From My Camera Roll (Patreon)

This time of year is so busy with launching Christmas projects and preparing for the Watercolour Advent Calendar. The fact that I had a two week holiday, a retreat in France AND decided to create the most labour intensive product - the paint your own 2025 calendar - meant that it has felt non-stop. That's why it's so nice to look back through my camera roll each week and see that there were moments of calm.

Twilight Sketching Stain Glass Window

On Thursday you will see a painting vlog of my time at the Newton Abbot Museum twilight sketching event. This tiny museum opens up its doors after hours to invite keen artists to come and sketch it's many artefacts. I settled on a stained glass window, which of course changed colour as the sun went down! It was a great challenge as I tried to paint just with the water brushes on a stool balancing everything in my hands! I'm quite pleased with the results and I can't wait to share the vlog.

Heightley Honey

My friend (and former assistant) Eleanor is a bee keeper and flower grower. We have been working together on a label for her honey and I was thrilled to receive a jar as well as some beautiful home grown flowers on the doorstep. I love the variety of my job and particularly enjoy collaborating with friends.

Paint Your Own!

The Paint Your Own hysteria has hit! As of yesterday, the physical paint your own calendar is sold out (next year I will print a lot more now we know it's popular) However I had an awful moment on Tuesday; the minute the video launched on Youtube, Etsy decided to put my shop into holiday mode as I needed to update my tax information. I took two days for the shop to return which resulted in some very frantic behind the scenes activity to get it all uploaded to my website! All's well that end's well. I'm so glad to see that some of you have already started painting along with the tutorials!

Coco

As usual I spent an afternoon volunteering at my local animal shelter (the place where we got both Kala and Crumble). Coco is the most calm, gentle and loving dog I've ever come across at the shelter in spite of appearances. That day we heard there might be a potential forever home for her. Noone deserves it more.

Stars Hollow

I began working with my new social media manager this week. She is going to help me manage the ever increasing responsibility of social media by focussing on strategy which will allow me to focus on the painting. Some of you might recognise this bandstand from Gilmore Girls, one of the ultimate 'cosy season' topics ( and an old favourite show of mine). I've done a few fun little paintings purely for social media which you will start to see rolled out this week.

Bergerac House Painting

You get not one, but two vlogs on Youtube this week. On Tuesday I will be taking you to Bergerac, the day before I began my retreat I spent a day alone in the town of Bergerac, painting and planning. This house was calling out to be painted so I documented the whole process which you can see on Youtube on Tuesday.