Pumpkins....

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 ; )

Painting elephants......

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.

Art Group

I love teaching at art groups, they're always full of very nice and talented people. I was asked to show how to paint birch trees using a credit card and salt technique in watercolour. 

I worked on a very traditional version, using the credit card to scrape the paint for the birch trees across the paper then use a natural sponge to paint the background leaves and trees:

But all of the members of the art group wanted to experiment with colour and the wonderful textures you get from salt. So I showed them how to create these:

and here are their wonderful creations. They all look fantastic. (I wish I had my own photographer to get pictures of everyone's work so sorry if I didn't manage to capture your work). 

The main thing I love about teaching is although I show people how to paint a subject matter with the same techniques every bodies work always looks completely different. Everybody brings in their own style, own colour palette and own vision. 

Watercolour classes.....

I've just finished a 10 week class in watercolours and we're almost ready to start the next one.

Here's some of the paintings that we did in class on the last course. 

We looked at adding shadows to bring our paintings to life:

We experimented with BRUSHO and my first time painting a Kingfisher. 

We played around with a limited palette in our paintings;

We also had a look at pen and ink;

If you fancy joining us the next class starts on Thursday 19th April at Hornchurch Country Park Visitors Centre. 

Merry Christmas everyone....

The College decided to use one of my learners festive images as their Season's Greetings this year. 

There was a lot of great entries including all of the great works below but they settled on Deborah How's lovely snow scene above. I'm really proud of all the learners who submitted amazing work, well done everyone.

Mark, painted the beautiful deer above, and made it to second place in an online festive greetings image competition. Big congratulations especially as he's only been painting for just under a year now. It's amazing what you can achieve when you try. 

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone : )

Blooming marvelous.....

One of my learners in the watercolour class had a request from a family member to paint flowers in glass which as you can imagine is a hard subject matter. 

So I found and produced some easier examples for them to follow with these 2 images......

  

And for anyone who wanted a harder challenge I photographed some flowers and painted this one. It doesn't quite show in the picture but this one was quite a long and detailed picture.

 

Here is what they produced which are amazing. I particularly love seeing their own styles starting to come through.....

Some then chose to attempt the harder challenge at home so I'm glad I didn't put them off : )

Proud mother hen.....watercolour portraits

I've been feeling like a proud mother hen lately from the learners in my art classes. I love seeing their work develop and progress over the weeks especially from people who haven't picked up a pencil or paintbrush since leaving school. Plus every week never feels like work!

These are some of the portraits the learners made.....

 

I have to confess that some did use carbon paper. I always show the learners how to draw the subject matter so in this case I showed them how to break down the face. But as the lessons are so short some chose to spend their time concentrating on painting the face. 

For such a hard subject matter I think they're brilliant.