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Parasols


Parasol Installer: Germaine
Parasol Painter: Yours truly
Reason: Why buy when you can do your own?

The scene: A street festival over run with small children sporting funkily styled paper parasols, apparently there was some kind of stall that allowed the creation of said useful articles in the fight against skin cancer.

The final straw: A yellow parasol with pink poodles wearing aqua scarves – truly, how do these kids get so good at art? I decided I must throw my hat (parasol?) in the ring.

The adult with the colouring-in urge: Your correspondent, with patient Ariel in tow, deciding to perpetrate her utterly derivative and often dire artistic skills upon a snow white parasol.

Art: I am not a good artist at all, at best I am passable, but I do have a knack for using my limited resources to produce something not too bad at all. My theory is that my tools have certain inherent possibilities that even my lack of skill can turn into something that doesn't make small children cry. Thus my parasol turned out quite a bit better than I expected, mainly due to a minimalist approach and not pushing my limits. Ariel was able to keep my penchant for over embellishment under control, and I worked with the tools available to produce a pattern that relied entirely on the shape of the brush, not my own finesse at painting.

The sequel: Smugly squiring my finished parasol through the crowd I let my success go to my head and I decided, once Ariel had gone home, to spend more time with the dye and poster paints to create a companion to the newest addition to my life. The second parasol was executed in a more freeform manner, but it turned out to admirably match the first.

Installation: Germaine was kind enough to humour me on her weekend and act as my engineering consultant; climbing onto various pieces of furniture in order to turn an otherwise empty corner of my room into a paradise of parasols.

Result: I fall asleep each night in the shade of tropical accoutrements, a very satisfactory state of affairs.

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