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You are welcome to copy any of my designs, as long as you do not take credit for them yourself. I am very happy for you to sell them. If I have used anyone else's design, I always try to give credit where it is due. If I have missed anything, please let me know and I will put things right.


This is intended to be mainly about my crafting stories, as a personal record of what I do. However, I interpret crafting quite widely, not just paper crafting but other things too. I have a butterfly mind and like to change from one thing to another depending on what I feel like on a given day - knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, cards, baking and several others, including my favourite right now, parchment, both traditional skills and Groovi, very relaxing and calming to do.

I have decided to put some structure into my blog so that each day will have something of a theme.
Monday- for Mindfulness; Tuesday - Tidy Up Day; Wednesday - What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday; Thursday - Technique and Tips; Friday - Finish Off Day; Saturday - Start Something New; Sunday - Anything Goes
These themes are not hard and fast and will be changed if I feel the need.

Saturday, 6 April 2019

Saturday is workshop day.

Today was a watercolour painting workshop with Matthew Palmer.  The title was "Prague in Sepia".

It was lovely to have the company of Wendy and Steve Thorburn, who had travelled up specially for the class.  We had a really good day.


Matthew gives his classes the option of drawing the sketch for themselves, of having a pre-drawn on, which allows us the chance to get on with the actual painting.  This first photo is just the sky and the clouds.  It is a good thing that Matthew always tells us not to judge until the whole painting is finished, as, to me, it looks pretty awful at this stage.


Stage two was adding misty grey buildings in the background which looked even worse to me, then roughly blocking in the sepia coloured buildings, and the statues on the bridge.   The clouds are still looking rather overpowering to me.


The cobbles on the bridge were tricky to keep more or less horizontal, but they did start to balance the strong sky.  After lunch, everything started to settle to where it should be, but I forgot to take any more progress shots.

By this time, most people had decided their neighbour's painting was  better than their own, including me.  It was a bit like doing the snow leopard, where it came to life with the addition of the spots and the eyes.  This time, it was the addition of windows and little clusters of bricks and tiles that did the same.

This is almost finished now, just needing a few tiny highlights to be added.  It certainly looks better with the frame added.


Some of you may recognise a couple of people in the following couple of shots taken from Matthew's Facebook page at the end of the day.



Thank you to Matthew for a great class today.

3 comments:

Lynne Bishop said...

Beautiful Maggie. I love the colours in this one. Glad you had a good day. xx

Sarah Brennan said...

Wow Maggie. You are a woman of many talents. See you later.

Sue C said...

Just catching up with your blog. Another lovely painting which as you say grows from what appears to be blotches to a view of Prague as you add more detail but which is only shades of one colour. It wasn't this quiet when we were there, as a famous landmark hundreds of people walk across admiring the view of the old town & the river then walking across to the new town on the other side or the other way round, day & night!! You certainly have had a busy weekend hope you have another great class today with Maria. Soon be Tuesday !!