That Sunday Feeling...

Studio Journal: APRIL: 2023:

A new term starts tomorrow and it’s hard to believe that it will be my last one teaching in F.E.

I haven’t got time to feel maudlin just yet though because it’s the busiest time of the year, so today has mainly been that heady cocktail of washing, drying, planning and sorting (whoop!)

I also spent part of the hols packing for my upcoming watercolour workshop (May 6 & 7) at the magical Hope & Elvis Studio. I’m so looking forward to this, we’ll be playing with experimental techniques (I don’t like following all the ‘rules’ surrounding the world of watercolour! heh! heh!)

I love the fact that when you have to teach something you have to really push yourself and analyse what you do and why, and often that feeds so much into my own practice - this is the thing I’m going to miss the most and I’m not sure yet how I’m going to build it into my everyday studio-life…this is something I’ll be pondering on here I’m sure.

The main ‘take-away’ I’ve had during the preparation for this workshop (the prep takes me months so it really seeps into everything else I do - another thing that I love about teaching workshops) is that it’s good to SLOW DOWN. I usually just dive in whenever I begin a new piece, and sometimes that’s just what I need, but for watercolour painting it can become like a meditation, you have to wait to apply another layer.

Watercolour doesn’t reward impatience, that’s not to say she doesn’t love spontaneity but she doesn’t like being hurried!

Because of this I have taken two new practices to add to my tool-kit:

1. Watercolour meditation: this is especially grounding for me if I can do this early in the morning before there are any other distractions.

   (I made a little YouTube vlog about this HERE.)

2. Swatching the paint before diving in: honestly, I would NEVER bother swatching before I paint and now I love it! It gives me a little bit of time to pause before launching in and it’s been so helpful!

This is me signing off, I’ll pop back on Substack when I can during the week but I know it’s going to be BUSY!!!!

If you’re new to this (like I am!) it might be handy for you to know that if you don’t want an email every time I post here, you can click on ‘unsubscribe’ at the bottom and just un-tick the box where it says ‘Mrs B’s Substack’ and/ or ‘The Bertimus Bulletin’ (I’ve not started to use this yet but I plan on it becoming a monthly newsletter), then you can hop onto Substack to read when you want instead, if you’d prefer.

Cheers and thanks again!