I broke...

...my glasses today...or rather they broke themselves while sitting on my nose. The frame round my right eye snapped for no apparent reason and the lens clattered to the floor.
So this was me searching for another pair of usable glasses until my opticians appointment. I am so used to these yellow tinted glasses. They are to help my migraines. I found some blue tinted ones, but the tint is too light, and everything too bright. I also have some quite deep green tinted glasses to help with reading and computer work. But no way can I wear these to paint with. So, it is the old blue tinted ones for the moment.

I was out all day. I did go looking for some acrylic paints where I was, but there were none. I did go into Smiths to look for some pens. I needed some white ones. They had some. So I tried them out to find the best ones. There were 8 that I was happy with. So off to the till. But it was only a self service one, and there was someone in front of me. She was only buying a magazine, and put in the correct money, but it spat her money back to her. She tried again. Then she tried with some new coins from her purse. It spat half her money back at her. She was ready to lose her temper. I think on the fifth or sixth attempt she finally got her receipt.

Because I am deaf I cannot hear what instructions a self service till is giving me. It is flashing words at me as well as repeating itself to me, but I have no idea of the exact words it is saying. I try to scan but it keeps flashing a picture of a carrier bag at me. I don't want to pay 5p for a carrier bag because I am going to put the pens in my backpack. But no amount of pressing 'No' will stop it flashing a carrier bag picture at me. Finally I dump my backpack on the place where it is flashing the carrier bag at me. The machine shuts up.
But it still won't scan my pens. By this time, because of the other woman trying to buy her magazine, and the time I have taken at least fifteen minutes has passed. Normally I will have nothing to do with self scanning tills and will walk out first after having put my goods down. And never go back to that store again. But I wanted these pens and I had spent a few minutes making sure they all worked well. Finally I look upwards for a security camera, wave the pens and my £20 note....
A woman shop assistant comes rushing from nowhere. She attempts to scan my pens...the self scan machine wasn't having it, and went back to the carrier bag picture again...after many attempts she finally manages to scan the pens laboriously one by one.
Needless to say I will never ever go back to this shop. I wonder why there were no other impending customers...

Finally I got home. I had a sleep. Then I was going to do this painting, but that was when my glasses decided to break. I have tidied up recently, or reorganised rather, and I had no idea where I had put my old glasses for safe keeping.

An hour later, armed with a mug of nettle tea and blue tinted glasses, I start my painting. To be honest I was in absolutely no mood to do this by this time. So what to do? Make it simple...

I painted the paper with a mixture of the soft grey acrylic and the paynes grey acrylic. Then I got a wallpaper scraper and scraped the paint partially off on the bottom half while it was still wet. Not bad 'cos this gave the impression of waves. What next? A moon? Yes, why not, but not a piddling little moon...I want a blinking great big moon, so the circular base of my mug of nettle tea was placed on the now dry acrylic paint and, with my brand new white pen which was so hard won to buy from that recalcitrant self service till, I drew round the base to get a good half of the big moon.

I didn't feel up to painting white acrylic on the moon and dab paint off to create a moon effect...I knew I was tired...I didn't want to spoil my picture if it didn't work...so got my white pastel pencil and drew a bit of moon shading and rubbed the craters out with a rubber.

Then did a bit of moon reflection with the pastel in the water. And used the white pen again for waves and the sparkle of waves.

I think I should have darkened some edges in this picture but I have run out of steam and want my warm bed now!

This is my contribution for today's a pic everyday in 2017.

I promise I will try and do better tomorrow. I will be somewhere I KNOW there will be a selection of grey acrylic paints. And I want a lime yellow...