Dr Annette Rubery

Great Rusty pre-dinner moment; he got @RichardBratby’s attention by somehow wriggling into the curtain loop and then couldn’t get out.

In 2000 I visited the Turner: The Sun is God exhibition at Tate Liverpool. The paintings were hung without the usual heavy Victorian frames. They looked like they had just been painted and hung up to dry. I had been obsessed with Turner for years. This show confirmed why.

In answering the question: can you fix a streaky background wash in watercolour? I’ve discovered you can - but only if you add a second layer of pigment. No water.

Lemons and limes. Two different techniques.

Fantastic talk from Katja Hoyer @lichfestival about her book on East Germany (Beyond the Wall). Brilliant speaker and such a compelling subject.

@StacieP62036695 @SueCooperBridge Very kind, thanks!

@AnnetteRubery @SueCooperBridge That beautiful!!😍

Background wash was absolutely terrifying. #watercolour

Annette and the late Sir John Vanbrugh. This is quite a good visual metaphor for our lives at present.

AI rendering of the left hand of Sir John Vanbrugh resembles a human foot.

Now where did I put my plans for Blenheim?

Great day at the Blueprints of Power exhibition at Blenheim. I pretended to be Vanbrugh, we went on the roof and I drew a picture of an anti-social duck (they are becoming a nuisance at the cafe apparently). 🦆

@SueCooperBridge Thank you! It’s the first exercise in my still life book. I would not have thought of this otherwise. ☺️

@AnnetteRubery Unusual and lovely combination!

Fish ’n’ lilies composition is almost finished.

Brushstroke practice (left) and extreme swatching.

Study of a Cat, c.1909, painting by Gwen John, Welsh artist.

Had fun this morning interviewing Charles Saumarez Smith (@saumarez_smith) about his fantastic new Vanbrugh biography at the Lichfield Literature Festival.

Incidentally, I didn’t know that Leonardo had a lazy eye until Googling on this just now. Wish my monocular vision made my drawings as good as his.

Very interesting episode of @JANUSZCZAK and @arthistorynews’s podcast (Waldy & Bendy) talking about the de Ganay Salvator Mundi. My first thought: “that sitter has a lazy eye”. I know because I have one and my eyes are sometimes like this in photos. news.artnet.com/market/salvato…

Phthalo Green acting like the total diva / attention seeker we all know it to be. (Note to self: I’m missing a warm red and a cold yellow.)

Ivory Netsuke in the Form of a Puppy, mid-19th century. Medium: Ivory. Collection: Bonhams. Taking power in the late seventeenth century, the fifth Tokugawa shogun, Tsunayoshi, enacted the first large-scale animal protection laws in Asian history. Born in the Year of the Dog according to Chinese astrology, the shogun introduced rules so strict that harming a dog was punishable by death. People were so terrified of being punished by the authorities that they started addressing the stray dogs they'd encounter on the street as Oinu-sama (Honorable Dog). When the stray dog population on Edo's streets spiraled out of control, Tsunayoshi had massive shelters built in the city's Nakano suburb. These facilities housed a hundred thousand dogs - or even up to two hundred thousand, according to some sources. Thanks to heavy taxes collected from the public, the animals were fed an expensive daily diet of white rice and dried fish. This diet - a luxury the era's impoverished public couldn't even afford to eat- along with the shogun's unusual policies, sparked a massive backlash.All these practices earned the shogun the mocking nickname of the "Dog Shogun". Over time, these strict laws were repealed. Even so, the value placed on dogs remained a lasting part of society.