Sunday – At Sea
Today was the second of our sea days, and the second of my watercolour workshops. The theme was ‘Tone and Composition’, so I gave them a tonal study to do, based upon a photograph of Tallinn, in Estonia, where we’ll be arriving tomorrow.
The monochrome study, painted entirely in Paynes Grey, went down well, and the results, overall, were encouraging. This workshop was of particular interest to me as it’s never been worked through before (other than the first time I painted it), so it was something of a ‘World Premiere’. It always feels like a bit of a gamble, rolling out a new exercise, as opposed to giving a group one that’s been well-tried-and-tested (and proved to work). Everybody seemed to enjoy it, despite being slightly anxious at first. Not only that; all three classes were full, other than a couple of empty spaces on the third class, and the new timings (10am, 1pm and 3pm) seemed popular.
By late afternoon, after the final class, I felt quite drained and only wanted to drink tea and chill. The weather outside has been wet and manky all day, although they did manage to stage the vegetable carving demonstration just before lunchtime, and we managed to grab some quality time standing on deck at the front of the ship, before the rain came in.
This evening, it was Arthur Bostrom’s turn to entertain us with stories and video clips from his life as an actor; most notably as the bumbling ‘Crabtree’ in ‘Allo ‘Allo… a very entertaining hour indeed!
