Now my arms feel like two bendy straws. Floating shelves : not worth the hassle. Stick to brackets.
The painting below was for an exercise where we had to paint something for the words 'zeitgeist', 'ephemeral' or 'subliminal'. I thought of approximately 999 very depressing things I could paint for those words, but I wanted to paint something more cheering, so in the end I went for 'Ephemeral' and painted one of our old copper & arsenic mines which were once both deadly and blighting, but now are overrun with plants and beautiful in their own way.
Then I decided to push my luck and added a pair of balmaidens for 'zeitgeist' - either literally as time-ghosts, or in the sense of 'well, things may not be perfect now, but at least girls are not routinely expected to take jobs working in arsenic mines at the age of 7 or 8 years old'. I used some of the photos on http://balmaiden.co.uk/ for clothing/ tools reference.
I'm quite pleased with how this came out, and may paint some more mine-ghost pictures. The girl is holding her bonnet in her hand, i'm not sure if that's clear.
