Today i had some work to do for a birthday. so, a 'trees' in watercolour based on an original on Pinterest and then done in oils on a small canvas. Also a box after delft. Windows painting is resting. Spring in the garden at last!

  Worked on the new painting, enjoying the moments of sort of sunshine that seemed like spring. I am trying to keep an art journal come diary every day ,which I really like doing, and the challenge is to see if I can make it go all year. I started on the 5 Jan so 2 months so far. Not as ambitious as Molly Artist's brilliant portrait challenge but a step in the right direction.

So I started a new windows painting and finished another local scene  -  Beverley in Summer - an antidote to the miserable rain today. At least the snow and ice have gone.

I like to sketch through windows using the window frame as a frame to the view. Here, I have two sketches in charcoal and pencil respectively, the first one in a few minutes to get the feel of the scene and the second more slowly, probably in about one hour, to look for more detail and sense of proportion. The final image is one of my favourites that I did some time ago, looking through a pub window near Oxford. I used a photograph that I took just as the last of the winter sun disappeared. Again, the window frame emphasises the cold dark night approaching.

Windows provide a variety of interesting frames in paintings and I like these. One of my favourite artists is Hammershoi who has done so many great paintings of windows and the light effect of these. Another artist who paints windows and whose paintings I admire is Jan Van der Kooi Below you can see the first image by Kooi, the second by Hammershoi and the third, my own work referring to both the former  - well I was trying to.... I did it a while ago and now I am returning to my love of windows for a new painting.

 Life drawing is always rewarding, exhausting and demanding but really rewarding in a way that lasts for days and even weeks after a particular class. I attended a workshop at Crescent Arts, Scarborough recently which was excellent. See below my attempts which I am pleased with as part of a lengthy learning curve! The most exciting earning was that of using the Boldmere 'Works' white to black pastel range for shading. Now I just want to buy some and get going again.

 I can't believe that I'm sitting here in the dark already. Also how long it has been since I last posted. 
I have been to Venice this month, where I enjoyed urban sketching; now I am inspired to do more at home....hmmm..... been here before. The first was done while sipping Prosecco at canal side bar on the first evening when we were unaware of the mosquitoes -- o dear!. The second was a quick sketch in Florians while enjoying the most heavenly hot chocolate ever ( an I could soak up the history too) and the photo at the end shows what I was looking at. Next we went to the Guggenheim and this sketch is from waiting for coffee in the outside cafe. We gave p in the end and went instead to a local cafe and had another wonderful hot chocolate. I am definitely going to find out how to make these and add them to my Christmas food and joy. Another day we were, again in a cafe, this time drinking red wine, int eh ghetto and the final sketch is on Burano, behind the pretty coloured houses, sitting by the water.

We have been in France for the summer and we are now home until Spring. The season has been interesting. Most of our visitors have been Airbnb guests and not art holiday people. That's fine and we enjoyed a good season, getting our third house ready for guests, working to keep the art selling space in creativelab, Beverley going and generally enjoying the sun as well as running the airbnb visits.
Today I want to show you a few images of watercolour pictures that I am selling in creativelab, Beverley. This is a great selling space and the people who run it are absolutely brilliant. if you are interested, please find  creativelab, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire or go to www.thecreativelab.space 

Having just joined the U3A in Bridlington, I am pleased to be able to paint with the art group. The leader is Rosie Abrahams who recently works on lovely vibrant seascape canvasses that really express the moods of the sea. She uses, and encourages us to use much water and acrylics. She has given me some larger brushes with feathered ends, rather like old house painting brushes but with far fewer bristles. I have started to experiment with these and with acrylics. It is great fun to be bigger and bolder and to enjoy the colour more. In  two of the three pictures I have added here today, I have used Maggi Hambling as my inspiration. The first painting, with the suggestion of waves and seagulls, was done very quickly, mixing the colours on the palette and almost on the paper as the water did what it wanted with the paint. I washed a piece of watercolour paper with lots of water, then swirled the blues onto it. The seagulls were suggested with the smallest of my newly acquired brushes. I then used a pallette knife to add white and finally threw watery white over the top of the waves. The second painting took a little longer but used the same approach with first water, then swirled colour and finally, white with watery white splashed on afterwards. The third picture is the first that I attempted and here I used my old brushes and you can see below just a small section of the work; the lower part of the paining works better than the upper section, which I think I will re-visit.

 Having had the most gross cold ever, I am finally aware of spring in my garden through the daffodils and crocuses, aconites and forsythia, in the bird world through the dawn chorus and growing excitement of the singing and in the longer light we receive. All so welcome. Reduction printing will be returned to as we have a day planned in a local school to get every child completing a poem and a reduction print based on their study of Hull in this year of it being the city of culture.
However, today I have been playing. I have started a paired sketch book with a painting friend.If you want a reason to sketch that helps you to learn and links to studying artists, this is a great idea. I love it. We each have a sketch book which we use and then swop. We talk about each other's sketch and then build on something in the other's work to complete the next sketch. Below I show the work from the sketch book currently in my possession. I hope you can see some link between each of the five sketches. I did the first one, my painting friend the second and so on. I really recommend this if you have a friend you could meet up with regularly - great excuse for much coffee drinking and chat also.

The final image is not from my sketch book but from my study link. It is an image of a painting by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. I will talk more about her in my next blog