Newsletter 19th December 2024

Our final studio update for the year

Welcome to our last newsletter of 2024. It’s been almost a year since we moved our mailing list over to Substack and started writing the extra articles that our paid subscribers receive in addition to the weekly newsletter. It’s been good to get back to writing more and it’s certainly kept us on track as far as documenting what we’re doing is concerned. Your response to everything that we’ve posted here has been so kind and we’d like to thank you for that. We’ve really enjoyed this platform so far and as your feedback has been so positive we’re going to be growing our offering to you with the addition of Art Club next January. As you might have already read with Art Club we’re looking to build on the community feel here and the whole principle of making art together. So for Art Club we’re going to be adding lots more video content and also opening up a chat feature so you can talk to us and each other as you work. So lots to look forward to in 2025.

Including…

Our first exhibition of 2025 which opens on January 31st at Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum in the Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington. Here’s a first look at the official posters for the event. We’re so looking forward to seeing all the work on display together. The other artists involved are Annabel Rainbow, Jennie Moncur, Stephanie Redfern and Daniel Lismore. The exhibition is free to visit and there are events such as a Meet the Artists day. For full information please visit the website here.

I promised last week to show you a few more photos from my trip. I did take literally hundreds; that’s the beauty of smart phones, there’s always a really decent camera right there in your pocket so nothing goes without being recorded!

This is one of the amazing illuminated trees that I talked about last week. They are in Kew Gardens as part of the Christmas light trail. I loved the colour combination don’t you? That beautiful blue and turquoise of the tree against that golden ochre sky. I’ve not applied any filters to this at all, it’s just the way my camera phone captured it. It looks almost like a negative image though doesn’t it?

The same colour combinations, albeit in much higher intensity, are at play in this painting by Van Gogh from the exhibition at the National Gallery. This is a close up detail that I had to share with you. If you were painting a beard would you choose turquoise and aqua? Possibly not the most obvious choices, but very vibrant on the canvas when placed next to those golden ochres and oranges.

And while we’re still on the subject of Van Gogh, yes there were sunflowers. I hadn’t see this one before.

I will have to look up the dates of these two paintings. They are all close, but I wonder if they are from a very narrow timeline. To me it looks like he is using the very same paint mixes in the face and beard as in the sunflowers and background.

It did make me smile that in the Gallery shop you can buy a glazed vase with signature just like this one. The merchandise department has not missed a trick!

And next a couple of exquisite paintings from the National Portrait Gallery. The Tudor gallery is possibly one of my favourite rooms in the whole world. I may have to paint a room in my house that glorious indigo blue.

If you’ve been watching Wolf Hall like me, it’s like walking into a room that’s alive with all the leading characters. Here is Katherine of Aragon.

and Queen Mary…

I think I’m obviously having a bit of a fad on various combinations of blue and orange. It seems to be there in all the photos I’ve picked out for you today! This painting was so special in its detail and colour. I love the gold lettering on the blue background don’t you? You can look at all the works from this room on the NPG website. Here’s a link. You’ll see you can click on any of the paintings and zoom in to see them close up.

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These aren’t in a pear tree, but I hope you’ll like to see them anyway…

They’re our partridges. Well I say they are ours, of course they are wild, but about 5 or 6 of them seem to have permanently moved into our garden and I’m feeding them so I am taking ownership! They are so funny, they tear around the garden at top speed and are very hard to photograph. These two were caught stealing food from our chickens’ feeder. They look a bit shifty, like they know they shouldn’t be doing it. We’ll let them off, it is Christmas after all.

Thank you for reading our newsletters throughout the year. This will be the last one for 2024. We’re signing off now to enjoy some time with our family, watch some Christmas movies and have a daily dose of mince pies. We’ll be back with our first newsletter of 2025 on January 9th. In the meantime there may be a couple of posts for our paid subscribers.

If you treat yourself to a paid subscription for Christmas (you can take just a month for £5), you will then have access to all our paid posts since we started writing here on Substack. That’s a lot to help inspire you. Once you’ve signed up just click to view the Archive on our page and you’ll find them all there.

If you’re a student who’s taking one of our online classes we will pick up messages over the holidays so if you get stuck with something and need help please do email. We might not be as quick as usual, but we will reply!

Thanks again for your support. It’s so good to know that you’re there and reading our articles and newsletters. We’d like to wish you and your families all the best for the festive season and a very happy and creative new year.

Until 2025,

Linda and Laura x