Melanie’s Monthly News in July

Welcome to Melanie’s Monthly news in July. Another month has flown by and we have been really busy in the studio painting and drawing portraits. However we have had time to get out and about too. The weather has been absolutely delightful and a real treat. It is never this sunny here in Wales so we took the opportunity to do a few touristy things this month. To start with, a paddle on our favourite beach in New Quay! It isn’t often warm enough to paddle however you can see the photo below where Lily and I are enjoying the warm water. I have never  known it to be this warm! Lily is not certain about waves. She is a little concerned when they come towards her. However just the gentle lapping of the calm waters were perfect for her and she enjoyed it immensely.

Although we have been working hard it has been lovely to take some extra long lunch breaks enjoying the garden. We have the loungers just outside the studio door and Nicholas took some lovely photos of the garden where the sunlight was just peeping through the trees after lunch one day. The garden is absolutely heavenly on days like this and it is a real struggle to get back in the studio to work!!

The chickens have been enjoying the dry weather and they are quite spoilt. You can see their favourite treat – cream crackers. I keep a packet in the studio and you can see they could not wait for me to open the packet, they came up onto the table looking for their daily treat.

The garden has been very difficult to keep watered in this heat. The flowers have done amazingly well considering. I have never seen our trees and shrubs so limp. Luckily we aren’t on a water meter here and so they have been having a sprinkle here and there. The poppies looked spectacular this month, both the orange and the red. My favourite though has to be the yellow daisies. Aren’t they all such wonderful colours.

Carreg Cennen Castle

We had a friend visit for a few days this month and we took him to Carreg Cennen Castle. The castle is very imposing and is famous for it’s Joseph Mallord William Turner Dynevor Sketchbook study which I have added below. Tunrer stood pretty much where we did in 1798 and painted this scene which we think is absolutely incredible. The photo below Turner’s painting shows our friend and myself walking up the hill in a similar position. It was a very hot day and I think I was less thinking about the view of the castle and more thinking about getting out of the heat at that point! The front of the castle is very imposing which you can see below.

Turners painting and a very similar view of the castle below.

The front of the Carreg Cennen Castle.

The detail when inside the castle was amazing, im sure it must have been pretty spectacular in its day.

Lily enjoyed herself as you can see. She very rarely pants, so to see her with her tongue out shows how warm it was. This area was up quite high and the view was stunning, you could look right across to see where we lived in the distance.

The photo below shows the start of the walk down to the caves! Yes there really are caves here. The castle was built on top of them. As you can see from the photo it wasn’t too bad to get down, carrying Lily most of the way. It got pretty dark and very narrow and uneven in places. It was a good job we had our mobile phones for light! I’m not certain what the caves were used for or why they were there in the first place, perhaps they were natural, however it is a wonderful feature. We would definitely recommend a visit if you are heading the the Brecon beacons in Wales.

You can see the musket loop below. The early parts of the castle were built in the late 12th Century and you can read more about the castle on the CADW website.

Lastly in my Melanie’s Monthly News in July, a very arty shot of the remains of a castle arrowslit. What a view through it…although I’m sure the archers at that time we not admiring it as we did!

Finally, we hope that you have enjoyed reading Melanie’s Monthly News in July and viewing our Art Studio Blog and our Melanie’s Monthly News in June. Why not sign up to our Monthly newsletter accessible at the bottom of our website which comes out on the 1st of each month. Consequently this means, you can catch up on all of the portrait stories and news from our Art Studio! Please don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube Channel too, share, like and follow our social media and you are more than welcome to comment below, we love hearing from our readers!