November means #home, #autumn and #Poland.

Happy Independence Day! Although half of Poland is celebrating today getting independence that we got after 123 year in 1918, the rest simply enjoy day off and cherish the beautiful "Polish Golden Autumn" that traditionally got a range of another season here. After couple of months of travelling here and there, I cherish it too in my family home in Łanięta.

This part of the year is one of my favourite (apart from spring) for visiting my parents. The park behind my house is full of colours and enchants everyone with its beauty.
Isn't this peaceful area just brilliant for sketching?

This time  in size a bit bigger than A4. This needs time.
 
And I had the whole long weekend. Nonetheless, I started in a rather lazy way and took my time. . Last couple of weeks were pretty eventful in my life and I really dreamt about some boring state of doing nothing, if you happen to know what I mean.
 

 

 

Outdoor sketch is already challenging in autumn. After 2h of sketching without gloves,
 the green tea is everything what you dream about!

 

 

 

 

Already in Slovenja, in September, I was quite frustrated about my inability to reflect the texture of trees. Although, in my opinion, these attempts from above are still not perfect, they are way better than those from September in Ljubljana (click).

 

Since that first try, drawing trees became my small idee fix that I constantly struggle with and hope that one day I will reach perfection. Nothing else than a tree gives you such a variety of possible textures, lines and shadows! Not to forget, there is no tree that looks the same.

 

 





Sometimes I feel like a little girl in a candy shop.

This happened when I got my first real aquarelle (water colour) set last week in Gdańsk. In the store, a nice lady recommended me a Russian brand called Ленинград (Leningrad) with a very good quality pigment.You can get those as a set or buy just some cubics of colour (what I should have done. For autumn colours, you need maybe 5-6 colours in total!).

However, as a watercolour beginner, I was more than excited to try those out. A night walk through the attic helped me to find a old drawer full of my child's sketches and old painting brushes, that lost on their quality over years of waiting for my inspirations. Not discouraged by that, I burnt the midnight oil and have tried different shades of green, yellow and umbra on my ink sketch.

Just like a girl with a candy.

What is this castle?

Zameczek w Łaniętach

During my 15 years of living in the village called Łanięta (read: wha-nyee-ta) - nearby Kutno - I had always a reminiscence of that castle being a ruined place to play. No doors, no windows, destroyed entrances and brick visible from behind the shabby walls. I was forbidden to go there. Some drinking local post-communistic icons used to hide their addiction in the bottles of cheap wine and in the bushes next to that Little Castle (Zameczek) .

A boy from my neighbourhood told me once a story about dragon that lived there in the dungeon, just under the part of the Little Castle that is clearly visible on my picture on the left. I was maybe six, he might have been eight and, admittedly, he wanted to impress me. Instead, I was scared of the dragons even more.

When I got older the "Lttle castle" became a shelter for juvenile romantic lovers who looked for secret place to steal girls some kisses after school or hide a bottle of  their first beers. Of course, at that moment I was also forbidden to go there. In the end, the teachers got to know about the secret tryst place and punished a group of boys and girls from my class for doing truancy over there. A good girl like me should not go there, although the Little Castle is still clearly visible from my room's window and stayed here like a forbidden fruit, surrounded by a wild forest.

 

Now, the castle is made prettier, and there is no forest. After its service as a shop, it became a local culture centre that offers space for children and youngsters after school who would rather do some workshops than kissing over there. They publish there a small local newspaper and organise some bigger events like the one after harvest in the middle of the park. Thanks to EU fonds, the historical park has been renovated, planted with new trees, equipped with park paths and benches. The charm and magic of a wild bushes and castle with a sleeping dragon under earth disappeared. Instead, we got a yellowish public building with a wizardry architecture that still want to resemble some fairy tales.

The table next to it tells the story about the Little "romantic" Castle that was built probably in the middle of 19th century as a part of the whole complex of palace and park with plenty of very old trees that we call now "monuments of nature". They witnessed the story of political changes throughout the centuries.

Nonetheless, I choose to think that somewhere, in that earthed dungeon, lies a corpus of one of the last dragons that used to hide its presence there -  from the world. Maybe it is not there any more. Maybe it has moved to the old bunker that, as the legend says, covers the secret path to the church. In the end little do we know about dragon's habits... :-).


Enjoy the beautiful day of having peace back!