Sunshine, Painting And Laughter!

Yesterday was the 'Introduction To Abstraction' workshop at The Steel Rooms, Brigg.

I was excited and nervous but as soon as we started the giggles began to fill the air and all was well.

Firstly, we began to play with the lovely delights known as Inktense pencils and watercolours. Fleet wood Mac was was on the decks and we enjoyed flinging the paint about!

After we had warmed up and got our hands dirty, we ventured outside to collect primary sources for our work.

Firstly, my intrepid artists had five minutes to practice 'mindfulness' and write down all the sights, sounds, smells, textures and thoughts.

(Quite a task in the middle of market day!)

Then we gathered our chattels and found a little sun trap to produce some paintings on location. We worked really hard and took photographs and sketched until dinner time.

It's at times like these you get 'fresh eyes' again and you can find inspiration in the most unusual of places.

The everyday and overlooked can be really beautiful.

One my favourite moments of the day was when I was challenging everyone to 'take risks' and 'destroy' their work in order to challenge yourself and stop being 'comfortable'.

Julie turned to me and said, ( very nicely, you understand,)

'Are you doing that?'

And do you know, she was right!

So I had to dive right in, and I was much happier with my little concertina sketchbook!

Thanks chuck!

That's one of the best things about teaching, you learn just as much as (hopefully) the students do!

After a delicious dinner, ( the butternut squash soup was to die for!) it was back to work.

Looking at the photographs and the concertina sketchbooks it was now time to produce a 'visual download' on a large sheet of paper.

Now it was time to play some banging eighties ch-oooones to perk ourselves up again.

Acrylic was also used to 'knock back' areas and it was fantastic to see the group throw caution to the wind and really go for it.

Look at the table at the end of the day, you can see just how much fun we had!

We were really spoiled all day, with cups of tea and cake a plenty.

Here's some of the work produced, ( I've just realised that in all the excitement I haven't photographed all the paintings, my apologies ladies).

We started the day as slightly nervous students and emerged as glamorous abstract artists, darling!

Julie, Emma, Pat and Liza it was an honour and a privilege to work with you.
Thank you and the lovely folks at The Steel Rooms for a truly fantastic day.

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