Reminiscing

Yesterday would have been my father's birthday. He died 24 years ago, but we were reminiscing about him while sat in the warm sun when brother Richard rang to say he also had been thinking of him. I was reminded of him by my palette knife, an antique piece that had been given to dad when he was a lad by a professional artist, so it may now be more than 100 years old.

We have had a full week preparing questions for the Saturday quiz, when it will be our turn to present. It is surprisingly difficult. Ann prepared rounds on Literature, History and General Knowledge and I've done the Science and Picture Quiz and put them into PowerPoint. MA's girls helped by creating a Young People's round. I couldn't answer Ann's questions, so we showed them to MA, but they were generally too difficult for her too so we've toned them down a bit. I sometimes think Ann doesn't realise just how much she knows, and assumes others know as much as she. We don't, Ann.

We have continued to watch more episodes of Bob Ross (Bob Ross sets a rare pace). I enjoy his relaxed style, and clever combinations of colour, but I do feel he is becoming quite repetitive. None of his pictures contain figures or personality; they are all models of "his world" as some rural idyll. We can almost predict where he will place a happy tree or plop a cloud in, and his many rustic barns look identical to his rustic houses. We feel it may be time to move on to some new art teacher; happily there are many on-line instruction videos on YouTube; but the problem there is that they are so contradictory. Basically, each artist has their own way of creating a painting, and the only general rule seems to be "in art, anything goes". But one thing I have learnt from Ross is, there are no such things as mistakes: only "happy accidents".