A Welcome Break

After a hectic weekend doing Tenbury Applefest and Ludlow Book and Craft fair it was lovely to get away yesterday up to North Yorkshire for a 3 night break..We are staying at  The Black Swan in Masham. We have a lovely, huge room, superking sized bed, oak floors and underfloor heating.. The breakfast was just beautiful this morning, kept us going until late afternoon! The weather turned out bright and sunny as well though it sounds like we will be getting some rain tomorrow, not that it will bother us much!

 

The autumn colours are all around us now..I just love these ferns we spotted on the way home from Harrogate and Rippon where we spent the day...some inspiratition is ever I saw it!

Beautiful scene...I will have many more photos before we leave that I can use as a base for paintings ...just need the time to do them!

Birches Workshop Aug 11th

The students had a wide range of colours and canvas size for yesterdays workshop..Deborah chose the beautiful autumn shades...wonderfully vibrant and warm feel to it..

10 year old Harry came along with his Nan Linda-he is staying with her during the holidays--and is back off down to his home in London shortly...he also chose the autumn shades, he soon found his confidence and his birch trees grew and grew--he was brilliant at the splattering, and did it with ease-turning his painting into quite a magical scene in no time..

Linda made a beautiful job of her painting-the  brown /cream shades give a lovely warm feel to the end result..you would never have believed it was her first time painting..

Irene was with me for the 10th time--but this time she was under a little pressure as her daughter-in -law had requested she paint a monochrome version of the Birches for her birthday!  Irene chose to add a subtle touch of silver to the trees-it looked lovely and catches the light beautifully...I'm sure it will be loved very much when its handed over!

Eileen and her hubby John were also first timers--and really went for it on a large 36in canvas...Eileen chose the autumn shades and John the monochrome/silver version..

I am looking forward to meeting Eileen and John again for the Summer Day in Oct...

Jayne, Tony and Carrie were painting with me for the 2nd time...but the first time using acrylic--

They all used the warm browns/creams for their painting..

It always amazes everyone how the background change so much during the course of the lesson...

Chris drove down from Liverpool the evening before, and loved every minute and intends coming back--first time using acrylics for her...

Anne used a 12in x 24in canvas for her painting--she was more nervous about the workshop than ever before--I think its because she did so well on her previous 2 workshops that she thought her 'luck' would run out and she wouldn't be able to do it! However she soon found out its down to her following the instructions and not 'luck' that creates the end results and she soon settled down and enjoyed using acrylics for the first time..

two very proud artists-Eileen and John...

Tony, Jayne and Carrie with their lovely paintings.

(back) Chris,Linda,Irene,, (front) Deborah,Anne and Harry

Wonderful results from everyone--well done--see you all again soon!

Halloween Market

We were babysitting our little Tommy on Saturday night , he was as good as gold--we were creased at him making his chair bounce-he knew exactly what he was doing bless him! He went up to bed wide awake and went right off to sleep -no problem! His mummy and daddy were back home at 11pm so we wer enot too late getting to bed-and the extra hour  helped as well!

It was lovely to have Penny next to us--we see her at some of the shows we do and we always have a great laugh with her and her hubby Mark....she has some amazing crystals on her stall---

Our friend Jane went the whole hog and got dressed up as a witch--she looked brilliant!

We had a little visitor in the form of our little Ollie---here he is enjoying a banana off Nanny Di !