My girls absolutely love Halloween so I took the spirit into my art classes last week to paint pumpkins. We did a version in oil paints, ink and watercolour.
All set up and ready to go....
This was my first painting, a traditional watercolur version....
This was the quickest and most fun painted in ink. It only took about 10 minutes painting time, it took longer waiting for the paint to dry to paint the second layer : )
Finally I was doing an introduction to oil paints and a pumpkin was the perfect simple shape to start with. Plus a little colour theory with the complimentary colour for the background.
Then they ended up in a nice vegetable soup at the end of the week ; )
This is something I've wanted to do for ages especially after reading Handa's surprise to the girls and seeing the gorgeous illustrations. I still love reading that to the girls so we can look at the amazing watercolour paintings.
I took inspiration from Hazel Soane painting in coloured layers starting with Yellow Ochre, adding Crimson then finishing with Blue. I was really pleased with him...there's something really joyful about elephants : )
If you're local and want to join us painting elephants i'll be in the Visitor Centre at Hornchurch Country Park this Thursday 12.45-14.45 £10.
I took full advantage of this unusally warm weather and last Thursday we went out into Hornchurch Country Park to paint the landscape. There's a lovely spot just past the visitor centre, which was luckuily out of the wind, where you find yourself underneath a large sky. It really is beautiful.
Just like a typical English day it was lovely and sunny and then we got some gorgeous moody clouds move over above us. Luckily the weather held out for us all to finish our paintings.
If you've never experienced it, painting outside is a great experience especially with a great group of learners.
I love teaching art and this has to be my favourite location of all time.
Walking through the park to get to the centre is incredible relaxing and then to be able to draw and paint overlooking the park is an amazing experience. I like to call it soul food, some call it mindfulness but whatever you call it I'd definitely recommend it as it really is a great experience.......
This Thursday we're heading into the park to paint skies and trees. If you want to join us meet in the cafe at 12.35pm.
Trying to
get my moneys worth from my art fund I went along to the Michael Jackson
exhibition "On the wall" with my friend. After a long summer doing kids
things it was great to get out and feed the soul on art and great
company. It was an emotional exhibition that leads you on a
rollercoaster of feelings from sadness, heartache, curiousity to sheer
joy with laugh out loud exhibits.
Here were my highlights...
As
we were at The National Portrait Gallery we popped in to see this years
BP Portrait Award which never disappoints. The paintings were
beautiful. The first one that greets you was amazing and looked so
photographic you can't even see any brush strokes!
Here were some of my favourites....
My kids love taking pictures and then going through them and looking back at what we've done. So it was lovely looking back at what we got up to at the summer, I'll spare you the hundreds of selfies they take of each other : ) I'm always taking pictures to inspire my work, here's some of my favourites from our local park, Thetford, St.Osyth and finally the Loire Valley. Can't wait to get planning and painting.....
It makes my life look idyllic which it really isnt! My daughter was so scared and fightened from the mannequins at the Sleeping Beauty Castle (Chateau d'Usse) that taking pictures of flowers in the garden was the only thing to calm her down. Note to self, do not take her to Madame Tussauds : )
At the beginning of July I bought myself a 3month art pass and started off by visiting the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. I've not been in years and so loved it. I felt the work was split between 2 moods, the playful and funny, just like Grayson Perry who was the main curator this year and the romantically beautiful. See if you can guess the category in the work below : )
The photos dont really do them justice, they were far more beautiful in real life.
The birch trees above and the hydrangea below were amazingly realistic watercolour paintings.
This rock face was also watercolour and had the most amazing colours.
Who thought a bin bag could be so attractive : ) I remember the artist Chris Stevens saying there is always beauty in the mundane, so true!
Fiona Rae's work was beautiful and brought back lots of memories from when I first saw her work at the Sensation exhibition when I was 18 along with the other Young British Artists (maybe not so young now though!).
I fell in love with the prints of Norman Ackroyd whilst I was there, they reminded me of many family holidays to the coast.
It was a great day out and definitely inspired me to enter next year. I love the soft romantic feeling of the paintings which is what I'm going to start working on next. If you're feeling like you've always wanted to enter and are a bit nervous, go for it and fingers crossed we get through : )
