Anyone who compares Douanier Rousseau with Susan Boyle is ok in my book, and that’s what Will Gompertz does in his brilliant book “What are you looking at”

I’d recommend this book to anyone, he writes simply and amusingly about modern art and its beginnings and makes sense of it all. There’s no ‘art bollocks’ here so far. I managed to pick up my copy in the Oxfam bookshop in Cheltenham not long after the literary festival we have here each year. I suspect some local philistine has been to the festival, bought it and could not be bothered to open it. My gain, their loss.

What he was getting at when he compared Rousseau to Boyle is that no-one expected a person who was a local official and painted on the side to be a brilliant artist, but he was, or became one, and no one expected a person who looked like Susan Boyle to be able to deliver the performance she did. Gompertz has some illuminating words on many other artists as well and I would recommend the book to anyone with a visual interest. I read it with my iPad nearby so I can look at the paintings he is talking about. The book gives an insight into the artists as well as their art, making them much more interesting. I’m as far in as Picasso and he even makes sense of his stuff too, though to be honest some of his abstracts leave me cold.

I’ve just done a drawing for a few plants. My neighbour on the plot gave me a load of plants which will nicely fill a gap, unless they get fried in this heat, and in exchange I’ve done a drawing of his shed. I’ve been drawing a lot of shed of late and the odd landscape. Early evening visit to the hills was a great inspiration for me to start some colour drawings of one of my favourite country views. After walking through fields of oxeye daisies my friend Sally and I came to the view. I don’t recall ever seeing such a full bloom of blossom on the hawthorns, they looked like huge white orbs in the woods below. I’d hope to see the garlic in flower but was a tad late for that, but the light in the evening dropped some super shadows over the fields and the tractor lines through a crop just enhanced the design. ( no hawthorns in this pic but loads of lovely pattern )

Summer has certainly arrived here. Sunny all day with very hot afternoons. Early mornings the best time to be out and about. After last years drought and an early cold and wet start to the season it’s now as dry as whatever. The allotment tends to survive quite well, fingers crossed, as the clay beneath holds the moisture, at least that’s my hope. Winter grown garlic has done ok, I call this group punk rock garlic. reminded me of a band.