Amazing what a holiday can do for you!

A holiday with my husband and I return to my studio full of inspiration! It's not necessarily that this cobweb painting was something I witnessed while I was away (more of those paintings to come) it's just that a week of beautiful countryside, reading and quality time with my family has freed up my head.
This painting (w.i.p. above) was created while the lovely Wyndham Art Group visited my studio this week. A small group of very enthusiastic painters, they have a huge sense of fun and vitality and wanted to come along and paint with me for the day. Oh, such a chore!
Together we created this piece, concentrating on using a ruling pen with masking fluid for precision blocking out and combined it with very loose, dark washes to show off the pale areas when the making was removed. There were many in the group who really hadn't mastered masking (try saying that quickly) and it was a pleasure to help them overcome their problems and unleash them on the possibilities that masking out can reveal.
Below you will see a close up of where the masking was used for the cobweb to give a sense of a stained glass window when combined with my favourite Daniel Smith watercolours in Cobalt Violet, Green Gold, Prussian Blue and Lamp Black.
Do you enjoy masking or is it a technique that has eluded you so far? Let me know and I'll help where I can, have a great week everyone.

A quick word about gouache

The more I use gouache, the more I love it.
When I originally taught myself how to paint, it was gouache that I first used as I loved the consistency and how flat I could get the colour to sit on the paper - I was heavily in to celtic knotwork at the time. Moving on to watercolours and leaving it behind, I've only just recently re-discovered how versatile a medium it is, particularly for inclusion in mixed media pieces.
Today at the studio we executed a foxglove painting and I'm not overly thrilled with mine, I definitely need to spend more time observing the shape of a foxglove 'trumpet'. However, we did add a bee in to our pieces and around the room, many people were pleased at how their bee wings came out, just with the simplest touch of gouache. Masking fluid would have been too hard and painting around them or glazing over the top may have been too big a stretch for some abilities so a little gouache and hey presto! a semi-transparent bee wing appears on the surface.
If you haven't ever had a chance to have an experiment with the medium, I urge you to try it out. I use Permanent White for highlights and it is quite versatile when mixed with watercolours or Brusho. Let me know how you get on and you are welcome to email me your paintings, or share them on Facebook. Have Fun!

I'd like to thank...

...is how every Oscar acceptance speech starts and we watch them, wondering how much gushing we are going to have to endure. However, it is worth thinking about those people who help us out when we have a goal which we are striving for, so this is the art equivalent of my Oscar speech. This week, I've been booking lots of things in to my diary for 2017 (all exciting blog posts to come) and I have realised that without significant people in my life, there is no way that I would be able to achieve my dreams. Do the rest of you out in art land feel the same? There are my supportive students, organisations like the Society for All Artists who work hard to promote me and my work and my assistant Jasmine, but these are all work related. How about friends, family and partners? All of them constantly beavering away in the background, helping out and making sacrifices just so I can do what I do.
My parents are just brilliant, even at the grand old age of 42, my mum is still my sounding board for ideas and problems and my dad will still drive me to events if I'm likely to be tired on the way back. Then of course there's my husband, who I don't think really understood what it would be like to live with a constantly driven, work obsessed artist but does it without ever moaning and is always the first to tell me to go for something.
So to all of you, my heartfelt thanks and gratitude and to my husband (who may occasionally forget what I look like) you are just the best and although I know you will hate it, here is you taking part in one of my workshops!