Inspired by Lindsay Ford

Lindsay Ford painting

Lindsay Ford painting

Painting exhibited at Gallery Delta by Lindsay Ford

I did art again this morning guided by Sarah Fynn. Today the inspiration came from the work of Lindsay Ford, a well known Zimbabwean artist. As a warm up I did figure silhouettes where you had to fill your paintbrush with paint and make the pigment flow to create your figure form. To begin with I was trying to create shape by wriggling my brush around but gradually got it to be more of a fluid movement.

I then selected a picture of a Mana Pools landscape and first did a sketch in charcoal, drawing by pulling out the dark areas (this was way more effective than trying to do line and texture). I then got out the same water colours I used last week - cadmium yellow, viridian, burnt sienna and ultramarine and again created a painting focusing on the dark and light and then shape rather than line. Wouldn't have been the colours I might ordinarily have chosen but they worked. If I am not teaching next week we are hoping to do a socially distanced painting en plein air at Jam Tree on the golf course.

The rest of today included queueing for petrol, teaching a student online (we battled on with trying to get him to grasp conjunctions, prepositions and direct speech), laminating pictures of fractions to stick up in my classroom for when we return and then getting home to do a Pilates class with my sister. I tried a Les Mills grit class last night. Oh my goodness gracious me, it was an introductory class but it was insane. One routine involved going from a burpee into a knee tuck jump. I just did normal burpees and that was killing. Tomorrow will try do a body balance class with my sister before Zumba.