Latest Workshop Pics

I am satisfyingly weary tonight after a successful workshop today! I had six lovely ladies sign up to paint a little still life in a day, using Winsor and Newtons Artisan water mixable oils!

I spent the day before, cooking and baking workshop lunch and goodies, set up the hall in the evening with just last minute things to do this morning before my students arrived.

As usually happens when people share the same interests, the girls got on famously. 

I decided , this time. to do my demo in stages and I think that worked well, especially as colour mixing with a limited palette, was relatively new to about half the group. So I talked them through, as I mixed my colours, you could hear a pin drop!  Then they started mixing. I then helped them to place their still life on their boards.

Lunchtime - already! There was great hilarity at the table, fun stories, daft stories and getting to know each other stories!

I did another demo, paint application, how to paint glass....the girls picked it up very quickly! 

As we reached the tricky bits, I decided we should have a break, coffee and homemade cake, more laughs round the table!

They had a finished piece of work each at the end of the day, so proud of them all!

Every Picture Tells a Story

I have painted these little shoes many times throughout my painting years. my daughter's first pair of shoes. They are well worn, the colour scuffed from the toes, where she tripped, often, in her hurry to be doing whatever her older brother was involved in at the time. The little t-bar creased where her little chubby feet had grown and spread, ready to move onto a bigger size.
Over the years, I drew them before I contemplated colour in my work. I rendered them in pencil, then charcoal.
Sometime later, I produced a pastel painting on canson paper. When I began using sanded paper, I found I could lay so many more layers down, loving the thickness of the medium.
When I first painted in oils, I mixed my reds as best I could at the time. 
This latest rendering of the little red toddler's shoes, in a way, shows where I am now, comfortable with colour mixing, loving painting with oils.
I love this little painting.......it can be seen hanging upstairs in Kirkcudbright Town Hall till the end of the month.....yes, it is for sale and I don't mind selling it. I have the orginal footwear which I am sure I will paint again, sometime in the future.

Day Three Kirkcudbright Art and Craft Trail

"I have enjoyed the last three days so much! Six artists and crafters, we have had lots of sales, lots of visitors and lots of laughs!

One more day to go, if any of you are in the area, please pop in to see us at our garden venue, down a winding cobbled close. At the opening for the garden two old fashioned roses have been intoxicating us with their delicious scent. I love our little town with its quirky back gardens and higglety pigglety lay outs.

Here are the gang I've spent the last few days with!

Day One Kirkcudbrightshire Art and Craft Trail

The weather was very kind to us, our marquees looking pretty, swaithes of bunting atopped the six creatives work. We had so many visitors, young and old and many of the four legged variety too. Venue 84, in the Yellow Door, our catchy slogan! Down the cobbled close decorated with many coloured fish (the theme of the trail), some caught in nets, others drifting freely!

The bottom of the close reveals a beautiful secret garden.! Locals and tourists alike were all taken with our setting. They browsed and bought our wares then took a tour of the garden.....Now we prepare for day two!