This week I was delighted to be asked permission to use one of my paintings in a flyer for an exhibition at Morley College.  I painted at an evening class there for a good few years before I had children and have very fond memories of that group.  I have always loved to use beautiful colours but I’ve been feeling that my paintings are a little muddy recently.  So, following a couple of reminders from Sarah, today I have been using pure colour and trying to keep all the colours beautiful.

The weather has been gorgeous this week and rain was forecast so I decided to paint outside in the garden.   I like using negative shapes as the basis of an abstract design.  We have an area in one corner of the garden which, to the untrained eye, looks like a heap of junk. In fact it’s  just waiting for a shed.  Boxes, pots, hosepipe, football goal in pieces, wheelbarrow and so on.  Lots of good shapes.  And opposite a sunny bench.   I wanted layers of shapes and I think that worked quite well. And my painting only blew into the pond once.

We are in the process of recreating the garden following destruction by the builders.  My favourite area is a long raised bed outside the kitchen window, which then steps up again to the level of the garden proper (or football pitch).  This was gorgeous with snowdrops a few weeks ago and now has a good nine or ten clumps of primroses.  Having failed to grow them in the dusty south, it’s great to see them flourishing right under my nose. I wasn’t going to paint flowers today, but spring flowers are so lovely…

The Easter holidays are here, which means finding the time (and space) to paint is even more of a challenge.  So I decided that we could all paint.  I spent a good half an hour setting things up for the boys – finding paints, water pots, brushes that could be ‘heavily’ used and letting them have some of my paper.  They managed a quick ten minutes.  The older carefully planned out what to do and the younger threw down a quick portrait of his brother.  By which time I’d just about found my own brushes.  They were ready to move on to something else.  Probably “no rules rugby” unless I acted fast.  So this week my painting is a small abstract based on the garden.  I enjoyed putting the paint on strongly and mixing on the brush/paper.  Which was good as there was little time for anything else.

I made a painting of my younger son a couple of weeks ago so, in the interests of fairness, this week is the turn of my elder.  This was from a photo taken on Bamburgh beach, which we love.  It was my birthday and the boys were having a great time climbing on the rocks.  The photo is full of the joy of leaping around on a cold winter day, with the promise of fish and chips to come.  I wanted to capture some of that joy.  I’m showing the half way point as well, as I liked the mysterious quality as the face emerged.

Three days until Mothers’ Day and a vase of daffodils on the kitchen table meant that my decision on what to paint this week was easy.  But making it happen turned out to be a quite a challenge.  I love yellow, but sometimes find it difficult to make it interesting in a painting.  The daffodils were doing their cheerful thing as my paintings got muddier and muddier.  I had two on the go as I wanted to make a card too.  I used masking fluid.  I washed paint off.  I used watercolour pencils.  Nothing seemed to help until I decided to cut the paintings up and make a mini collage.  Not a triumph but much better, and I like the simplicity of the little one.

I wanted to paint a landscape this week, so I looked through some photos for inspiration.  The ones I especially liked were of us rockpooling with lovely friends at Whitburn.  Lots of craggy rocks, slimy seaweed and patches of water.  And children having fun.  So my painting for week 4 is from a photo of my younger son.  I liked his thoughtful expression.  There’s an element of landscape, but in the end it’s really about the boy.  If I did it again I would stress the horizontal feel to the rocks and probably miss out the dinosaur egg in the background…

I have some snowdrops in a large planter just outside my kitchen window.  They look lovely but will soon be over so today was the day to tackle them.  I decided not to use pencil or charcoal and to do any drawing with the paint, so this is pure watercolour.  The negative shapes were a real challenge, as was the bright white colour of the flowers.  I finished up with a few unusual snowdrops to satisfy my need for colour.

Half term slightly scuppered week 2, so thought I would try a quick  charcoal sketch this morning.  I don’t often use charcoal, but I recently saw a beautiful charcoal and watercolour landscape so I’m feeling inspired to try it more often.  This was the work of 20 minutes while the flapjack cooked.  It’s ok but there’s something a bit funny about the bottom left corner… Might be fun to put some colour on this later in the week.

A week after my rash promise to myself to create a painting each week, and following quite a bit of procrastinating, I sat down with a pencil drawing from a couple of weeks ago of some liles in a vase.  Not my favourite flower but I liked the positive and negative shapes all the leaves made.

I had just a few simple aims: to finish the painting, to keep the transparency of the watercolours and not to slavishly follow the lines of the drawing with paint.

I didn’t paint for long – maybe an hour and a half – but I was absorbed by the process.

It got slightly muddy, but for week 1, after a long break, I’m pleased.  It felt good to be painting again.