Friday, November 05, 2010

France: Pork joint and French beer

French beer & glass © Peter Gander
We bought some pork belly from the butchers next door to my brother’s house. With some dexterity and a little artfulness, he swiftly took out the ribs from this joint, attached a sliver of fat around the base and wrapped it up snugly with string. Fiona was to cook it later, along with the previous vegetables painted on the previous post. What better to slake your thirst whilst painting than a chilled bottle of French beer too, (although I begrudged having to ‘wait for myself’ to paint it before I could finish it off!
Pork Joint, Navarrenx, France © Peter Gander

Thursday, November 04, 2010

France, leek

Leek © Peter Gander
Still on the side vegetables that went with our roasted pork, a French leek which was later made into a gratin.

France, Autumn marrow

Forgive me for I have not posted lately.  Fiona and I returned to the south of France to Navarrenx where my brother lives, for his 50th birthday. Normally fishing would be high on the agenda, but sadly it was out of season. The local river Oloron is a salmon river and protected at this time of year so we couldn’t even fish for barbel or chub, not even tiddlers, (so I couldn’t live there, that’s not enough scope for fishing!) Thus I got out my filbert brush rather than my fishing rod and did some painting when we weren’t eating or sipping beers in the local bar.
Autumn marrow © Peter Gander
It wasn’t terribly great weather for painting those lights and darks as it was grey and overcast all day as you can see from the overall tone of the painting with just a feint highlight on the marrow’s surface. It had been raining and this was painted in the rural garden of my brother’s gate house, The Concierge that he and his wife Lindy let out to holidaymakers. It lies about 20mins walk from their home in Navarrenx. I painted under a roof overhanging a patio area to the soft drip, drip of the rain falling off the leaves. A blackbird was rustling through fallen leaves in the garden, apart from that, it was wonderfully quiet. We later ate the marrow with Fiona’s roasted pork, the skin was as hard as nails to peel off but it tasted great.

Illustration for upcoming 'Lake District Map'

Hand-drawn in brush pen with digital colour.  © Peter Gander