Days off?

Even on days off, it's never really a proper day off, (thank goodness). Today, whilst shopping for my very last minute bits, I bumped into a student of mine, who promptly booked herself into a class in the New Year. When I returned home, I had a quick coffee break in front of the PC and checked my e-mails. Some last minute orders had been sent in and they are now packaged up ready for posting. The phone rang - another 2 bookings for a February class. It's nice to juggle the non-painting side of business in with the Christmas preparations. In a mad last minute decision, I thought I'd really get ahead of myself so I have an easy day tomorrow. So - the bird is now cooked, ready for carving. The sausage/bacon rolls are cooked also and the stuffing balls have been made and they're cooked too. The table has been fully laid and looks a treat. The white wine is chilling and the after dinner mints are cooling in the fridge too. The icing on the Christmas cake has hardened nicely, my containers groan with mince pies, cheese scones, buns, fruit cake, sausage rolls and biscuits with reserves in the freezer. With 4 days of entertaining ahead of us we're looking forward to every minute.

Little People

Today I've been fiddling around with some more landscape scenes that will be suitable for complete beginners to paint in my AyoubArt Oil Painting Classes. For one of the projects I wanted to create a nice warm snow scene in brown, cream and ochre tones......... I also wanted to give it that little something extra. What a difference it makes to the painting to have these little silhouette figures. I'm calling this one 'Remember a day'. A gift voucher for a private lesson to paint this romantic scene would make the ideal Valentine's gift, don't you think? It'd last a lifetime too.

December Exhibition

Just when I thought I'd finished exhibiting for 2007, by pure good luck, I discovered our local public house, The White Horse in Capel St Mary promotes local artists by showing paintings in their Restaurant. In late November I contacted the landlord to see if I might show a few of mine sometime. Here's where I had my second stroke of luck.........he just happened to have a vacancy for me which covered 3 weeks of December from 2nd to the 23rd, their busiest time of the year!

It was easy to select my entries as I'd just done exhibiting in October and November. This was one of the most homely exhibitions I have taken part in. Instead of paintings being displayed one after the other on peg boards in large open halls and galleries they were actually hung in a cosy carpeted dining room with an open fire. The lights were low and the room was filled with a cottage character enhanced by the exposed beams.

The owners of the White Horse didn't just display my paintings, they also promoted my local AyoubArt Oil Painting Classes - even selling some painting class gift vouchers too. How nice is that?

Just before my exhibition there ended several family members and students of mine met up there one evening to sample their 3 course Christmas Dinner. At the close of the exhibition they had made several painting sales for me, with 3 paintings going to one buyer!

But it doesn't stop there.........a third stroke of luck kicked in just yesterday. We decided to pop in for a Sunday carvery lunch. The landlady asked me if I still had my 'Sunbeams' painting as she had a buyer for it. Luckily, I do still have it so that's another painting sale that I really didn't expect. You can see a version of 'Sunbeams' here on the right.......it's not mine though, this was painted by 14 year old Annie during a Private Class with her cousin and grandmother.