Weather----grrrrrrr

I had to cancel last Saturdays workshop because of the snow...we couldn't get out of our road to get to the venue and I had students coming from Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Telford ,Leominster and Cleobury Mortimer-and they had no chance of getting here safely.
So for every ones sake it was the best option to cancel...everyone except 2 have booked in for another workshop...so that's been sorted.
I'm keeping everything crossed that we will be able to run the new Sunflower workshop this Saturday--but I wont hold my breath--the forecast is for more snow Friday...watch this space.....

February 5th "Stormy Skies" oils

We are painting "Stormy Skies" on February 5th--you will use oils and a variety of brushes and techniques--
for more details check out the website www.paintingmyway.co.uk

JUST 3 PLACES LEFT

Todays Class-Summer Day

We had a mix of first timers and some who had been before in today's class.
Sam, Gemma, Helen B, and Lyndsey had all been 4 times before.

Will aged 13 came along with his Aunty Sam for the first time, Jeannette I met at the market on Wednesday , Mercedes had been bought a gift voucher by her daughter Sara-Jane who also decided to join us and Helen lives in Normandy France and had found my website!

None of the first timers had ever painted before-and Mercedes said after the class that she hadn't expected to be able to paint anything any good!
Sara-Jane had a t-shirt on saying "I survived swine flu" which we all thought was just a joke -however it turns out that she HAD in fact been in intensive care on a ventilator for 11 days last November after catching swine flu.
Everyone was a bit nervous-there are a lot of brushes and techniques in this painting--8 brushes, 1 silicon tool and a knife to be precise.
However as I went through each stage in small bite sized bits no-one was left wondering what to do next.
Hardest part was the knife work on the waves-getting the pressure and angle right is quite difficult and all the first timers really came in at the deep end with the first painting they tackled.
We soon progressed with it though and by the time we stopped at 12pm for lunch we were nearly finished.
Its very handy having the cafe at the venue--the students were able to order what they wanted for lunch before the class started and it was all ready for them when we stopped. They do a beautiful melted cheese baghette for just £2 which went down well, as did the bacon butties.There is a lovely patio area for us to sit in the sun and eat as well which was nice as the sun was shining and warm.
We had a wide variety of poppies going in at the end-big ones, small ones-and everything in between-the time seemed to fly by.
We are seeing everyone again--Sam and Gem are coming to do the Birches and bringing her Mum and stepdad so it will be a real family affair!
Helen is going to coincide another trip to the UK with another class she wants to do--Bill made her a box to keep her painting safe en route back to France on Monday!
All in all a great class all round-everyone went away happy and with a lovely painting!

All Worth It

On Saturday night I had a call from Jack, one of the students who had come to paint "Stormy Skies" in class that day.
At the end of class I had said to him that the painting would look good in one of the black frames he had previously bought from me--well evidently he went home and put it in one of the frames and he was gobsmacked at the effect---thus the phone call to tell me!

I get calls from students very often, telling me that friends and relations don't believe that they have painted the pictures taken home by them-indeed we have had some paintings disfigured by people who don't belive that the person concerned could have painted such a brilliant painting in just 4 hours!
Several times now I have had calls from students upset because of finger marks where people have touched to see if the painting is wet-we have been able to rectify the problem each time thank goodness!


I only supply 2 different colour frames-a blond wood frame and a black one.
I find that these suit 99% of the paintings we do in class.
If any of the students want another colour I can get that for them for the following week.
The cost is just £12.

Birch Trees In Brown

Birch Trees in Brown
This is my latest work in the Birch Tree collection.

This is one of my latest work in my almost monochrome birch tree collection.

I painted this triptych in a combination of beige, cream and dark brown, instead of black, grey and white!

It works a treat!

The photo does not show the true colour of the dark brown though-its showing up as black on the photo.

This colour combination will be popular in today's contemporary home.

Each canvas measures 20 cm wide x 50 cm long -so a large 60 cm x 50 cm in total-all the sides are painted and it has been varnished to protect it.

The price of this painting is £180 you can buy it via www.dianetheartist.com

Janes Summer Day

Jane came for a one to one on Wednesday.

She had been to a class once before but couldn't wait for the next one so came to the house!.

We had a lovely afternoon and Jane painted a beautiful painting.We took some pics with my camera phone and sent them to her daughter to see-she was very impressed with her mums achievements.

Class of April 12th

We had an interesting time today in the advanced class.
A real mix of subject paintings.
Carole had a friends photo taken when abroad to work from -the palm trees were in silhouette in the evening,It was a real treat to watch Carole in action-she needed very little help, once it was decided she needed a black acrylic base, Carole just got on with it. Carole had bought her own canvas as she prefers to work smaller than out usual size.She also bought with her some beautiful paintings that she had done at home, which I didn't get chance to get pis of.We will call on her next time we are in Leominster and get some photos-they are really beautiful.

Hayley -Caroles daughter hadn't painted for over 6 months and was unsure what to paint, but after a look through the photos I take for inspiration and the book of copy rite free images, she decided on a beautiful bright sunset.After getting over her initial fear of the colour and the big white canvas(which was completely understandable after 6 months not painting!) Hayley did the most dramatic sunset painting.
Jan had a lovely photo of a Japanese Maple tree that is being used on her posters for her Reiki Healing sessions--it was quite a challenge for her , as we had never covered a subject quite like it before in class,but the finished painting looked really great.Jan has also gone away with some ideas for a painting for her daughter!

The final member of the class was Joyce who has never attended any of my classes, but had been to classes elsewhere so has some experience of painting wet on wet. She is having a one to one tomorrow and Monday.
I am also on the craft market tomorrow, so we will have a busy day- I will go and set up with Bill on the market, then pick up Joyce from hotel, back home to paint "Summer Day" and then after dropping Joyce back at her hotel I will join Bill on the craft Market.
It is usually quieter during the morning, so Bill should be ok on his own!

Latest Poppy

Ive finaly finished the ''Red Poppy'', I have added the wax centres to all of the 4 canvas and they have had their first coat of varnish.
The colour is absolutly vibrant now they have had the varnish, you can see all the different shades of reds clearly.
The only problem with painting the red poppies is getting decent photos of them-they tend to come out orangey rather than red!
I am very please with the effect of the lava rock paint that I used just outside of the wax cenres-it looks just like pollen-very effective.You can see me adding the melted wax with my special tool in th photo.
They will get another coat of varnish today and the final one tomorrow.

Special Students

Today was a special day for 3 of my students.I had decided that my advanced students needed some recognition of the fact.So Mandy Jack and Jan (who called by the class after me asking her to) were all chuffed with their artists badges that I presented them with.
The little lady artist badge complete with easel and paints are for my female students and the palette badge complete with brushes and paint tubes are for my male students.
Its just a token gift of my appreciation.
All of my students who attend at least 6 times will recieve their badges.
Jack has taken Yvonnes home with him as she couldnt attend today.I have a few more to give out at the next advanced class.

Todays class

We were minus one student today--Yvonne had to work.Im sure she would have rather been painting!
We had a mixed lot of students today,
Sam who had been once before bought along her mother in law who hadn't done anything like this before.
Pauline and her hubby had been once before and Jack and Mandy have been quite a few times.
Right from the start you could see that the paintings were going to turn out very different to each other.
As soon as the surgical gloves(Supplied by me to protect their hands) went on and they picked up their natural sponges, the paintings all evolved in different ways.Jack had several spooky faces appear in his pic straight away--he always laughs at me picking them out!
But soon everyone was spotting faces of trolls and all sorts of things in the paint!We had a a great laugh as usual in the class.
The pathways all went in different directions which made it very interesting.
The trees were a bit scary for some of the students to do, but everyone soon settled sown and when it came to the splattering part, we ended up in fits of laughter! I ended up with black spotted boobs, and feet after some of the splattering went wrong when I was holding the plate with the paint on (thanks Gwen!!) But everyone soon got the hang of it in the end!
When it came to the finishing touches-adding the foxgloves with the encaustic pen --there were lots of nerves , but again after a few practise runs on some card everyone produced some great foxgloves.
I had previously ordered some acrylic varnish from the SAA, as I knew we had some acrylic classes coming up.
All acrylic paintings benifit from a couple of coats of varnish to bring out the colours and protect them.
I am happy to supply the varnish at cost price from the SAA to my students.
Pauline and Chris also went away with the SAA joining forms, catalogue and a free copy of Paint magazine.

Bets Commission

At last Bets painting will be on its way to her! She commissioned this painting ages ago, I painted it straight away, and added some daisies detail to the bottom of it a short time after.
It refused to dry!!!I got it off the wall to pack and send last week only to find that the daises were still not quite dry, so a quick email to Bet to apologise and tell her it would be this week instead.
Well its dry at last and Bill has packed it up ready to be sent by special delivery in the morning.
Its a special gift for her hubbys birthday at the weekend.

Its a busy month for birthdays in March.I have sold 2 paintings for birthday presents this month, both are a complete surprise-one more so than the other-I will let you into the secret after the event!

Its my birthday and our wedding anniversary on Friday and still got to sort out a present for Bill yet.
Cant belive its 7 years since we got married!.
They say life begins at 40 and in my case it did. I got married on my 40th birthday-and they have been the happiest 7 years of my life!

Mandy's Winter Wonderland

Mandy came for her one to one today.She was to join the class of Saturday March 22nd but had to cancel that because of other commitments.
YOu can see how her painting progressed step by step.
It was the second time that she had painted on a black canvas, the first being a waterfall painting some time ago.
It seemed strange to her to be putting transparent paint onto a black canvas because she couldnt see where the paint had covered.
As soon as we started to add the white paint, the atmospheric sky started to appear,then we went on to add the bushes and trees then the snow.
The pond was soon done using the fan brush and the tickling brush.The reflection of the main tree was added and then we were ready for the finishing touches ,the broken fences in the forground and the moon with some little clouds drifting across it.
She was chuffed to bits with the finished result!
We wil be seeing her again very shortly in the Birch tree walk class on March 29th

A lovely Day

After breakfast we went to the first boot sale of the season at leominster, picked up some more bargains, including some crayons for use on fabric-will have some fun personalising the aprons used in class with them!
Then back to clean out the stick insects-boy have they grown.I gave Paddy the parrot a good shower with the spray botle while I had it out spraying the sticks, then after calling round at mums to drop off her mothers day pressies, back to cook a beautiful roast beef dinner.
The roses I had for valentines day were about finished so I gently pulled all the petals off and put into some pretty glass dishes.They will continue to dry out in the sunny kitchen windowsill.Then when complety dry I will put some rose scented pot pourri oil on them.A real lasting memento of a great day!

Im now doing all the updating of my sites and catching up on emails!
Also got to send off the applications for some craft fairs coming up this summer.We seem to need more space every year with doing both encaustic demos and oil and acrylic demos too!!!!

Bird Table

Here are some of our regular visitors to our bird table.
The bull finch and his wife arent showing up very well in this pic,we counted 16 siskins on the table and feeder at one time, but wasnt quick enough with the camera to catch them all.
We love watching them from the house, the bull finches are quick to chase off anything else that comes near until they have had their fill!!

Carole's Paintings

Carole has been painting by herself at home and bought along the 3 paintings shown above to show everyone in the class.She has made a beautiful job of them and Bill framed the one seaside scene for her in a matching frame.It set it off beautifully.
It has taken Carole a little while to get enough self confidence to have go at home, but she said coming to the advanced class helped her a lot.
I have only one place left now in the advanced class on April 12th and no other spaces in other classes other than the Winter Wonderland one on Easter Saturday March 22nd.

Mandy's Summer Day

Today Mandy came to do her one to one. She had chosen to do "Summer Day".
This painting is one of the most popular ones that I do.
We had a real laugh while painting.We had time to chat about loads of things-I gave her loads of websites to look at-some to get art materials and some for more general things.All in all a great day!
She has booked up another 7 classes for the near future, so that means that I only have space now in the "Winter Wonderland" Painting which is Saturday March 22nd --which is Easter weekend.
I will work on new class subjects and dates tomorrow and publish them on here and my website asap as I know there are many of you waiting to see what is planned!!!

Results from Jan 12th Advanced Class

We had a very interesting day yesterday doing the advanced class.

Sharleen and Hayely were unable to make it unfortunately, but Jack,Carole, Yvonne and Jan came and as you can see we had some fantastic results. Four totaly different painting!

Jack had a copyright free book of photos from the SAA(Society for all Artists) which he bought along to show us--brilliant for giving some inspiration on what to paint--I will be ordering a copy for myself tomorrow.

He had scanned and printed his and Yvonnes choice of subject and bought them along.

Jan bought along a picture her hubby John had taken on the Welsh coast, down by St Davids.

Carole had a birthday card that had given her some ideas for a floral painting.

This was the first time for everyone--The idea was to give the student the confidence to paint on their own at home with out me !!

They had to do everything for themselves--with my supervision.

I had already prepared some work sheets , printed and laminated them for them to use both during the class and at home.

To start they had to prepare the undercoat that we use to coat the canvas--some old yogurt pots came in useful for this--everyone agreed it was easy enough to do--so that was the first scary thing out of the way.

Jack had decided that his choice of painting needed a canvas in both black and white--after a few tips he was soon done.

Everyone was a bit apprehensive about things for a while--they had to decide on the best brushes for the job, help them selves to paint--everything as if I wasn't there!

It was great to see everyone thinking for them selves and making decisions.

I was able to correct some small things that happened- but everyone agreed it was a very useful day,everyone learnt a lot and it has given them all the confidence to start painting at home.They all know they can ring me ANY time and I will help them.All in all a great day.

We took Carole back to Leominster did a bit of shopping and then finished the day off with Jan and her hubby John up the road at The Squirrel.

We all had a steak and some wine, the time just flew by we arrived at 5pm and in no time it was 9pm--where did the time go to?

A thoroughly great night--thanks both!

Trine

Well more congratulations to my dear artist friend in Norway--Trine.

She been asked to write a monthly piece for her local paper.
Her first one was published today.
You can view her daily blog here on this link
http://mtv65.blogspot.com/
She sells her work all over the world, it is much different to my style -she works in chinese inks and paper a lot, although she has started using her encaustic waxes again.
We had such fun when she came over in 2006 and stayed with us for week.I am sure that 2008 is going to be a fantastic year for her.

wine v water

I was sent this by one of my good friends--made us laugh!!!!

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine and those who don't.
As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.
In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 litre of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in feces.
In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.!
However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.
Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of s##t.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service!!!

Class for April 12th

Todays class is going to be another advanced class for people who have been to me before.They will bring their own picture that they want to paint.Any copyright free picture they want. I will supply the materials and will help them through it.I will have a selection of my own pictures there for them to do if they have been unable to find something suitable.