DAILY PAINTING - Poolside with delicious cocktails. 1.5 hour bridge study

Well… it’s been a couple of days since my last post — however that does not mean I haven’t been painting. I absolutely have.

In fact, this is the third painting in three days.

One of them I’m not happy with yet and want to do justice to properly before writing about it.
The other one (the second Bondi Beach piece) isn’t quite ready to talk about either.
But this one — this one is fresh, finished, and I’m itching to post it.

The day that was

Today my oldest daughter had a friend over to play. While they were busy, I managed to get some painting done, and when they all jumped in the swimming pool, I headed outside with a delicious (low-cal, low-alcohol) cocktail and painted out there by the pool.

(Yes — recipe below.)

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The painting

This is a small suburban scene — a bridge over a road, trees either side.
Nothing fancy. Nothing “swish”. Just painting.

I was actually quite happy with the light in this one. It reads a little better than some of my recent pieces, which is something I’m consciously working on. I like the mid-scene break of light coming from the left and the way the shadows fall across the road.

The greens are acceptable (always a win), and I really like the very subtle purple tints in the road surface.

I did bugger the pedestrian crossing… but I’m not fixing it.
It took long enough as it is.

All up, I reckon about 1.5 hours.

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Colours / palette

Nothing unusual here — my usual working palette:

• Black and white (very, very little black)
• Cadmium Yellow Medium
• Phthalo Green
• Oxide Green
• Dioxazine Purple
• Cadmium Red Light
• Burnt Umber
• Burnt Sienna (underpainting)

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The drink 🍹

This is a light, bitter, refreshing cocktail — perfect for hot afternoons when you want something but not a 3-standard-drink sugar bomb.

Roughly 0.7–1 standard drink, depending on how generous you are 😉

My mix:

• ~30 ml Campari
• ~25 ml Pimms
• A dash of bitters
• Sliver of orange rind
• Sprig of rosemary
• A few mint leaves
• Loads of ice
• Top up with zero-sugar Lemon Solo

That amount of alcohol was enough to make two small wine-glass-sized drinks with plenty of ice, which feels very reasonable to me. Perfect poolside drink.

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Dinner (because food matters)

I also cooked a new dinner tonight — a yellow curry with fish and prawns, using kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass from the garden.
It was excellent.

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Anyway — that’s the day that was.

I’ll probably post the other Bondi piece tomorrow…
we’ll see how we go.

Happy creating, everyone.