Clouds

Yes… there were these blobby things floating high above which occasionally allowed the sun to peep through. Otherwise, a pleasantly warm, and sometimes sunny, day.

I thought the day ahead lay free of anything much but forgot I had my watercolour expressive bluebell class to attend.
The realisation awoke me for the second time, with quite a start.

It was all a bit of a rush – through the shower and then round Streatley Rec with little H. This was a half day course so she could be left at home.

This course was more fully attended than the previous ones – there were about 12 of us present, some with absolutely no painting experience. Denny always holds a review of our work at the end of a session, and always manages to highlight a section of each painting that looks good (within a frame) even when the rest of it is crap. And there were a few crap efforts.
Sarah (from Lower Basildon) was there again and another lady whose name I’ve forgotten, as was the French lady. But the rest were new faces, except for the Moulsford lady, whose name also escapes my memory. But they were a nice bunch of people.

I’m very tempted by a day of flowers in acrylics in August. Denny described what we would be doing. There is definitely a twist to it. And I’m tempted by Christmas angels too.

My effort, however, escaped the Sweet Pea treatment. ( words of doom) And yes, I could find plenty of fault with it, but it was better than most. And Denny chose to shower it with praise.

In a nutshell, we practised creating a background…using 1. salt and then 2. cling film to create texture. As well as spattering. We practised using the spray technique and also the dribble techniques for trees. The spray technique was particularly interesting.

Then we painted trees onto one of our backgrounds.

The strange tentacle on the tree in the foreground was thanks to the hairdryer. It was supposed to be drying wet paint, not spreading it. The top study – texture was created by salt, lower one – clingfilm .

I enjoyed it and came home to rescue H. I had intended to pot up my plants but I fell asleep instead. Oh well… no weights today.

And that was more or less it for the day.

The Illis are coming for a brunch tomorrow but it seems to have morphed into lunch because G has a football match to play. We will be having shakshuka (amongst other creations) using the ingredients I won at Slimming World.

Hopefully we can enjoy it outside – the weather forecast seems to be up for it.

Thought for the Day