My painting season at Yeo Valley Organic garden ended on Friday. My first visit to this garden was last year on a painting day with Clifton Arts Club.  Last year I chose to sit right in the middle of the path to paint  globe thistles with a distant view of Blagdon Church  from the top of the house steps. This year I did the path to the oak.
On my 14 visits since then, I am just a general visitor on garden open days so I have to chose my subjects to make sure I am not blocking other garden visitors with my kit.

I am exhibiting at the Paper Gallery, 53 Merchant Street, Broadmead, Bristol, BS1 3EE as one of of 8 artists from Clifton Arts Club.
 We are : Kathy Luders, Carolyn Lamb, Priscilla Sorapure, Maddie Leigh, Roger Jones, Ann Baber, Barbara Ryder and Stacey Clarke.
The exhibition runs 8th -21st September 2015 and is open daily from 10-6 Mon-Sat and  11-5 Sundays.
Merchant Street is the pedestrian street off the HorseFair between Debenhams and BHS.
http://paperarts.org.uk/our-events/clifton-arts-club-autumn-exhibition/       
The left painting is of the Pinnacles rock formation from Horseshoe bend, Cheddar Gorge. The middle oil is a quiet, contemplative view of the stream that runs out of the disused Hendre Ddu Slate mine near Aberangell in Powys, and the third is a poppy field I spotted last year alongside the road at Failand. It looked like an intentional commemoration for the First World war anniversary (2014) but the farmer said it was accidental -his planted crop had not taken properly and the poppies had come up in great numbers instead.

 The orange plaque on this Grade II listed thatched cottage tells us that  George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, used to live here. In his day it had a tin roof and was the village store.

Arriving for a family weekend I did a quick ink sketch of the cottage from the lay-by on Kits Lane.  The house behind used to be the village pub. I could look out the bedroom window in the morning to see two tiny muntjac deer wandering about the scrub and gardens opposite. Next, I'm not sure how the kitchen fireplace would have looked originally but now it has a woodburner in it.
 No shops or pub in Wallington now, but there was relaxing at home as seen on the middle two sketches, plus a barbeque in the village hall and trips to nearby village pubs for meals at the Moon and Stars (Rushden) and the Fox and Duck (Therfield). 
Bottom row is the view out the front window towards another thatched cottage on the corner of Kits Lane and The Street. Lastly a view of Manor Farm from the footpath. I love old sheds and I had hoped to do an oil painting of this but the weather was never good enough to sit unprotected outdoors, so will I try on a future visit. Manor Farm has the extra interest of possibly being the farm inspiration for Orwell's Animal Farm.

 

Changed my pigment choices to aim for a warm sunny picture. It was not sunny to start but just at the right moment for my painting the sun came out.  Instead of using cobalt and cerulean blue which often give a cool tone  to my paintings, I used french ultramarine and cadmium yellow medium rather than lemon yellow and cadmium yellow pale.. I also selected a simple subject that could be completed in a day . I liked the structure and colours of these moss covered  garden ornamental features.