Mulled wine and hot chocolate

Mulled wine - hot chocolate
Christmas market no 2
24 x 30 cms

Continuing on with the Christmas market theme, this one concentrates on the action within the mulled wine stall. I particularly was after the warmth, the bright lights and the distorting effects of the steam. Again I tried very much to stick to big shapes apart from the odd bits of interest. I loved it in it's fairly abstract stages, shown below. I was very tempted to leave it at stage two but I do like people to be able to recognise the figurative subject matter and so I felt it didn't say enough about it yet. I don't know, maybe there's an abstract artist within me trying to burst through!

The mostly warm colour palette offset by those lavender/grey blues, and small touches of hot red, pleased me no end. I think when a painting speaks to you in this way, you just know that something about it will affect something you work on in the future at some point, like having a new arrow in your quiver. You don't need to be conscious about it, or try too hard, it will just infuse and develop within your repertoire. 

Stage 1 - darks

Stage 2 - large shapes - could have stopped here

Lovely blog readers, I need to ask your help with something. I've decided to rename this blog in the new year. At the moment it's called 'ma vie en couleurs' which seemed appropriate when I started as I was living in France at the time. Well I've been back in England three years and I need a new title. Don't worry, everything else about the blog stays the same.

But here's where I need you... can you think of a couple of words or a short phrase that describes me and my work and my usual blog content? Please drop me a line or even better leave a comment on this blog post so that others can see your ideas too. If you are reading this in your email inbox, you can redirect to my blog here. Thanks so much for taking the time :-)