Yesterday was my big day, the start of my 12 week online course SketchingNow Foundations!

It has been a LOT of work, far more work to get everything ready than I expected, so to have it all up and running is a huge relief and sense of achievement. It is a significant milestone, and while I don’t think that it is necessary to make a purchase to celebrate, it was a fun thing to do. And ,of course, it was a teacup purchase! I was doing some essential chores at Macquarie Centre and ‘just happened’ to walk past the T2 tea shop.

There were many nice cups in the shop on display; the first one that caught my eye was a refined butterfly cup and the second was a ‘Retro Orange’ one. I agonised over it for a little while as the butterfly cup was very pretty, but in the end Retro Orange won. I am very satisfied with my choice – it is very beautiful, colourful and happy – and it will be a lot of fun to sketch over and over again. Retro Orange is more challenging than the butterfly cup which, although looking more intricate, is a lot easier to draw, especially with black ink. Ah! I have just realised while writing this, that I am have brown ink in my pen not black currently – so that is another confirmation that I made the right decision. Retro Orange is officially called Pretty Punch Orange and is part of a set. I really don’t need the other two colours or one of the teapots, do I? Hmm, the whole range is very nice!

I sketched the new cup while the first lesson was about to go live so I was a touch distracted. I realised that I rarely use orange these days (ie. bright orange as opposed to earth orange which I use all the time) and wasn’t sure what would be the result of my working very wet – how would the colours intermingle? Would it turn out too brown? My mind was transported back to the days of the T2 tearoom and how much orange I used back then and how important having a dedicated orange in my palette was. I LOVE Schminke Translucent Orange as a colour and so it was nice to squeeze some fresh paint out to do this. Keen to do another version of this soon.

I also quickly sketched my roast dinner yesterday in this little ‘down time’ before the class went live. There is a SketchingNow reason for doing this – those in the class will discover why in a few weeks time.

While on the subject of teacups… last week I found a box containing 2 teapots and 3 teacups that had been laid aside during the big move and reshuffle last year. Amongst the collection was my beloved green cup; I think this was the first fancy everyday teacup and saucer I ever purchased for myself. I stopped using it due to a chip on the rim, but as it is not on the side I drink from, have decided to start using it again. Oh! I love the pattern and the shape of the cup, and had so much fun sketching it again after many years. Isn’t the brown ink wonderful?

To put this teacup sketch in the context of the whole spread, here it is beside another local house sketch on the way home from the gym.

And finally, on Monday (perhaps the biggest day of work this week) I only managed a little paint play at night. These are just imaginary trees – an excuse just to splash and use a few different brushes.

Subscribe to my mailing list for my monthly newsletters including first notification of my new SketchingNow Online Sketching Courses and face-to-face workshops.