Sometimes it’s lovely to just play.
I’m very fortunate to have fabulously talented pupils who can do things that I cant. One such pupil is the lovely Elspeth. You will have seen her pop up on my blog before, she is my dressmaking sewing buddy and has recently become the latest recruit at BTHQ and is our official sample maker (she needs a better job title I know but we are working on that one)!
Elspeth has always been particularly good at drawing and painting and can sketch almost anything you need her too. When I saw a painting on the wall at our sewing class at the local arts centre I knew I had to replicate it. Made with simple blobs of watercolour and outlined in ink I thought it couldn’t be that hard!
So my day off arrived, Elspeth turned up laden with paint, paper and books and we simply played. I quickly found out that the super wet, splodgy ways of watercolour are not for me. Being an old school acrylic painter and one for corporate straight edges and blocks of colour and also someone who cant draw for toffee I admitted defeat very early on. However once I found my own style I was very pleased with the pictures I did manage.
My tortoise was a wet and watery one but he had a lot of help from a black pen.
I particularly enjoyed my toadstools. I could have cried when the red leaked into the brown but actually it looks like a great bit of light reflection and I now love it. Not so sure about my geisha girl but she is passable!
My very first attempt at a flower turned out rather childishly bright and happy
And having an artists cat in residence helped me finish off a trio of toadstools! You can see my random effects at painting ‘properly’ in the back ground here, so not my cup of tea!
I can highly recommend ‘playing’ though. Find a friend with a talent who can share it with you, put the kettle on, set aside a couple of hours and have some fun. It was so therapeutic and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Do pop back and share with me the fun times you have been having.
