Art Collection

Having had a weekend of intense writing - two children's stories and a chapter of my ongoing novel - I feel in a bit of a playful, arty clarty mood this morning. I've just discovered that I can make a montage of my paintings. Well, the computer can if I press the right buttons. It's been a learning curve and I lost the lot first time round, then everything froze on the screen until I pressed the space bar! And Voila! as they say in my part of the world. Here is the famous montage showing only a small selection of my work and there's a shot of my studio in the centre.

I've also been preparing for the art group I run on Thursdays. I'm putting the members to the test by doing a bit of portraiture. That's just got to be the most difficult thing I've thrown at them, but they knuckled down and we all had a good laugh. I did a good sketch of my subject, but made a mess of it when painting it - will have to do better. Fortunately, with the kind of paints I use - Chromacolour - I can paint out and paint over, which is something of a miracle when you are doing water colour style. Chromacolour is a cross between water colour (it's water based), acrylic (it's waterproof and doesn't fade in the light, and oils (there's no smell and it dries quickly). I love it and my painting skills have improved tremendously since I discovered it. Unfortunately, I have to by it on-line from England and although the paint itself isn't expensive, the postage makes up for it.

This week I'm going to challenge my group to make a copy of one of Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings of a girl looking out of a window. First, I must paint it myself. I never set my group to do anything I can't do. So, it's off to do some painting. The sun is shining and my studio is warm - it will be hot this afternoon, but at least I can open the big double-glazed door and let the air in.