Coffee and cake with friends

Coffee and cake with friends

A painted sketch from yesterday afternoon, with friends enjoying coffee and birthday cakes at Sarah's house. Friday afternoon, two o clock, everything stops for coffee. It's our tradition dating back about seven years. Before that, we used to meet for coffee on Friday mornings while our children played in ball pools :-)
This is the kind of subject I always want to paint. An hour wasn't quite long enough but I'm pleased with what I got down in that time. Managed to eat cake and drink coffee too, of course.

Late summer, North heath lane

Late summer, north heath lane
Oil on panel 24 x 30cms

I can't remember the last time I had a day at home in my studio - and enjoyed it as much as I have today!
With a lot of patient consideration (something I'm working on because it doesn't come naturally!) I finished this one that I painted in the lane on Friday. I'm afraid this photo lets it down because it's played down the warmth - the field on the right is much more of a warm gold than the yellow it looks here. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out and I don't think I've spoiled it with the extra twiddling!
I've also done some radical work on a commission so I'm in a kind of scary 'it will look a lot worse before it gets better' kind of scenario! And I'm still workshop planning. This Wednesday's drawing workshop will be exciting!
Also I received such a lovely letter from Newark Art Club to thank me for my demonstration last week. It made my day! :-)
Thought you might like to see these too...

The SAA Paint magazine's latest edition with my Oilbar article

Little piece about my Pro Arte award in September's The Artist magazine.
I haven't ordered any of my new brushes yet!
Looking forward to it!

Friday, work in progress...

Work in progress - had to stop not long after this as the light had gone

I really have lots and lots of business/admin/email/workshop writing type work to be getting on with after my lovely August break, so that kept me busy all morning. Then of course Friday afternoon at 2 o clock is coffee time with my friends, and I haven't seen some of them for six weeks. Everything else stops for an hour and a half on Friday afternoons during term time :-)
Then I was able to get out for two to three hours with Mabel, glorious late summer, late afternoon day as you can see! I can't tell you how many times I've walked past this barn and considered painting it. It's good to finally get on to it!
I got quite a lot further with the painting (the barn anyway) than this but couldn't take a good photo and there's one or two touches I want to finish.
I was reading about some fascinating research this morning by Dr Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard medical school. He found that volunteers who practised piano skills using only their imagination, looking at the keyboard without being able to touch it, gained the same brain pattern improvements as a group that had actually practised the exercises on the piano. I always knew it was a good thing to mentally draw or paint something when you haven't got any materials to hand. In fact, I did quite a lot of that when my children were very young and their needs kept me so busy! :-)