When the watercolour session ended I had everyone lay their pictures on the floor for a quick crit.
‘Do you mind if I scoot?’ said Cailey.
‘No, not all. Thank you very much for modelling today.’
‘Byeee.’ She grabbed her stuff and swaggered out the room on the tail end of everyone’s thank yous.
‘Right, come look at the pictures. You can ask me anything you want.’
‘Are you single?’ said Shane, and even I laughed.
‘Well?’ said Louis.
‘Come on, I meant you can ask anything about painting. You’ve all put in such a lot of effort this morning.’
‘What I want to know,’ whined Felicity, ‘is how Minty got such delicate colours.’
‘Minty?’
‘I think it’s because I used a lot more water.’
‘But I tried to use a lot of water and look at mine,’ grumbled Lianne. ‘It’s all blotchy.’
‘What sort of brush were you using?’
‘Here.’ She handed it to me.
‘This is a synthetic brush. Minty, is yours sable?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sable holds water better than synthetic so it gives a much smoother, more even spread of colour.’
Lianne wrote down the name on the back of her hand. I didn’t like to tell her quite how expensive these brushes are. Every artist, no matter how much money they have, has to weigh up performance and cost. The reality is, the more you spend the better the equipment and natural versus synthetic is no comparison.
‘Louis,’ said Rupert, ‘why have you painted more of her jumper than her face?’
‘I thought it’d be easier,’ he shrugged.
‘Cheat,’ said Jane.
‘Not true,’ I said. ‘Painting is interpreting what’s in front of you any way you want. That’s why pictures reveal so much about a person’s character.’
‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Louis is a cheat.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Felicity. ‘You and I would have done better concentrating on the jumper.’
Jane actually stamped her foot. ‘I just wish you didn’t all have to see my poor efforts.’
‘Jane,’ I said, trying to lift her mood, ‘you mustn’t say that. The hardest thing about creativity is the challenge. There is no formula. No medicine to make things better when they’re bad. It’s not like learning something and knowing it forever. Each new painting or drawing puts you right back on first base and just because past drawings and paintings have worked doesn’t mean future ones are going to.’
‘Mine hasn’t worked at all today.’
‘Well, I think it looks like Cailey.’
‘That’s because no one else wears such wacky make-up,’ said Shane.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Lianne. ‘Can we go?’
‘Yes, let’s call it a morning. We’re having lunch up on the moor and the minibus will be leaving here in ten minutes.’
I looked out of the window and my heart fell; grey clouds had swamped this morning’s blue sky.
‘Cheer up,’ said Louis over my shoulder.
‘I’m happy. I just don’t want it to rain.’
We’ve just finished a stand-up lunch of thick hot soup and cold lamb rolls in the bothy and are now out on the veranda, under an awning, contemplating the drizzle.
Stretched out in front of us is a loch, one long slick plane of deep brown sunk into the foreground of the heather moorland. The landscape behind tumbles for miles, eventually blending with the peaks on the horizon.
‘Look,’ exclaimed Rupert. ‘There’s a ptarmigan.’
‘So it is,’ said Fergus. ‘Well spotted.’
‘What did you say it was?’ said Felicity, all giggly with confusion.
‘A ptarmigan.’
‘Spelt P T A R M I G A N,’ said Jane.
‘Blast, he’s gone.’ Giles was disappointed. ‘I’ve never seen one before.’
‘Over there,’ said Minty.
‘You’s never seen a bird before?’ said Shane.
‘You’ll only see these birds in the Highlands.’ Fergus leant on the crook of his stick. ‘They’re a species of grouse. This one’s a male. You can tell from the black feathers round his face.’
‘I ain’t see no black feathers.’
‘It’s a bit far away, but if you look closely you’ll see them coming through his white winter plumage.’
‘Only birds in Britain to grow completely white plumage,’ said Rupert. ‘Talking of which, there’s a painting of them in my bathroom.’
‘Yes,’ said Fergus, ‘it’s by Thorburn.’
‘And…which Earl bought that?’ mocked Shane.
Fergus laughed. ‘The Countess suo jure’s husband bought it. He was wounded in the First World War, no quality of life after and bought art to cheer himself up. He had been a particularly keen sportsman before the war. There are some of Henry Alken’s wildfowl prints in one of the children’s rooms, I think?’
‘Mine,’ said Giles.
Fergus clapped his hands and Haggis barked at the ptarmigan’s rasp as it furiously flapped its short wings and grazed the heather in low flight.
‘I’m going to leave you all to it,’ Fergus said with a spring in his step as he bounced off the veranda into the heather. ‘Haggis and I have some inspecting of the butts to do.’
‘What?’ shrieked Lianne.
‘A butt’s a camouflaged hide you shoot from,’ said Rupert.
‘What’s a hide?’
‘A place of concealment, disguised to appear as part of the natural environment,’ said Jane.
‘I bet you’re good at Scrabble,’ teased Rupert but she wasn’t amused.
‘It would be a grand place for a wind farm here,’ said Giles. ‘My parents are longing for their application to be accepted. They’ve got an eighty-foot application mast up, like that one over there.’ He pointed into the distance.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ said Felicity.
‘I’m not lying, it’s the tip of a mast breaking the horizon. I can tell.’
‘Yeah right?’ said Minty.
‘Wind farms make you rich, don’t they?’ said Shane.
‘Mega rich,’ said Lianne.
‘They’re ghastly,’ said Minty.
‘Enough of this,’ I cut in, ‘it’s time to begin and if you’re all happy using my primed paper again, then help yourself to a sheet in the bothy. We’ll be painting outside.’
‘What about the rain?’ mumbled Lianne.
‘Yeah?’ said Louis.
‘You don’t have to paint it if you don’t like it.’
‘Ha ha.’
I took a step down from the veranda onto the heather. It was only drizzling but everyone else stuck under cover. Rupert and Shane were squeezed in the doorway, Minty, Giles, Felicity, Jane and Lianne spread out over two benches, and
