Pottery and the Great Indoors

First, pottery.  I went to Porches (pronounced something like Porche the car, there's a lot of shhh sounds in European Portuguese) this morning to check out the pottery there.  It's.an area that has been known for pottery for centuries and today still has many shops selling Portuguese hand painted tiles, dishes, and the like.  I focused on one shop, Olaria Pequena, where the potter is designing and painting and the pottery there is gorgeous. I particularly liked the designs with sardines and with olives.  The glazes are beautiful.  It's also heavy and their experience with shipping it isn't good, so none of it is traveling with me.

The shop called Porches Pottery, which has a great reputation as well, was closed for the winter.  And the three other shops I went to were somehow both mass-produced and hand-painted.  The kinds of things that say Portugal or Algarve on them and are piled up in huge stacks.  Enough said about them.

This afternoon I forced myself indoors to work out painting problems.  I have painted plein air for a long time, but not a whole lot in gouache and not in the endlessly sunny, shade-free conditions here.  In addition to wearing fetching straw hats, artists use umbrellas to shade their work and shade their palettes.  I brought the straw hat but no umbrella and I have been frustrated at mixing the colors I want and finding the colors drying too dark.  

I can say this -- I was happier with my little 4 x 6" indoor experiments than I have been with the outdoor work, but I'm still not there and I'm still not sure how I'll fix my outdoor painting experiences. 

Oh -- and a tech note.  People have asked me if they can follow the blog.  I finally spent time looking for the answer to where the "follow" widget went, and it turns out it was discontinued in April 2021.  I'm sorry to say if you want to keep up, you will need to check online for updated posts.  I'm pretty much posting something every day, for what that's worth.