Today, a fast crowd painting to get the gesture of the figures:

In an ongoing attempt to paint faster and looser (but still as expressively as possible), I'm trying to give myself a time limit for finishing each piece. This piece took roughly an hour and a half:

I'm practising sketching faces to improve my proficiency. The late, great Pete Postlethwaite was my subject for this sketch:

Ah, another instalment of Artist's Fuel. I made soup the day before yesterday – the perfect dinner for a night that got down to -36°C (which apparently felt like -49°C) – truly, just UNSPEAKABLY cold!
This soup had cooked, lean ground chicken and sauteed onions as a base, then carrots, celery, tomatoes, consommé, spices and quinoa were added in and the whole thing simmered for several hours in a slow cooker. We baked some half-baked whole wheat buns to go with it – yum!

Today it was more practice sketches of the face:

My latest practice exercise is to draw lips. It's absolutely essential to know at least something about the anatomy under the body part you're drawing!

We've been fortunate the last few weeks to enjoy lovely, unseasonably warm weather, but the inevitable has occurred. Today it's -25°C, and with the windchill it feels like -34°C, so I'm hunkering down to do some writing. Here is the frosty view from my front window:

Practice is the key - I think I'm getting the hang of this!

I'm enjoying the freedom of painting looser than usual with wide brush strokes of colour. This image is from a picture we took last spring at the National Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh:

And this is my second try using slightly different digital media. This one had a few false starts, but it came around eventually...