Experimental painting

Now I wish I could take credit for these paintings, but unfortunately I can't. They were created by someone in my Step Up programme with Arts for Health. So incredible...

Inspiration from Hastings and around

Just a few snaps of things that caught my eye...finding flashes of colour or beauty amongst the grey.

Finished painting

Finally got there with my parrot painting. Was so happy with the background that I was a little tentative when it came to doing the illustration over the top. Did a simple pen sketch first, but decided it needed something extra to make it really stand out against the bold abstract background, so I added some white and gold highlights. Really pleased with the final result, just got to find somewhere to display it now! Can't wait to start the next one.

Drawing at Headway

We've been focusing on drawing recently at Headway and have found the subject of flowers particularly interesting. We tried a variety of different drawing techniques and these are some of the nicest results. I love the photo of some of the group drawing on the wall. Just changing the position we were in whilst drawing added a really interesting dimension to the session and was particularly good for a participant who uses a wheelchair. He just loved drawing on the wall! Some of the others are done using a rubber and charcoal to draw with. Simply beautiful.

Headstart landscape paintings

Recently I've been teaching the lovely young people at Headstart about colour mixing and painting techniques, which they've then begun translating into landscape paintings. Such amazing results so far, they are so proud of themselves and so they should be.

Some well needed studio time

A few weeks ago I made a tiny canvas as part of a demonstration I was doing about painting techniques with a group of young people at Arts for Health. The results were surprisingly really nice, even though I wasn't really paying much attention to what I was doing! In the same session my lovely volunteer Amy traced a gorgeous picture of a parrot onto acetate and we decided that the two looked perfect layered together. Since then I've been dying to get into my studio and have a go at re-creating the piece on a larger scale. Finally got around to making the background this week.... 

Inky postcards

At Headway recently we have been playing around a lot with acrylic inks. They have been such fun and most people have found them more enjoyable than watercolours because of their vibrancy. I bought the group some watercolour paper in postcard size so that they could create a design and then write a message on the back to someone to then be posted. These are the results;