Sketching in Lanzerote April 2016

Just a quick post to show that I still paint!  Of course that is something that I would never give up.

Having just been to Lanzerote I brought my faithful paints and brushes with me together with a couple sketchbooks.

I am still at a loss though with sketchbooks and will finally decide on the right one for me!  But at the moment just have some basic watercolour ones and a couple cartiridge paper ones which I like the effect of but not the buckling of the paper when wet.  I am also in the process of making my own sketchbooks, but that will have to be another post in the near future!

So here are some of my sketches.

The aim was no longer than 20 minutes and try and get some different heights going to exercise my perspective lessons.

Also bear in mind I was painting by the pool and the beach only in a bikini.....so I didnt want to hang around cooking only one side of me!!!!

Having just joined on a online perspective sketching course with Stephanie Bower (Craftsy - great value) I was determined to test some theories and was pleased with the results.

These are by no means works of art that are wall worthy or sale-able but did what they needed to do and that was to give me more confidence in recording what I was seeing and having a "reasonable" entry in my sketchbook.

All advice received gratefully on urban sketching and keeping a "good" sketchbook.  Its what I am striving towards, so that when I finally do more travelling I can record in fab detail the things that stir me!

So if you you didn't know we do Art Holidays visit www.francepaintingholiday.com and book a week with us where we can go out sketching and come back to do the painting from the sketch in the afternoon.

We still have places left on Jane Minters workshop which I am really looking forward to this year so contact me now if you want to reserve a place.   You wont be disappointed!

Till nextime

Bx 

Our 2016 Season - Come join us  

Brochure

If you would like to find out more about us either click on the online Brochure on the right or visit us on our website. 

These will be our tutors this year and we also run our standard art holidays.  This leaves you free to paint when and what you want with the added bonuses of being taken out locally to visit our lovely towns and villages. Any queries can be covered by me if you need some one to one tutoring.  All this and the benefits of ensuite accommodation and full board.  

If you are a tutor and would like to bring your own group, please call and we can discuss the details.  Discounts will be available to 5+ people

Open access to the studio and materials also available

In addition to the above I will also be holding a Craft week to incorporate making unusual christmas decorations and other gifts and a Printing week, to include Gel Prints, watercolour batik, collagraph, decoupage and monoprinting.  Please email me at info@francepaintingholiday if you are interested.

Examples of my work are below: 

Two of these designs have been chosen to be used on fabric for clothes designs.  Take a look here

Thats it for today....two days in a row!!!!  Lets see when I next post.  

Bx

Summer has arrived! 

 And with it sunshine and plenty of poppies.  Which for the Centenary year of the first world war, seems appropriate.  Find here a link to the reason why the poppy was the designated flower of remembrance.History of the Poppy

With that in mind I set to work a couple of weeks ago on my Gelli Printing not really knowing where I was going, but achieved something I had long been hoping to do and that was a series of paintings/prints of poppy field to mark the anniversary of the first world war.  The fact that it happened this year was perfect.  So here are two of my Centenary Field series, yet to be completed.

More on Gelli Plate printing further down!

Lest we Forget                                                    Ghosts of Summer

Art Holidays

Our first tutored week of the season has just been completed and what a week we had.

Stephie Butler was our tutor who specialises in human portraiture, but more recently in wild cats 

and other animals.  Everyone learnt and achieved so

by G. Grayland

 much in this week and I think came away thrilled with their results.  We too were very happy that everyone had a lovely time and that the sun finally graced us with its presence.  Although the sun was out, work still had to be done in the Studio but we found plenty of time to go out and about and do some sight seeing too!

As this area is so steeped in Medieval history we
we all went to St Loup which is just off the Road of the Plantagenet Kings.  We also went to Parthenay which is famous to be the route of St. James (or St. Jacques in Frances) who was the Pilgrim who walked the route to Compestello - click here for more information. And to finish off the week we went to Thouars for the weekly market. So how could we not go out.

But whilst we were all working in the Studio here are some of the samples of works that were achieved.  For more photos of work and from our week please visit  Here you will also  find albums from our previous holidays and more photos of Bandouille itself.  You are free to use these photos as reference if you so wish.

And here are some that I managed to do. Mainly after Stephie left as I was flitting from Studio to kitchen all the time.  But these are only the first run and works in progress as I learnt so much from just doing these the once and learning from my mistakes.  Mainly I go to heavy with the painting so will have to pull back a bit.  But in saying that its more the little techniques on the way that have been the most useful and that I can implement into my own style, rather than develop the style of the artist.  As I feel that I will always be far bolder than Stephies lovely gentle way of painting.  Ho hum!

These two lovely portraits were gifted to us by Stephie and we are thrilled to have her work here at Bandouille.

With that said...Stephie will be back next year.  Please add your name to the waiting list through our contact page on our website www.francepaintingholiday.com   Spaces are limited 

In the meantime......We still have spaces for Eugen Chisnicean and for Jane Minter.  For our schedule, view previous post or go to our website. Only a couple spaces left, so you need to be quick!

Gelli Plate Printing

USEFUL TIP!

When making your plate (instructions on previous post) place large piece of clingfilm into the mould...This makes it 100 times easier to remove than without. Also if you like the crinkly effect of clingfilm in your artwork, you can use the underside too.  It needs to be large as it seems to want to shrink due to the warmth of the mix.

Here I have used a  polystyrene sausage container.  Look out for interesting sized or shaped containers from Supermarkets. Also keep an eye on textured bases of containers too.  I confess that I have bought these kind of items just because I needed the mould....shhh!

WARNING!!!!!!!  Do not leave in the sun or even in a room that is too warm....the plate melts....I know!!

Since discovering this technique I do have mixed responses, which are easily divided.  The men think I have totally lost the plot and the women LOVE IT!

This includes Stephie who, as she and our other guests had an extra day, got me to demonstrate how this method works.  And guess what....they were hooked.  They had great fun! And produced loads and loads and loads.  So much in fact, my supply of paint has totally disappeared and its a good job Drew has gone back to the UK to pick up extra supplies. 

Here are a few prints from a batch that I did at the same time as the poppies above.  It shows how you can change course in your ideas as you are going along.

I am really excited by this method of "painting" and have just ordered a sencil cutting tool off Amazon to make my own stencils and masks.  I will let you all know how that is working out and post some results at a later date!!!.  

I am thinking of running an Art journalling week next year to include Gelli Plate printing.  Again, if you are interested please contact us on the link above.

BANDOUILLE

First though, some sad news.....Chippy our wonderful baby duckling that grew up to be our cheeky duck has, it seems, been taken by Mr. Fox.  He has not been seen for over two weeks now and we know he was too greedy to stay away for any other reason. As our other ducks are all sitting on nest we hope before he disappeared he was able to fertilise the females.  Maybe we will have many little chippies here...Will let you know......RIP Chippy x.

As to what is happening now, life goes on as normal at Bandouille.  Gardening, when possible and making quirky things like Elder Cordial (I have just bottled 4 litres of it) and my first batch has gone really fizzy and is delish! Planting and harvesting whatever I can find.  Sneaking into the studio to do some "stuff" inbetween cleaning.

So everyone, hope you like the catch up and speak to you soon.  And yep, I know the posts dont get any shorter....but you have caught up now!  Thats my excuse and I am sticking to it!

Bx

A Brand New Start!

I know I know….April last year was the last time I wrote this blog, but I have been active all over Facebook and we have recently launched our Twitter hashtag (is that the right way to annouce it???)  Bixxy@bandouille1, so please join us on there too.  And if you feel that I am not communicating send me a message to give me a kick!!!  I also belong to various watercolour groups on the web…so I have not been idle by any means.

 So here we are in 2014 and my main resolution is to get to grips with this blog and we have an exciting year in store. Many of you already have seen our diary for this year so far but here is the line up which is also advertised in January’s Artists and Illustrators magazine.  We are so priviledged to have back Keiko Tanabe, Eugen Chisnicean, Joanne Boon Thomas and Jane Minter who all have had workshops here at Bandouille and already have had some of our former guest book with these artists for this year.  A compliment all round I think you would agree.  So exciting stuff and we are adding to this wonderful array the stunning work of both Amanda Spencer and Stephie Butler, all of whom work in pricipally watercolour.  All details to be found on our website.

To find out more about us and what we do and what is here please read this article written by one of our guests (Nikki Griffiths) we had in October!    http://www.seos-art.org/news/125    

This is another article written on the blog of Doron Art

Lovely to know that we are someones guilty pleasure!!!! To those outside the UK our house has been dressed like the Bourneville brand of chocolate. We are now someones guilty pleasure.  How wonderful!

Doron writes

 "I am sure you remember my painting holiday to France last year at Bandouille… I had some nice painting time after the Christmas holiday and I wanted to paint special thank you message. The holiday was so good that it remind me another good thing… Yes a great chocolate I am sure we all know!

Happy New Year Bix and Drew and thank you for a great holiday"

To read his full article Click here....Lovely read!
http://doronart.com/2013/06/02/bandouille/
 It was such a wonderful thing to know how much Bandouille is enjoyed by our guests and that is what we are striving for.  Also take a peek at the testimonials on our FB page and on our website too..

Please follow this blog for further news on future guest tutors and of course on Twitter too…..and always feel free to comment too.

ART

My artistic year started towards the end of the the Christmas break and I

have been busy putting together ideas for my textures and techniques (see above) classes and creating a small book to help me format a good balanced layout for exercises.  Whilst playing I created a few little gems and these dancers were just a happy accident.  But that’s the beauty of watercolour.  Sometimes things happen that you just don’t expect and the results can be fantastic.

From here I have also promised my self that this year I will paint more pictures for me from my reference library and the Pomegrantes just screamed at me (or Grenade in French) and I just had to try them.  I always seem to choose things that I know are out of my depth but I like the challenge and felt that I met this one full on. I was pleased with the result but regretted that it was so small (just under A4).  So now I want to revisit and do a larger version, perhaps with less fiddling too.

A site that I have joined in the last couple of weeks (United by watercolour – check it out) challenged us to doing our own self portraits, so here is mine in the 3 stages that it took me to do.  Great fun and my first.  Im not a great fan of the camera, or my face, but wanted to be a bit different and quirky and show something that was ME.

 I liked the results and that’s saying something!  Great fun! 



Next challenge from that site is to paint a piece of work from your favourite Artist.  So one of mine is John Singer Sargeant these are the ones I am juggling between Hard choice!  So pop by next time and see what I decided!!!  I'm think the Shadows on the house, or The Lesson. 

 Which would you choose?

I also enjoy just sitting down in front of the telly and sketching and drawing of an evening.  Especially at this time of year.  My children at Christmas bought me this gorgeous selection of drawer knobs, which I adore.  But instead of all being screwed into designated pieces of furniture, I have many other plans for  them before that.

At present I am just painting and drawing them in different ways with different mediums and on different papers too, but would also like to try collage, fabric and maybe mount some in a box frame.

We shall see!

  

That's it for the time being.  I don't want to bore you all.  I shall be posting items as I get them from now on rather than grouping it all together like this and see if that works better for us. 

So keep in touch and see more posts on Chippy and how he is getting on, the renovation on the Chapel and gardening if the weather allows.  Also I will be posting regularly on various crafty items that I have been creating too.

See you next time.

Bx