Pastel Society annual show

I am very happy to say that these two pastels have made it through selection and will on show at the annual Pastel Society exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

Chinese mug with Citrus

This is my first pastel having got my studio up and running again following the house fire we experienced late February. It felt good to do something relatively normal once again :-)

From the Ashes

Many of you will already be aware that on 28th February we suffered a catastrophic house fire that has left our 15th century cottage a complete wreck. I have been fortunate that my studio only suffered water damage and the fire service were able to drag out artwork and equipment. The past two weeks have been taken up with sorting out somewhere to live temporarily and to salvage what we could from the ground floor which has remained reasonably intact although very water damaged. We have been overwhelmed by the help and support we have received from friends and the kindness of strangers (who have given us temporary accommodation in a holiday let near to the house). I am busy sorting out new flooring for the studio having ripped up what was there to dry the room out. We are making good progress and although I have been unable to do any painting since the fire I am hoping that the studio will be back in action very soon, and I can take up my paintbrush once again:-)

Pastel sketch of Sandra

Today we had our second and final sitting with Sandra, the young german woman. I chose to work in pastel and feel that I managed to capture something of her. I prefer to do a fresh piece of work at each sitting as I feel it makes me work harder and keeps me on my toes; the time constraint of two and a half hours has an energising affect, or perhaps I like to kid myself that if my work lacks accuracy in these studies at least they have not been laboured over :-)

Green coffee pot

This still-life was set up for a workshop; the coffee pot was found at a flea market and a gift from the friend I was with at the time.

Oil sketch of Sandra

Sandra, a young german woman, sat for us at the scout hut yesterday morning. I have painted her once before as she has modelled for our life group, and I enjoyed the opportunity to paint her face which has such a natural beauty about it. These are the stages of this two and a half hour sketch:

Broken Heart

These chocolate hearts were a gift from my 'old veteran', 94 year old Arthur whose portrait you might remember from earlier last year. I thought it would be fun to set them out in readiness to paint them, today being 14th February and all that.... I broke the unwrapped heart into two lovely shapes, but having turned away for a few minutes, my bengal cat had other ideas; she will vouch that they taste good, it is just a pity the shape I was left with was not :-)