A CHEERFULNESS OF CHALLENGES

I don't know if there is such a thing as a collective phrase as a Cheerfulness of Challenges, but I have enjoyed making these challenge entries and they have made me feel cheerful.

To start with, here is my postcard entry to the Sunday Postcard Art theme of EPHEMERA:

The definition of ephemera includes 'something designed to be useful for a short time'.  Well, parking tickets are not just useful.  They are essential in today's world, even in hospital car parks which adds severely to the annoyance of having to visit a hospital frequently.  

I was tidying the car's glove box a few months ago (next tidy due in three years!) and I found a wad of parking tickets.  The Morrison's tickets in the card above include one each from 2008, 09, 10, 11, 12 and 13, so old the ink has faded.

The sketch below is from a ten-year-old sketchbook, and I was pleased to find it matched two challenges:

This is a page from a section in a travel journal recording an enjoyable trip to Glasgow, a first-ever visit.  For some reason this sketch popped into my mind and I took out the sketchbook recording this trip to use for the Collage Obsession challenge of 'A Page in a Travel Journal'.

We like visiting museums and sketching anything that takes our eye.  I loved this old car, and challenged myself to draw it by starting at one point and keeping my pen on the page throughout - taking a line for a walk.  I probably lifted the pen a couple of times and pretended I wasn't cheating.  It was a difficult thing to draw but worth the intense concentration involved.

We don't travel far at all these days, so re-visiting the pages of that travel journal brought back many happy memories - which makes it just right for the Take a Word challenge of 'Memories'.  One of my happiest memories of that Glasgow trip is coming across the multi-screen cinema and going to see 'Chicago', followed the next night by seeing 'Frida'.  These are now two of our favourite films, watched many times on DVD.

Lastly, the Artists' Play Room challenge is 'Weather'.  Well, the weather in the past year or so has certainly been a challenge in all parts of the world, so that's how I approached the theme.

I've drawn a very INaccurate map of England and Wales - sorry Scotland, but you are very difficult to draw.

I used weather stickers from a kids sticker book by Grafix, which seemed to me to show the way our weather travels through a range of cloud, sun, rain, sun, cloud, and hailstones all in one day.  At the moment it is too hot, humid and I can feel the pressure that comes before a tremendous rainstorm at the end of a hot period.  Just when all the farmers round about here have planted out their baby cabbages, leeks and cauliflowers.  I know I shall be sad to see them when we drive out again, all battered down with the rain.

As Moana Lott used to say on the WW2 Tommy Handley ITMA show (which only other ancients like me will perhaps remember) ...... "It's being so cheerful as keeps me going."

Also linking to Manon's Paper Saturdays