What I'd like for Christmas ..

A plaster cast from the Parthenon Frieze

to go with the hand I bought in a specialist Paris art shop 

and the foot from the Sir John Soane Museum

All images © Rosie West

Skiing for Adults

All images courtesy Christie's catalogue 'The Ski Sale' 2006

Nature Morte

Please look away now if you don't like ex-animals (below).  I painted them  at The Prince's Drawing School  in Shoreditch under the tutelage of Henry Gibbons Guy who  gave them a poignant Chardin style setting in the changing light of our fourth-floor studio.  

The artists' prey was contributed by the wonderful Delia, one of our fellow students, who brought it from Norfolk via her London deep freeze.  Where a squirrel or a rabbit needed  post mortem first aid, as it were, she would gently bathe it and then blow dry the fur with her hairdryer.  As a gesture towards students who might be squeamish, it was a fine one.Nobody could say that our models didn't look pristine and peaceful.

All images © Rosie West

Oh No - Back In the Saddle Again!

How embarrassing is this?  but my daughter Polly, mother of Lucien (aka Lucky) seemed to think the little chap might enjoy a strangely jolting ride with the odd swerve on the chicanes.  Sad to report, this was the most enthusiasm he mustered; more interested in the fragment of cheese pretzel in my hand when not mystified or alarmed by the experience.  Oh well, looks as though I was enjoying myself and thoroughly relieved that we didn't have to call the AA (that's the automobile breakdown service where I come from).


We were at Winter WonderhellLand in London's Hyde Park on Sunday, jostling pushchairs with a thousand others, high on the aroma of roasting chestnuts, fresh-fried donuts and hot Bavarian sausage.  Oh it was good, really, but not for too long. Lucky and I escaped to the Serpentine lake to feed the water birds and marvel at the way seagulls will take morsels of pink iced bun on the wing. (Not a good day for my diet or theirs for that matter.) Polly braved  the swelling crowd and took her five-year old Storm on various attractions.  Three quid to go down a slide the height of Mont Blanc (not) proves the Eurozone economic crisis hasn't quite hit home yet.  Her pictures of the day at her blog A Caged Bird Sings here.

Great Colour Combos : Vermillion/Cerulean

One of my favourite colour combinations, always connected in my mind to Tri-ang Toys  and anything tin really...

Cerulean (sir-roo-le-on) is a handy word for something that's not quite turquoise, not quite sky blue despite its probable derivation from the Latin caelum = sky. 

Vermillion - something deliciously bright that's not quite scarlet, not really orange.  (I might be stretching it sometimes, I know.)

Other Great Colour Combos here

[Images are leaves from my scrapbook.  Forgive me not attributing them.]