What? Me? Painting?!!

Hello there
Whoa! Breathe Diane! I have just spent some time this morning painting something other than walls and doors; which I have plenty of experience at.

Imagine the scene; dining table covered with colourful plastic cover, small canvasses at the ready, new Claudine Hellmuth 'proper' brushes laid out, acrylic paints in their gorgeous little tubes still in the box and lids un-popped open ( I love opening new tubes with the pokey end of the lid). Then in comes one rather intrepid Diane, who just puts some paint straight onto a larger brush and yes.... it's going to happen...onto the .....CANVAS!!! And then she's off.. the world doesn't collapse as we know it; explosions don't happen; the canvas doesn't collapse under the weight of the paint; the canvas just changes colour.

Maggie watches from the sidelines at first and then seeing the smile on Diane's face, gets her canvas and chooses a different colour and does the same thing. With the same result; her canvas changes colour.

This was the project half way through

My weird animal thing with some snakes

I know I'm making a joke of it but I've never painted on canvas before, so was excited and nervous to do it (as previously mentioned in a post), as I'm well aware of my rather large limitations as a artist. I'm going to have to use paints and canvasses on the BPC class I'm doing with May Flaum, starting next month, so I've used my daughter's art project as an excuse to practise beforehand and hopefully to inspire her as she's not confident either and nervous about showing it to her class. She doesn't have to do the canvas but I'm encouraging her to go beyond basic requirements and exceed expectations.

Maggie's brilliant creature with a snake

The project uses Eric Tournaire's art as inspiration; hence the mythological type characters with strong colours. As you can see we painted our creatures onto paper as a safe option, so that if we weren't happy at all with what we painted, we could just screw it up, throw it away and start again. We'll cut them out and glue them onto the canvas another day.

I've got to dash anyway as she's now pushing my boundaries by getting me to watch War Horse with her.

Take care out there

p.s. I've been to see the movie now - quite emotional and I couldn't watch half of it due to the extreme conditions both men and horses had to endure in the First World War.