Painting with friends

After four hours painting - unfinished 24" x 26"

I'm happy with my own company, but also I'm very sociable and love a chance to paint with friends. Yesterday I drove to London to meet with two of my favourite artist friends and two lovely young models to paint together by the canal. It was a perfect day!
I worked on a large white oil primed canvas, 24" x 26" which was a lot of ground to cover! After around four hours I got to this stage. I love the composition and I wanted to get the main colours on and the white covered. The swan kept coming back and forth so I really had to include it in the painting.

The light was challenging. We started with heavy cloud cover but by the end of the session it was full sun. I couldn't start to introduce strong shadows at that point. If we can arrange another day together I'd really love to finish the painting from life. Otherwise I will do my best with it in the studio.

With Michele del Campo and Adebanji Alade and a chocolate brownie thief

Early morning, Santa Maria della Salute

Early morning, Santa Maria della Salute
Oils 24 x 30 cms

It's nice to recall while watching the rain lashing down outside my cosy studio today that this time last week I was painting in beautiful Venice. I was really pleased with this one, painted on the Accademia bridge very early on Friday morning as the sun was rising.

It's such a difficult time to paint as the sun moves so quickly, and as it gets higher into the sky it brings more definition into everything you can see. If you start trying to keep up with this before you know it you're attempting to paint all the tiny windows and doors that you can see, and the buildings get darker as well as more clearly defined.

I really wanted to stick to my initial impression of the softness and muted greys of the buildings, the warm orange from the sky reflected into the sea and the relative darkness of the boats against the water.

I'm happy that I stopped as soon as I felt I'd 'said it'.

Painting in situ

I was also happy that I'd captured the difficult transition between the cool areas of water and the hot orange reflected light, and that I'd done so with a brevity of marks and colour.

Wyllis Heaton at work

It was a real pleasure to be painting alongside friends from the US and UK on that morning, and then to go off for a chocolate croissant and cappuccino afterwards. :-)

Penny German, Felicity House, Louisa Calder, Kelly Medford and Ann Justin

Spectacular San Marco light display

This time last week this amazing spectacle of light greeted me at San Marco, shortly before a rainbow appeared in an arc right over the top of the campanile.

Sketches of ladies

Oil sketch of friends in repose

Then I took the high key colour palette and used it to paint these small sketches in oil, based on my line drawings from the day spa and using a little artistic license regarding backgrounds etc. I just can't wait to be able to paint like this outside in summer. I just need to find willing models. 

In the meantime, if you're local and willing to spend a few hours sitting around in your dressing gown for me please get in touch!

Oil sketch of friends in repose

Fête des voisins

Fête des voisins

Have you any idea how tricky this little exercise was? This 10" x 12" canvas was painted en plein air on Thursday evening, when we had our wonderful neighbourhood summer party. Believe me, nobody was posing or sitting even remotely still!! This was all action, real life, plein air challenge with the setting sun to contend with and dogs running around nearly knocking over me/my easel/my champagne glass/all three!
And fun like that doesn't come around every day :-)

The photo doesn't do it justice so forgive me if I show you again at some point when I've actually worked out how to use the new camera which I'm presently scared to even hold in my hands!

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.