Preparing to Dance, watercolour

Two Dancers, watercolour

I like to catch the in-between moments in my paintings of dancers, rather than when they are on stage, for the relaxed and every day atmosphere they convey.

This time I chose a colour scheme based on green and red, which are complementary on the colour wheel. I made a preparatory pencil drawing of the same size as the painting to sort out the proportions and then traced it onto the watercolour paper.

I had to redo the painting, though, as I got the shape of one leg wrong when tracing and noticed it too late. Will have to make  a note to self to be much more careful when tracing that the paper does not move...

Pencil drawing of dancers

Putting out the flags for the Queen's 90th birthday

Two weeks ago I was back in London on yet another rainy day, but the streets were brightened up considerably by all those Union Jacks flying in honour of the Queen's upcoming birthday celebrations.

This is near the BBC (Langham Place), where my husband and me had lunch sitting in the window of a Pizza Express. We saw the newsreader Huw Edwards walk by to pick up some lunch, but I was too slow to take a picture both on his way out and on his return! He's probably quite glad about that.