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Given that
various friends & acquaintances had frequently suggested
that Mim gave them lessons in watercolour, she finally
cracked & started ‘showing’ a group of friends how to
have fun with watercolour. Given that she was still the
president of the BSN – a charity supporting all English
speakers in the whole of France – she didn’t have a lot
of spare time, so just started with a once a month
sessions in October , November & December 2019, always
at a friend’s house.
The prime requirement for each session, was a friendly
host, with enough parking space for a few cars, a large
table/chairs + coffee/tea & biscuits to hand Once
everyone arrived & was settled with at least some
watercolour paints, some brushes, a piece of reasonable
weight paper taped to board with masking tape, and
plenty of kitchen paper to mop up the mess we could
start!
The obvious subjects in late autumn/winter were taken
from a selection of Mimi’s cards – www.mimi-cards.net,
mostly landscapes to start with, and followed by an
attempt at flowers to loosen up the inhibitions. Some
friends had experience of watercolours, others were
complete beginners, but we all shared the fun of putting
that first brush stroke of colour on the clean white
paper. We started as described on my bio page with a
simple sky, sweeps of sea, & some sand colour into which
we dropped some other colours and sprinkled salt with
gay abandon. Then like a recipe, we had to let it cook
by waiting for the salt to dry…….
Meanwhile we tried wetting some more paper and let our
imaginations run riot by painting poppy colours &
shapes- again you can try salt for texture, or as we did
later scrunching cling film to make abstract shapes.
This can be experimented with time and again, the main
thing is to try different colours, textures, shapes – or
of course you can keep it simple by just painting the
subject in front of you!
January 2020 brought about an immediate change of
schedule for Mim because after 9 yrs she resigned as
president of the BSN, & although staying on a
volunteer/supervisor this left more time for easyart
sessions!
They became twice a month events in the January,
February & March calendar & everyone got to know each
other better, adding one or two more enthusiasts. There
was talk about moving around this beautiful area with
all those glorious views….
Then we hit the start of Covid confinement……joining in
art sessions is not exactly high on the important
considerations list, so everything slowed down
completely until Mim thought of trying out an art
session on zoom, & that is where we are now, with a 2nd
one booked for the 8th May- watch this space for the
next blog entry. Please feel free to contact me for more
information/news as we go along… |
