Wednesday 17 January 2007

Surge



The Rat Man came again yesterday to inspect the state of the Rat Insurgency. It's definitely fighting back. There were signs of extra digging and the bag of poison had been covered up - out of sight, out of mind.

Dropping a couple more bags of blue poison - rats must be colour blind - down the holes, the Rat Man was away again. He'll be back next Tuesday, but I note today that a new tunnel entrance has been opened up further along from the original hole.

I put a stone over the hole and went back to work.

I'm currently working on a picture of Grey's Monument (see above). I repainted the sky recently and that's thrown up several areas that need looking at again.

I'd say the painting is about half-way finished. The Monument needs completion, of course, and I think it, and the buildings behind, need cooling down and pushing back just a little with aerial perspective. The whole paint surface needs a degree of complexity not yet evident - I like a painting to show the history of its development, including the complex build up and scraping away that goes into getting it right.

There's a client who's expressed an interest in a painting of this area of town, so I guess I'd better get on with it.

4 comments:

ian gordon said...

If them thar rats have access to the sewer via a broken pipe then poison's not gonna work on them critters. Every rat in the city will just line up to feast.

(That's the problem I had).

Sounds like you might have to dig and investigate...

Paintings looking good. Nice sence of atmosphere.

harry bell said...

I do worry about the rats and a possibly broken sewer, but at the moment don't think that's the reason. The garden is about 12 feet above pavement level, so I assume the sewer pipes are much lower than garden level. My suspicion is that they're coming from the nearby railway line. Despite their obligation to do so, the railway authority don't take effective measures to keep the rat population down.

Anna said...

Hope you'll show us the painting as it develops. I like your mini master classes.

harry bell said...

Good, I was afraid I might be putting off my huge readership. Progress report a little later.