A family affair

My eldest daughter, Anneli, is really good with drawing people.  You can see some of her artwork on her Pinterest board.  This morning we had some time at hand and I came across the idea of doing a joint painting/sketch.  I have seen joint paintings before where Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet and Herman Pekel were jointly working on a painting.  The link is here.  So, we decided to give it a try.  We found some colourful images of people and a good mountain  picture on Pinterest and started to combine them into a painting.  I would be doing the mountain and sky and she would be doing the detail of the grass and the people… I am not good with detail.  We worked on a 190 gsm A2 sheet.  I used large flat brushes with Windsor and Newton Cotman watercolours and she used a number 1 brush with the watercolour and some Derwent Academy Watercolour Pencils.  The result can be seen below.  I really like it. It feels like the people and the valley just gel!  I can see myself staring down that valley to wonder what is down there and hear the wind softly blowing around me.

One of my favourite art teachers, Richard Robinson, once made the following comment: “… One of my favorite moments is sitting back with a coffee and absorbing a freshly finished painting – seeing how my passion translated itself into paint. If the translation is garbled their is inevitably disappointment, but if the translation is true the coffee seems to taste extra good.”  …. and I must say, BOY, DID THAT COFFEE TASTE GOOD!!!!!

The valley