Thirty Days hath September - Day Twenty Four - An Andalucian Reunion

Earlier in the year I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take a group of painters out to Andalucia, where we spent a glorious week sampling everything the area had to offer...and a spot of painting too. Our hosts Howard and Angelina were awesome and the group were a joy to take out there so we decided earlier in the year that we must take time for a reunion at some point.

As you can imagine, we came home with lots of photographs and sketches and I personally was eager to help anyone start to turn these in to finished paintings, so I suggested that we all meet at the studio and swap ideas.

It was also too good an opportunity for it to be part of Thirty Days but I was wondering how it was going to be challenging for me. I shouldn't have worried, a situation soon presented itself! In a couple of weeks time I will be back on the TV (yes, I'm such a show-off) and I will be demonstrating a package of materials that I've not actually put together before, in fact it's quite a daunting task to be demonstrating on live television - no room for not looking professional. Therefore today gave me the chance to test out some of these materials in the one painting and see what I could come up with.

Using one of my Spanish photographs I drew out on to Yupo paper (a synthetic, waterproof paper) my balcony scene and started to add watercolour and one of my favourite products - Brusho. I pushed it all around for a while, not really getting anywhere until I realised that I was doing the thing I tell everyone NOT to do, don't get too precious about it and care a bit less. As soon as this kicked in, I was off and away, chucking stuff at the surface, watching it run and enjoying the process a whole lot more.

This combination of materials and new techniques is potentially very exciting and has done what Thirty Days set out to do, help me to discover new elements to my profession and see where they lead me.

Now, tomorrow is going to be a bit different. It's not going to be a 'thing', it's going to be an activity as I'm returning to my old job and if you don't know what I used to do before I became an artist, you may be in for a surprise! I promise I'll blog about it before I go...