9 ladies and a postman

I had my largest workshop to date.  9 lovely ladies arrived to paint Spring flowers. I wont pretend it didn't come with a few logistical problems.  But it was fun and great to have a full house.

The group was a mix of  those who had been to a lot of various classes and some that are only on their 3 or 4th ever painting,  but everyone was very positive and supportive of each others work.

We had a few varieties of flowers daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, grape hyacinths, primmulas and primroses

We started the day looking at the structure of flowers and leaves, we had magnifying glasses to help people look closer at details and they were all asked to look at the shapes of the flowers.  They needed to identify if they were Star,  bell, bowl, trumpet or multiheaded shapes.

They then did a quick tonal drawing to learn how to plot light in a painting so if the light changed they still could see where the light had been and be able to continue on into a final painting,  if they wanted to.

I had got them to stretch paper in the morning ready to do a final painting in the afternoon.

A couple of my more advanced students I challenged to do the whole final painting without putting in any line drawing and they coped extremely well with it.

When they were getting tea and coffee generally chatting away it could be quite noisy and I had to shout to be heard,  but as soon as they were painting and concentrating they were as silent as church mice.

Except of course when my lovely postman came in in his shorts. There were whoops and cheers and the poor man went a bit pink and left asap.

 The whole day went really quickly and everyone was very positive.  All said they would be back either for another workshop or for the drop in groups,  so I was very pleased.

I also had a sale of a painting and was pleased to have so many people in generally,  the sun must have brought them out.  I was worried they may not come in, with so much activity,  but I was surprised to find it seemed to draw people in to see what was happening.  I also had a couple of people leave their names to be contacted for more information on future workshops.

All in all I had a lovely day and although I am tired today I wouldn't hesitate to do it all again,  I fact I will positively look forward to it.