We went for a drive one day a couple of weeks ago, and the whole time the sky had crazy clouds (which later turned to rain). At the time I just took a bunch of photos on my phone to paint from later on. Later came one afternoon when Poppy and I were at home, and the power went out. I had been in the middle of doing laundry, and suddenly everything was off. No lights, no internet and it was also a very hot day so we weren’t too keen on going outside. We decided to paint in the studio since it was in the cooler basement and actually had enough natural light. Of course Poppy is never at a loss about what to paint; she just started up right away while I mucked around for a bit until I decided to get out those photos and try a cloud study from them. Poppy is always very encouraging about my art, and she gave this her highest compliment which is “It looks so real!”. Though it always seems funny to me–even though my purpose is to make it look like clouds–that she never says whether she thinks something is pretty or not, just whether it looks real or not.