From My Camera Roll (Patreon)

Hi everyone, I'm back from a lovely week in France, having a proper rest. I read the most wonderful book 'Circe' by Madeline Miller, have you read it? I want to discuss it!! I did a little bit of painting but made sure that the moment it felt like work, I stopped.

Fuumuui Fans

I had been sent a pack of Paint Your Own Palm Leaf Fans by Fuumuui so I brought them along thinking they might be a good activity for my nieces. In the end, I was the one who had a go! You can get a 10% discount using the code Harriet.

'Serious painting'

This was a less relaxing experience as I was fighting against time, temperature and a convenient place to sit to get this one done. But I'm proud that I kept going and it's a reminder that you can stop when something's not going right, but you can also take a breath and keep going with no pressure on your shoulders to achieve much and you might just surprise yourself. It was at this point that I got my beach colouring booklet out and decided to only paint fun little hobby things for the rest of the week!

AC!

We got home at around 4pm. At 4:30pm I informed Ant that we would install my portable air conditioning unit in the office. It's ugly and very loud but it's doing a fine job.

This week on Patreon

We have a one and done watercolour challenge this week. You asked for a Goldfinch and here it is (the european version) on a branch of thistles! Great practise for soft focus wet on wet backgrounds.

Back to Botanicals

I adored painting this African Marigold plant for Tuesday's Youtube video. It really felt like getting back to what I started off doing...flowers in the new botanical style. It made me wonder about doing a second volume of New Botanical Painting, what do you think? And don't worry, I'm still campaigning to my publisher about a book on buildings first!

Unexpected Creativity!

My paint your own postcards and art pad launched this week so I decided to do a paint along for Thursday's Youtube. I didn't expect to have my creativity sparked from the freedom of not having to do any drawing, and soon I was coming up with all sorts of ideas to personalise the card. Each design has a decent amount of empty space that you can totally fill with additional designs of your own. I turned this Ladybird into a sweet card, watch on Thursday to see how I adapted it!