Today’s Snapshot is looking back to when I was 16 and my friend and I had just been presented with the Queen’s Guide Award. For some reason, which I can’t remember we were photographed with the Girl Guides District Commissioner and the Town Mayor as though we were giving them a cup of tea and biscuits!
I’m the Girl Guide on the right, next to the District Commissioner.
I was looking for a book on drawing trees this morning. I knew I had one, but wasn’t sure where it was and had to spend some time searching for it. I should be more organised, but my problem is that each time I look at an art book I never put it back in the same place. So I got them all out (and found the book I wanted today). I hadn’t realised we’d got so many!
These are the ‘How to draw’ books:
and books on watercolour painting:
and just three specifically on pastel:
It’s the art group this afternoon, so I will actually be drawing/painting this afternoon and not, as D said, just reading about it!
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1863, (Tate Britain)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Beata Beatrix was inspired by Dante’s poem La Vita Nuova about his love for Beatrice, but it is actually a painting about Rossetti’s wife, Lizzie, mourning her death.
In 1850 Rossetti had fallen in love with Lizzie Siddal, a milliner’s shop assistant, who had agreed to pose for William Deverell, another member of the Brotherhood. She became a favourite model of all the members, including posing for hours in a tepid bath as Millais’s Ophelia. Rossetti, though, became increasingly possessive about her and they lived together and eventually married in 1860. But he gave her a hard time, neglecting her and was unfaithful. They lived in dark, cold and damp rooms at Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge. Lizzie’s health deteriorated. She was frail and depressed, and became addicted to laudanum. After her child was stillborn, Rossetti came home late one night in 1862 he found her dead, with an empty phial by her side. The official verdict was accidental death but to Rossetti it felt like suicide (which was illegal and immoral at the time and would have barred her from a Christian burial).
Rossetti’s portrait mourns Lizzie’s the death, showing her in a ecstatic, trance-like state. The haloed red dove, the messenger of Love, carrying a flower has become the messenger of Death and the flower is a poppy, the symbol of sleep and death and also the source of opium (laudanum), the drug which killed her.
I think this is such a beautiful, powerful painting ‘“ Rossetti described it saying Lizzy was ‘˜rapt from earth to heaven‘.
Linked to ABC Wednesday.
Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts this weekly meme. The idea is that you post the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few ) of a book you decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s).
A friend lent me this book, saying she’d really enjoyed it. It’s
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell and it begins:
Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.
The garden is empty, the patio deserted, save for some pots with geraniums and delphiniums shuddering in the wind. A bench stands on the lawn, two chairs facing politely away from it. A bicycle is propped against the house but its pedals are stationary, the oiled chain motionless. A baby has been put out to sleep in a pram and it lies inside its stiff cocoon of blankets, eyes obligingly shut tight. A seagull hangs suspended in the sky above and even that is silent, beak closed, wings outstretched to catch the high thermal draughts.
I can visualise the scene, feel the breeze and find myself holding my breath copying out these paragraphs from the book, waiting with bated breath to find out what is going to happen.
s for … Peter JamesPeter James is an author I’ve been aware of for a while and although I’ve owned a couple of his books until recently I hadn’t read them. Now I’ve read Dead Simple I realise I should have read it years ago – I didn’t know what I was missing. It’s really good.
Peter James is currently the Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association. As well as being a crime fiction writer he is also a film producer and script writer. He has sold more than a million books internationally and has been translated into 35 languages. His most recent books, set in Brighton, feature Detective Superintendent Roy Grace – there are 8 in the series, the first being Dead Simple.There is full list of all his books with summaries on his website.
Dead Simple is anything but simple. There are plenty of twists and turns in this story of a race against time to find Michael Harrison who disappeared after what was supposed to be a harmless stag night prank three days before his wedding. Michael’s fiancée, Ashley and his mother are frantic with worry, but surely Mark, his best man and business partner must have some idea where he is, even though he missed the stag night himself.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is in charge of the investigation, which has added impetus for him as his wife disappeared eight years earlier and has never been found. When all the usual sources had failed to find her he had turned to psychics and mediums for help and he eventually resorts to consulting them again in this case.
It’s told from a number of viewpoints which gives a rounded view of the events and yet the full picture is never quite in view. There are hints that led me to suspect the outcome, but not completely. Some of it does seem rather far-fetched but it’s totally gripping, building to a tremendous climax.
I shall certainly be seeking out the other 7 books in his Grace series, and his earlier books too, which according to the author information in Dead Simple, all reflect his ‘deep interest in medicine, science and the paranormal.’
For more blog posts featuring the letter J in The Crime Fiction Alphabet go to Mysteries in Paradise.
There are many advantages to reading on a Kindle – mainly because it’s easy to use:
BooksPlease 