Emerald Woods Workshop --Leicester

We were asked by Amanda, who had been to several of my workshops, if we would travel to Leicester to do a workshop there . We are always happy to travel to do workshops, as long as there are enough people and a suitable room to do it in,, There is an extra charge per head to over our travel costs. In this case it was to be the most unusual place I have ever done a workshop-- in a factory! There were 12 people ranging from 9 years up...just Amanda and Ken had painted before and of course the others all thought they wouldn't be able to make much of a job of it,,

apologies to everyone-- my list of names has vanished out of the diary so apart from Amanda, Ken and Barry I have no idea of names! We travelled up to Leicester on the Friday and stayed in the Ibis nearby.. Bill had prepared the canvas before we left home so we just had to get the easels and paint out for everyone when we got there..

everyone started off with just black and white paint..

we had 4 children painting..

as usual, right from the word go-every single painting was completely different from each other..

Miles joined us from time to time-just to check what was going on in there !

lovely results from everyone quite quickly...

Some amazing spooky trees!

Ken has been twice to Ludlow to paint with me,

Barry was quite surprised at how easy it was..

we had a lovely BBQ for lunch... then it was back to the easels to decide if they wanted to add a touch of colour to the paintings...so many different things can be done to them to change them..

as you can see-some left them monochrome and the others added some colour! They all loved it and we have been asked if we will go back in Sep/Oct to do it again! Will look forward to that very much!

Birches Workshop

We had a few students unable to attend due to various reasons--however they will be coming along in the future! Although there is a wide variety of choices for the workshop, colour and canvas size-almost everyone decided to use the 20in x 16in canvas- Jenny and Anna used the 24in x 12in and the 12in x 24in..And the monochrome version proved to be the most popular colour...Everyone wanted to add a bit of bling in the form of metallic silver birch trees....Steven has been to the Yesterday workshop previously--and we will look forward to seeing him and his wife in the future ..

Jenny chose the same colours as me-beautiful bright autumn colours--love the path disappearing off in the distance..

Anna has quite a distance to travel from Bristol..but Bill was able to tell her an easier way  home than the satnav had bought her..being an ex lorry driver is very useful sometimes! She made a lovely job of her painting--managing to get her splatters on the trees very fine--though we couldn't work out exactly how-although I watched her every move! She admits she is addicted to the workshops--and we will look forward to seeing her again next month!

We had 4 ladies come down from the Telford area after one of their mums came along to the demo I did recently at the  Withington WI..all had tried watercolours before and a bit of acrylic but this was a first for them.. Helen is adding her dark trees here...

The silver paint stands out lovely against the bright autumn colours in Jenny's painting..

the last of the silver birches going in...

everyone was amazed at the difference each stage made to the previous one...

layering dark and light trees added distance and depth to the pictures..

I love the way everyone gets more confidence with each step...its often quite hard to paint over stuff you have previously painted--but it is necessary to add the depth and distance to the paintings...

adding the lines to the birches...

When we do acrylics we always have mats down to protect the floor in the room --its new and very light----to be sure we put down a huge tarpaulin sheet to do the splattering!!!

always interesting to see how everyone tackles this bit...

for a lot of this workshop you could hear a pin drop...everyone concentrating so much..

what great results from everyone..

After a 5 hour workshop it was lovely to come home and have a quick dinner to prepare--diet coke chicken is a firm favourite here-so quick,easy and tasty-and as the weather was so beautiful we sat outside by the pond to eat it...

One of our original fish--Moby is a real greedy bugger-and is always first out of the water  searching out food on the lily pads..

waiting for their dinner!

Pud was just as easy and delicious-fresh local strawberries, with low fat strawberry greek yogurt and a few tiny meringue's

Buttons and Beads

Well its been a while since I started playing with buttons and beads alongside the paintings!

I love the different colours and shapes you can get..

and its great fun creating the 'flowers'

I have got some bouquets finished now..

buttonholes made with buttons are great fun to--I will be making some to match all the bouquets...

I love searching out things I can use,

buttons of all shapes and sizes...

Vintage buttons are so beautiful,,,but involve quite a lot of work...they have to be washed and dried,sorted into colours and shapes..

I use vintage materials too, this hand made croqueted tablecloth had a few stains on it , but I was able to rescue some of the individual 'flowers; to use..

reminds me of sweets in a shop--these are just a small number of my buttons!

As well as button bouquets I will be creating other items--this is my first button bling Christmas tree--the photos don't do it justice..its bling at its finest!

buttons and jewels abound!!

One of my latest creations..a huge Button Butterfly suitable for a little girls room maybe?

And I'm really chuffed with my pink Christmas tree

I am working on a new website for the button side of the business--will post here when its up and running!In the meantime if there is anything you would like creating in buttons please contact me via my usual website www.paintingmyway.co.uk