TWO RED ROSES

Have not painted new work of late but did manage to finish the Trevi Fountain I posted recently.

So thought you might like to see what we did at last Thursday's ladies' art session I hold in my home weekly. Two of the ladies coincidentally brought red roses to paint, so I joined them and gave a little advice here and there. When they all left I sprayed the painting with my fine mist spray that came with my Artelier acrylic set, letting the colours run and adding some droplets of red, yellow and blue to strengthen the base, spraying and tipping the paper as I went. Resulted in a more interesting background than the plain white paper.

So thats it for now. I have some work to do for Christmas so hopefully will have a quieter couple of days to get down to it.

MORE ITALIAN ACRYLIC INK WORK

Haven't painted much new work lately but you may remember my Italian practice work last year when Anita and I had planned to visit Italy sketching together. Had to put it off, but will make an effort to organise next year. So I thought I'd show you a couple of small pieces created from a trip to Italy a couple of years ago.

GONDOLA CORNER

This little painting is from my visit to Venice two summers ago when I went to Italy with Clive for our 50th anniversary. Its framed in my art study as a lovely reminder of a lovely time. Thought you'd like to see it. BTW, acrylic ink on Lana Vanguard support. Quite small at 8" x 5" in a 14" x 12" frame.

GRAND CANAL REFLECTIONS

Here's another little acrylic ink on Lana Vanguard done at home from photos taken during the same holiday whilst going down the Grand Canal on one of the ferries. Just 8" x 11" currently only in a two inch double mount awaiting framing.

Both going into Christmas shows at local Norfolk galleries.

PAINTING DAY AT SANDRA'S STUDIO

I have just had a great day painting with my friend Sandra when I drove down to Norwich City to her studio about 10 miles from home. We set ourselves a challenge of creating a piece of acrylic artwork 20" x 16" in one day.

I took a sketch of the Trevi Fountain plus a photograph to work from. The sketch was the important thing as I had used washes of gouache blocks of colour and I wanted to repeat this idea. The photograph was to give me more detail where I needed it for the statues and windows.

Here I am working on the canvas. My arm had begun to ache so Sandra quickly whipped up a home made marl stick from a piece of dowling and a taped wrapped round piece of cotton to give my arm support.

Here is an image of the painting by 4.30 when I packed up to get home before the city traffic built up. We'd had breaks for tea and cake mid morning, soup and rolls and fruit for lunch and another cuppa in the afternoon when Sandra's husband Malcolm joined us. So all in all delighted how far I had got. Needless to say, lots to do to finish it off.

Here we are working in the studio together, back to back because being left handed I needed to face the other way to have my paints etc to hand!!

It was a real fun day and so good to create a full piece of work with another artist with lots of interaction and 'what do you think of this?' every so often or other such enquiries. Sandra created a wrought iron gate from her sketch book on a trickled, blended background of lovely soft aquas, lavenders and greys all over crumpled tissue to give texture. We had lots of chats, laughs and music - a fun day. Plan to make it a monthly event (except Jan and Feb when Sandra is going to New Zealand - that's right 'sketching'. !

Hope the images above enlarge with a click.

CROMER TOWN AND FISHING BOATS

I was up in Cromer on the Norfolk north coast last week, firstly invigilating at the COAST Festival and then spending time at my friend Anne's home where I slept overnight so we could visit more of the COAST events in Sheringham the next morning, finishing with a visit to Felbrigg Hall to see the NOVA sculpture trail.

Before going on to Anne's I had a walk round Cromer in the sunshine (but very breezy) capturing lots of ideas for small works for a Christmas exhibition at The Garden House Gallery in Cromer .

Firstly, I created this pen sketch with my Mitsubishi Uni pens from 0.4 right up to a brush ............

... and from this and some photos I have now created this watercolour for the Christmas exhibition. I drew in the detail with my Lamy pen and Lexington Grey waterproof Noodlers ink so that the linework was not intrusive once I had added the colour washes with my Daniel Smith watercolours.