I was really tempted to use that bright, light green in the bottom middle as my background colour, but I restrained myself! I like it on the dark background- it’s quite sophisticated and allows the glass jug to glow!

I’m doing these little colour swatches to show students the number of mixes required for each element of the painting.
I like to premix my colours with a palette knife on a glass palette.

A miniature! The dogs head here is about the size of my finger tip in real life so quite fiddly to paint loosely! The paint swatches show all the premixed colours that went into painting the animal alone- just the 18!

Working ‘alla prima’ in oil paint. Focussing on leaving bits of the under-painting peeking through. Looing at ways of applying the paint in a dynamic and interesting way: focusing on colour, brushwork and composition.

Tricky not to get too involved in the detail on this one, again, i’m loving the shadows on the petals and those spirally tendrils. interesting background - makes it feel kinda breezy!

Anemones - Process shots

A teacher of mine used to say “How are you going to make that line interesting?” Funny how certain phrases stay with you!

Note the change of background as I changed my mind as to what to do with it! It’s important to remain fluid and let the painting inform what happens next.

I love the shadows of the stamen on the petals on this one. 

These ones look like I’ve just gone ‘Swish-swash-swoosh-done’ (that’s the painting equivalent of ‘bish-bash-bosh’!) but I assure you each mark was placed carefully and in a very deliberate way.

Japanese Anemones, process shots. I’m not feeling this painting for some reason.

Japanese Anemones, more freehand this time.

Sometimes in art you dance around an idea for a while then suddenly it becomes consolidated and you get quite excited by the possibilities... 

I loved having the hot pink as my background colour and keeping bits of it peaking through the flowers.

I’ve always loved hot pink ever since I was 11 when my mum bought me a brand new batwing sleeved coat in that colour! I’m probably too old to wear hot pink now- but I still do!

The challenging thing about painting the same thing everyday is that you are forced to rethink it/ reinvent it/ change things up in some way. My next thought is to use the little squares from the vase as a pattern in the background too.

Time to ramp it up again with a highly contrasting background to show up those lovely curls on the petals.  The vase - whilst decorative, was actually almost hidden against the background so I felt I achieved contrast and subtlety.

Process shots

I can’t think of a better excuse to finish a bottle of gin - can you??The gin bottle was perfect for holding the stem vertically and allowing me to paint the flowers in profile.

Process shots