French coffee and roses

French coffee and roses

Just before I left France at the end of August I was working on a magazine article about painting vibrant still lifes. As the weather was so lovely I painted this in the garden, using flowers from the garden. I built up the colour in a series of glazes firstly with acrylics, and then moving on to oils for the finishing touches and more opaque areas.

The picture below shows the progression of stages - the first three are in acrylics, and then the last three I was using oils. I tried really hard to stop before I'd crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's, so that viewers of the painting will be able to put their imaginations to work a little.

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.