Nothing like painting ice-cream to make you paint fast!! I think someone on the outside looking in would have been rather amused by my running up and down stairs with a choc-ice. I painted a bit then took it back down to the freezer while I worked a bit more on building up the painting, then running back downstairs to pick up my model and work for another few minutes before having to return it to the freezer. I gave up after the third time and just ate the it!

A quick pastel – its hard to do anything outside because of the security situation here. But the golden light on the changing leaves just wouldn’t be ignored. I’m really not at ease doing anything like this so it took a concentrated effort to try and pull this together.

I’ve been looking at the Fauvist group of artists in my research on use of colour and have found a lot of what Michael Newberry had talked to me about – using cool colours for distant objects to push them back. So for example – a red object in the distance to use magentas and more blue reds. Matisse is a master of colour and uses its hue to move objects in space as does Derain. I was delighted to find that Dufy, who is a favourite of mine (such happy, cheerful paintings!, was also a fauvist. What a great art movement.

Deborah Ross kindly commented on my blog and so I went to take a look at hers and she was talking about a poem she had read but then couldn’t find. I thought I would have a look and see if I could find it and came across this – not sure if it was what she was looking for but it realy spoke to me….. I also found through Deborah’s blog the Sketchbook Project which has wonderful things going on. I wish I had found this sooner as I would love to have taken part in the latest project but with mailing times to and from here it would leave me less than a month to fill up and entire sketchbook and I am not sure I could do that! Going to keep an eye on this and maybe join in something else.

“From the start, From my Heart, That’s really art!”
Randy Vanlandingham