Another Busy Week.....

Its true what they say about time flying as you get older, I can confirm that it really does. In fact it seems like you blink and its the weekend again. (which in itself is not a bad thing, I love weekends!!)

So whats happened this week? it started badly when a friend sadly lost her Mum, she had been poorly, but was undiagnosed, it was very sad that she never made it home and my friend is now facing the same problems that we had at the end of last year. I really feel for her .

Last Wednesday I went to a Welfare Conference in Devon. We stayed at Croyde Bay, which is a rather lovely place, but its a long way away, a good five hour drive, which by British standards is
 l-o-n-g!!

We arrived Wednesday afternoon and of course it started to rain, it continued raining until we left to come home, every time we have been its rained, its doomed!!

Of course by the time we headed home the sun came out!!! It was still pretty nippy though.

Laura headed off with her friend Hayley, for a trip of a lifetime to Japan. I am so pleased for her that she has been able to make the trip. Tom took them to Heathrow airport on Friday night, they got as far as St.Albans when Laura realised that she had forgotten some of her medication! At least they hadn't hit the dreaded M25 before they had to turn back. Anyway we tracked Laura's flights and she sent me a message around midnight last night to say they had landed. (Carl, the super trip organiser had found them cheaper flights if they flew via Helsinki, so Finaire to Helsinki followed by Japan Air to Tokyo) Laura hopes to update her blog with the trip, so if you want to look at what she is up to, check HERE

I have for sometime liked the work of a local artist called Jean Picton, she paints the most beautiful poppy pictures. So when my friend Jane and I spotted that she was going to do a one day taster session, we saved our birthday money and booked a spot on her course. I was fantastic!! We learnt such a lot!! She is such a character. She didn't start painting in any shape or form until she had retired. She took a fine art degree and hit upon a style that people liked.

She has painted poppies in all sorts of colours, I would love to be the owner of one of her paintings!

We started the day off by experimenting with ink and water.

We started off laying water on the paper and then adding ink. We didn't use a brush, we used a twig! It gave a great effect.

It so easy to draw with a twig, much easier than a paint brush! You can look at the marks and see all sorts of different shapes, its like seeing pictures in the clouds.

We moved onto laying water on the paper and allowing the ink to bleed into it, we tried some poppies!!

Part of Jeans style is to add small dots, so although I felt that the poppies were half reasonable (not brilliant by a long shot!!) I felt I messed it up by having dots that were too large! It will be a case of practice, practice, practice!

We then had to have a go at copying a piece of dried grass. The picture above was done by using the trusty twig to make all the strong black lines and the 'fluffy' bits were made by allowing the ink to run and achieve different tones. 

Finally we ended up trying to copy a picture of poppies using water colours. Jeans style is to work fast and get the paint down, she thinks if you take too long it looks over worked and looses the fun and flow. This is a hard concept for frightened novices to get a grip of. So we copied the picture and then she cracked the whip and told us to get it finished!!! 

So here is my interpretation of the picture, I am fairly pleased considering I was rushing and trying to be creative and get the colours right and get them mixed all in a very short space of time!!

At the end of the afternoon, I was talking to Jean and she was telling us about her days working in 'The Windmill' theatre as a dancing girl in the 50's, she has had a very exciting life! On the way out she signed the picture she had painted during the session and gave it to me!! So I now have a black and white Jean Picton Poppy painting!!

I have another busy week a trip to Cambridge and two days in London. I hope you all have a good week.