Today, Easter Mondays, is a holiday here, and things are quiet around here. Thus, no busy streets, no rush and no newspaper. But the perfect full moon this morning, and about a thousand birds singing under a dark sky, at 5 am. They ot up early and so did I. I could not help it and had to take a picture of the moon with the Nikon.

One reason why I got up early, besides work that just needs to get done and out of my way: the drawing board and the mixing table. On the drawing board waits paper with (another) tuberose work. Mixed media (oil pastel and water color) and I had to stop there yesterday. A bit wild, but I like it that way.

Tuberose, watercolor, oil pastel, not finished

I want to finish the background but won’t do much more. The picture is actually the last of a series that I did, slowly approaching towards an abstraction, trying to understand the form and essence.

When starting this post, I did not think about it. But now I can see it: The moon and the tuberose are actually pointing towards tuberose sotto la luna. But that’s another story, I guess, for September.

And on the mixing table, I will do some dilutions of earlier mixing experiments. And, if I feel like it, do another base or two. I love mixing bases (and discarding them): Mixing bases does not come with the pretense of “this needs to turn into a perfume beyond the ordinary”. There is a an element of lightness and relief. The same is true for trial vials where the only aim of the trial is to create for my private drawer. I actually have a couple of these, in the private drawer. Some of them get redone at some point, and they are like a repository for new ideas. Although, to be honest, they do not sit in a drawer, but on my bench. You can imagine them like waves of 30 ml vials, brown glass, flowing over the bench from the left (where the papers that need to go out sit) and the right (where the label printer sits). I just did a quick overview counting: Must be like 75 right now, in various states of completion or olfactif horror.

There is a physical limit: The size of the bench. If the vials get too close to the keyboard, the ones that are not convincing go into a box or on another shelf. There they continue to sit for a while until they go to the trash.

What base do I have in mind? Today, I feel like vetiver. Why would you need a base for vetiver, you might ask. There’s more than enough vetiver around… yes, but you see: That’s the nice thing about doing a base. No pretense going into that vial.