Off to South Korea again

I'm now all prepared for my week teaching in South Korea. Everything is ready to pack and its the excitement before travelling time! The flight is long but I will watch a couple of movies and try and sleep a bit, I like travelling but not the actual travel bit, if that makes sense? I am not sure if I will manage to blog whilst I am away but I will definitely tweet and take some photos. 
This is the lovely family who organise our trip and always make us so welcome, we are looking forward to seeing them again.

The Great Escape!

What a busy weekend I have had! I decided to switch off so spent most of it painting which was just as well as three of my paintings sold in Burford this weekend so I plan to take more  later this week. I painted in the allotments on Saturday and posted in real time on twitter my painting stages, but I didn't want you to miss out, so I have cropped them and chosen a few, here they are.

I started  with a prepared canvas which was covered in a fabulous warm ochre colour, this was to act as a warm base colour. I put in my darks and my lights, so the base acts as my mid tone.  

Then I like to establish a few brights, it positions the important blocks of colour, so I can now tell if the painting is balanced. 

The shed was actually green but I thought if I painted it red (and there is actually a red shed near by) it would balance the red of the wheel in the bottom right corner. Green might have been a bit lost. 

The greens that are sprouting now are the most vivid colour, really bright, I love them! Time also to get in all the distant sheds and stuff, stuff I can't really make out, but its there and it needs to go in.

Those bean poles just HAVE to go in, I can no longer resist them! Then its time for the  background greens and foliage, I used my fingers to smudge the paint flicks to appear like tiny foliage. Its those minute little green shoots, they seem like a haze of bright greens.

This was the stage I had to leave it, the foreground needed a bit doing to finish it, but I ran out of time.
At this stage there is a real danger of over working it.

The final painting, I did not do much more. I am happy with that.... it will go to Burford.

The Flower Market workshop

I travelled cross country to paint with a great group in Dunstable on Saturday. The subject they had chosen for their workshop was 'the flower seller' a painting they had seen on my website which was inspired by my trip to Italy last autumn. 
Street scenes can be quite daunting and ensuring that such a complex view can be achieved within the day takes some planning. However, this group worked really hard all day, in between cups of tea and of course the biscuit tin! I am afraid to say, I think I ate most of the ginger biscuits, but that's another story!

The flower market 9.5 x 13 inches

This is the painting I completed on the day but the whole group were delighted with their own paintings. 

My new workshops are now on my website

How exciting, my new workshops are now on my website, its very snazzy now because you can actually purchase a place on-line as well as see images of the subjects and the venue. If you have been to one of my workshops before you will know what a lovely hall it is and what a fun day we have!
I am so looking forward to painting with you again this year!