Well, I don’t know about anyone else but I’m suddenly feeling quite overcome with festive pressure! It’s not even the end of the first week in December yet but I’m already feeling quite anxious about all the things that I’m probably not going to get done before I break for Christmas!
All of this is a bit of a preamble to how meagre and threadbare this post is! So I’ll not delay any further, here’s what I’ve been working on most recently:
I’d say that this is about 98% done. There are just a few bits of what the great Joseph Zbukvic describes as ‘jewellery’ to add in. This will be the odd lamp post here, a traffic light there, or maybe a street sign somewhere else. There are parts of this that I quite like and I hope that the contrasts in the foreground and mid-ground are strong enough to stop the eye from spending too much time drifting up and resting on the tower and the dome, which I think are the least successful parts of this painting!
What I’m slightly struggling with, as I often do at this time of year, is finding any decent light to paint in! I do have a daylight light so I might have to start getting that out to paint under because any decent daylight is precious to come by at the moment and painting under normal electric lights is usually most unsatisfying!
Brighton Painting Group December meeting up
Speaking of unsatisfying! This Saturday is the next scheduled meeting for the Brighton Painting Group. The location this month is St Ann’s Well Gardens. This location is particularly dear to me as I live right next door to it and I’m familiar with just about every inch of it (especially since getting a dog!). My dilemma at the moment is whether I’m going to be able to take advantage of this ‘on my doorstep’ opportunity. The UK is about to enter a particularly cold snap and, if the temperature isn’t much above freezing I’m not sure how appealing this is! The cold is one thing, but as I experienced last January, I think in similar temperatures, just waiting for my watercolour paints to dry in such cold temperatures is extremely frustrating!
I hope that everyone else’s countdown to Christmas is going superbly well and that everyone is managing to keep warm!