
This week I have been playing and experimenting with a few painting techniques. It’s a good way to develop and move your work on in new directions, like capturing transient things with the camera, such as snow and ice changing as the temperature fluctuated a few degrees during the day, then completely disappearing almost overnight.
I only spotted the icicles on this corrugated roof as it was almost dark on my way home last Friday after a walk in the woods. I didn’t manage to get back on Saturday morning when the light was good.

By Sunday morning all that was left was ice on each of the corrugations. The interesting parts were the ends, each one very different, making fantastic organic shapes, ideal for doodling shapes and practising shading. Yet to do!

I’d zoomed in close to get the details and patterns in the ice. The one on the left looks like the exploding fireworks we saw on New Years Eve, but in grey-scale. By Monday morning everything looked grey-scale, a dull, damp, grey morning. The snow and ice had brought blue skies and sunny days, which gave us longer feeling days with the daylight lasting longer.
I have written my “morning pages”* in coloured ink with a cartridge pen for several years, until this recent book that was such horrible scratchy paper that I resorted to Biro. I have finally finished it, so now I’ve gone back to proper ink.
*3 pages of longhand advocated by Julia Cameron in “The artist’s way”.
I could go back to my cartridge pen. It was almost empty, but loads of colour came out as I ran it under the tap, so I used the lovely orange ink for the first three pages of my new book. It felt so good to write with my ink pen again, smooth and flowing. I had intended to use the bottle of teal ink to tone with the turquoise of the cover, but the orange is complementary and was a bit of sunshine. I dipped it in water a couple of times to keep it going until I’d finished writing, gradually getting thinner and paler, giving an ombré effect.
When I put it in a tub of water for a couple of hours, to wash out the orange before refilling it with teal, I came back to find this sunny image.

I have a selection of different coloured inks, which I change to suit my mood, the season, the cover of the book. The tiny bottles themselves are beautiful. But my favourite Leaf Green I could only find in a big bottle, so I’m saving that until spring really is springing, not just the little glimmer that we’ve had for a few hours here and there this week, between the wind and the heavy rain.
Mags Bradley’s “Pleasurable painting” watercolour class (that I have been doing for a long time), started up on Zoom in November. There were three sessions when we went in person, limited to a maximum of 10 because of space in the room for the Tuesday sessions at the Caistor Art and Heritage Centre. The Thursday session was in Cleethorpes. Now there are two sessions a week which are an amalgamation of the three classes, and you can do either or both. Most weeks I have done both. It’s good to have a bit of interaction with people, but also it motivates me to paint more. Classes used to be in six-week blocks, more or less following the academic year. Week 6 used to be a “wild or experimental” session, playing with new media or different techniques, anything goes, so these were often my favourite sessions.
We had a week 6 session this week, so two play days: cellophane, muslin, ink, granulation fluid, salt, and a hairdryer, as well as the usual watercolours. Fun, fun, fun. Mags gave a demonstration at the start of each session and a bit of guidance, then we were set free.
I had a couple of pieces of watercolour paper masked off, but also some torn edged pieces to play with. It can be a bit messy so I set up one end of the kitchen table with a plastic tablecloth and some of my toys.
I did loads in Tuesday’s session, some possible backgrounds for stitching into later, some possibly pieces in their own right with a bit more work added.



On Thursday’s session I had a bit more idea of how things would turn out, so worked with more intention, but still playful and responding to what was happening. The first one almost has the appearance of a collagraph, and I was really pleased with the textural effects.

The second one was a bit wishy-washy after it had dried; I liked the texture though.

I went back into it with more paint and it started looking like peacock feathers, so I fetched some out for reference. I love the vibrant, iridescent colours. I wasn’t trying to reproduce it, just capture some of its beauty and the feel of it.



It’s almost finished, left to dry fully before I assess what it still needs, maybe a touch of gold.

Lots of ideas have been generated over the week, some for projects that I hadn’t been sure where to go with. Buttonhole stitch suddenly leapt into my mind in the middle of the night, so off for more experimentation. /