Happy Meal Paddington

This painting was made as a live demonstration piece for my art class in Hoylake earlier today. It was painted in water-mixable oils on A4 Winsor & Newton canvas-textured oil paper. It took me something like an hour to paint.I don’t like the colour of the shadow in the background, but there isn’t always time…

Hello Spring!

My most recent online art class challenged students to come up with something that represented the welcoming of spring and the waving of a metaphorical goodbye to winter. I asked them to include some spring flowers alongside something that represented their winter. Pictured here is my demonstration painting, for which I chose to paint a…

Food & Drink in Lockdown III

I was recently perusing the list of themes for Grayson Perry’s upcoming new series of his ‘Art Club’, the first series of which last year I found very inspiring. In search of new subjects with which to challenge my art group, I thought one of these themes (though spoiled for choice really) – ‘food’ –…

A Rainbow Still Life

Online art class demonstration painting The latest subject in my online art classes is ‘rainbow still life’. It’s the first class of 2021 and I thought I’d set something optimistic, colourful and potentially playful for my students. The idea was that each student should choose an object reflecting a colour in the rainbow, and the…

Art Classes in Lockdown

Lockdown has forced the move of my weekly painting classes online. Classes, sociably held until March this year in a local community centre with time for painting and chat, are now virtual affairs, with conversations held – and photographs of work shared – via group messaging. I’ve tried to look for the positives in these…