Grocery Shopping with Dad

Dear Friends,

The other day was one of those beautiful days of summer vacation when you have no meetings, nowhere to go and no one to see. Free. I wheedled away the morning by reading this book, which my younger brother Paul-Hugh recommended. Then I chatted with my parents and helped my mother decide which dishes to keep and which to get rid of. I Skyped with Sheldon and enjoyed seeing his lovely face.

Eventually the day was half over and I had a decision: Stay home and work on some personal art projects or walk into town with my dad to do the grocery shopping at our local store. It was a hard decision, because I am the kind of person who has trouble with ending a day and not having anything concrete to show for it (like some progress on a personal project) but I am also aware that my time with my family is precious, because I only get to spend time with them twice a year. Walking to town with my dad would mean one-on-one time with him for an hour. Decision made. I went shopping.

I am glad I got to go. On the way down we lugged our three big bags of recycling to the local deposit boxes and talked about:
- The Age of the Internet and this book which predicted it
- Chinese computer hackers
- How teachers can craft the environment of their own classroom's miniature society
- This song by the band "I'm from Barcelona"

We bought apples, balkan cheese, dish soap and detergent. We also each bought a bottle of cider. I had strawberry-lime and my dad had pear. We opened our bottles by banging them up against a metal trash can. I didn't very much like the flavour I had, so my dad let me trade.

It was so good to hang out with him. It will be hard to back to school after this long stay with my family.

Today I spent a few hours working on some watercolour paintings based off photos I took the day we went shopping.

Here they are:

1. Our Food on the Conveyer Belt: I like the way this painting turned out. It is not to belaboured, but it still has some detail. I am really pleased with the way the grapefruits in the plastic bag turned out. I was very careful to leave white spots for the plastic of the bag and use very small washes layered gradually to paint the grapefruits.

2. Plum and Apricots: I had fun with these. I started out with a layer of extremely light, watery blue for the plums and faint peach for the apricots and then slowly added more tones. I only filled in a few outlines meticulously. 

3. Hasiče (Fire station): This one is a little more architectural illustration-y, but I don't mind too much. I think I went in a little to strong with the pencil after I finished painting. It was airier before with the lines of the pencil. Also the perspective is a bit wonky, as always. But I like my windows and the bit of parking lot. 

4. Omma: Omma is the name of our "shopping mall". It houses our town's grocery store and a number of other random shops like a drugstore, a shoe store (I bought my fake Birkenstocks there from an older lady who wanted to convince me to do a masters degree, because she herself had never been able to finish studying), a pet store owned by my friend's parents and lots of other randomnesses like the stationary shop where I bought all my school supplies in middle school. 

I am not a huge fan of this painting or at least of the photo of this painting. Oh Well.  

Love,
Lucy Rose

PS
Here is a post about awkward me in middle school.
Here is a post another post about my dad.