I find it frustrating that my watercolour paintings (including this abstract leaf print) always dry so much paler (and less vibrant) than I might like, but luckily with easy digital manipulation I’ve discovered I can visually ‘correct’ the colour when photographing and saving it as a digital image!

Here is the original painting before and after whacking up both the contrast and saturation by 30 (whatever that numerical value represents!) – I’d wanted it to feel like a bright explosion of colour, not a dull disappointment… 🙂

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Before

Like Herding Cats

~ Ruth ~ 11 Comments

I never like feeling like a beginner at anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, I’m always emotionally uncomfortable at the feeling of not really knowing what I’m doing. There’s always an internal, infernal life-long feeling of not-good-enough-ness nagging away in the background, mocking my nascent efforts.

So here I am determinedly picking up water-colour painting in my later years, struggling to find my own way with what feels like such an unforgiving medium. It seems like there is simply nowhere to hide with water-colours, the promise of beautiful luminous transparency and fluidity that attracts me so strongly to it is also its biggest bug-bear for a control-freak like me.

I watch myriad tutorials on YouTube and try to replicate the wonderful loose light-touch techniques I see online, feeling initially motivated and inspired, but somewhere along the line it all regularly gets lost in translation. It feels to me like I’m painting with will-o-the-wisp water, chasing out-of-control colours careering across the paper, a bit like herding cats.

But still I persevere in the hope that one day I will stop feeling like a beginner so completely out of my depth. I’ll learn to love the way the water flows so unpredictably, stop fretting and fussing over it and worrying it to death, and learn to go with the flow. I’ll learn to lay the paint on the paper cleanly and clearly then leave it alone to do its own thing.

I’ll learn that less is more, let go of any real semblance of control and eagerly embrace whole-heartedly whatever creative outcome will be ❤

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Beginner

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

~ Ruth ~ 2 Comments

So tomorrow we find out who will be the new Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, replacing Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.

The selection process has been carried out over the last few months, first by Tory MPs deciding on which two candidates they preferred to go forward, and then all registered members of the Tory party voting for whichever of those two remaining candidates they wish to take over the job.

Sadly the rest of the electorate have no say in the matter.

I’m delighted that Boris will no longer be Prime Minister but I’m not too keen on either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, so it doesn’t really make too much difference to me who wins – it’s still going to be another Tory, not my party of choice regardless of who the leader may be.

One way or another I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place… Roll on the next General Election…

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Selection

My Last Day on Earth…

~ Ruth ~ 2 Comments

What a surreal provocative question Fandango has come up with today – he asks:

What will your last day on earth be like?

Ideally I wouldn’t actually want to know it was to be my last day on earth, because that feels like it would put far too much pressure on me to get it just right and I’d risk messing it up somehow, somewhere along the line.

If I knew beforehand, I’d feel obliged to say I’d want to see absolutely everyone I love and spend some quality time with all of them before I go, but of course that’s a really stressful ask for only one day and as well as the sadness of saying goodbye there’s always the problem of the inevitable ongoing family tensions between different people getting in the way of things running smoothly enough for my liking.

So instead I think I’d hope that my last day on earth fell on a regular, random day I simply wasn’t working and had nothing pressing to do other than enjoy the nice weather kicking about in my beautiful garden, enjoy a lovely evening meal with my husband, and then after a lazy day of laughing and loving and living my life fully with a very private and understated passion, finally fall asleep in my warm cosy bed and just not ever wake up again…

Of course, taken another way the question might be asking about a last day on earth in the sense of moving to mars or something equally ‘out there’? So in that unlikely scenario (as someone who’s not generally a keen traveller), I’d make sure I’d packed my intergalactic passport along with enough universal currency to see me through my journey and a few days more just to be safe, make sure I’d put all my affairs in order well beforehand and tidied up a bit more than I might otherwise, then probably spend my last day pretty much as I’d indicated in the previous scenario… ❤

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Passion

Ragtag Daily Prompt: Surreal

Send in the Clown…

~ Ruth ~ 8 Comments

If I can use some artistic licence with Stephen Sondheim’s song lyrics from ‘A Little Night Music’ I feel that today’s resignation news of the UK’s Prime Minister is a clear case of ‘Send in the clown… Don’t bother, he’s here…’

In his resignation speech to the nation, instead of acknowledging and accepting that he was caught lying to parliament and the people once too often, Boris Johnson instead blamed the herd instincts of Conservative MPs for forcing him out of office. Not once did this arrogant delusional man waver from that stance in any way, maintaining his absolute insistence that the situation he finds himself in is the fault of everyone but himself.

However much Boris seems to want to style himself on Trump, we do not have a Presidential but a first-part-the-post Parliamentary democracy here in the UK. The ruling party, via an accumulation of individual constituency MPs gaining seats, is voted in to power during a General Election. The chosen leader of that party automatically becomes Prime Minister, and no one single person is ever indispensable. The party leader can be changed within the term of that Parliament without triggering a new General Election.

The self-styled Wannabe World King has finally been deposed, cornered in a check-mate style move by his former supporters, and not before time. But unlike most of his Prime Ministerial predecessors who found themselves in similar situations in the past, Boris seems unable to understand why this has happened on his watch, and so seems unable to behave with the dignity and integrity the position deserves.

In my opinion he’s become an embarrassing liability to our political landscape, and he needs to be gone from Downing Street now, not in the autumn, to prevent this ridiculous circus act currently playing out in and around the House of Commons from continuing any longer.

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Waver

Word of the Day: Clown