{a colour-study of calm}

An advert for paint played on the telly all the time while we were in England: 

A couple, newly-married, happily painting their bedroom a bright red. They close the bedroom door, and when it opens again, a second later, several years have passed and the room is now a blur of children jumping on the bed, pets howling, and the frazzled parents, with paintbrushes and a can of white paint, frantically painting over the red walls.

Last weekend, I painted our red walls grey. I painted the beige hall grey. The week before, we painted the green kitchen grey. Over the past few months, I've been sewing grey covers for our red cushions. Slowly, slowly, our home is becoming a place of peace and refuge -- a backdrop to the colour we want to add, rather than an overflowing box of paints into which we have fallen.

A few weeks ago, I found this card in a lovely shop in Bryan. "Colour Study of Whole Heartedness," by Karen Horney. Though the colours this artist chose don't capture my sense of whole-heartedness (I don't think there's even a spot of green or purple in my heart), I love the idea of conveying an abstract value or emotion through colour.

And as I imagine calmness, displayed the same way in Pantone shades, it is so much simpler. Not thirty-six shades, small and squeezed in, but perhaps simply four swatches -- a bright white, a cloudy-summer-in-England grey, a moody charcoal, and a red that sings -- each floating in white space, free to breathe. 

{oh happy grey}

Just a little note to say hello. And that we haven't fallen off the face of the globe. It has been painting week here, and we've been busy to-doing, unscrewing, spackling, de-crackling, stirring, concurring, drilling, filling, second-coating, and then doting on Tilly's newly grey room.

No photos of the actual room yet -- Tilly is in bed woofing (hopefully a pre-nap woof) -- and so I'll give you a couple of photos of rooms I'd pinned for inspiration. And yes, patient Pinterest followers, all of the pins simply titled "grey walls" will now stop, I promise. (Well, until we do the kitchen...)

1. Buymodernbaby 2. The Good Report 3. Tarpapercrane

P.S. Thanks to all of you who are joining in with the Advent Tea Swap! It's now closed, but if you'd like to arrange a swap of your own with family and friends, I'd be happy to share a tip or two if you drop me an email. 

{photos of paint in various stages of drying}

Today you're going to get a little peek behind the scenes at Red Red. Glamour, this is not. It's the every day, bit-by-bit process of creating, whenever I can fit it in.

This is me painting a white canvas white. Seriously. Someone once told me that canvases should always be painted white first. I can't remember who, I can't remember why. But as the laundry sat unfolded, the dishwasher sat unloaded, and the baby lay sleeping, I painted a white canvas white. It was sort of zen, in a mindless-task-that-has-no-practical-value sort of way.

This is a sketch. A half-hearted, I-can't-be-bothered-to-fill-it-all-in sort of drawing. Recognise it? It's that four dandelion piece of art (from our large art round-up).

This is paint. My artistic friend, Whitney, who has a background in decorative painting, is mixing up a nice shade using colours from her own walls. Check out the toe-decoration -- and she didn't even know her feet were going to be on camera.

And here's me, slapping it on, crissing and crossing and trying not to listen to the perfectionist in my head. Good job you can't see my toes. I'd be like the Ugly Step-Sister of feet.

The base colour done, I then played around with slightly different shades on top -- a layer of the base colour with more white, a layer of the base colour with less white. The bottom layer wasn't quite dry, it turned out, when I started adding new layers, so I got an interesting texture where the half-dry paint below got pulled along with the brush. I meant to do that. Ahem. Not. 

A little darker in the corners, a little lighter in the centre. According to Whitney, this is how multi-millionaires like their walls painted. Ooh la la.

(P.S. By the way, there are three unseen --but very present!-- children in the background, and at all times, one of us was fending off Tilly, who was determined to step in the paint...)

Not wanting to have too much of the pulled-off-paint texture, I'm giving the background a good twenty-four hours to dry before adding the dandelions. But, in preparation, I cut the approximate shapes of the flower heads out of paper towels...

...and taped them to the canvas. (There's no artistic reason for using paper towels -- I was just in the kitchen, and they were handy)

Just like the masters did it. Everyone knows Van Gogh stuck paper towel sunflowers to his canvases before painting...

And I'm sure good ol' Vincent held up his iPhone pic of the art he was copying to check the placement of said sunflowers, too.

Stay tuned! Tomorrow, when it's all dry dry completely dry, I'll add the flowers.