Flying first class.

I went to my first painting class on Monday night at Hazelhurst Gallery. Lots of it was great and some of it was kind of kooky. When I turned up it was all dark and gloomy and I couldn't find any humans and I nearly left before I busted out a single virgin paintbrush bristle. But then I found a good and helpful human and was directed to Studio One, although I had quite a bit of trouble finding the door which was not as straightforward as it may sound. I think the helpful human may have been laughing at me the second time I walked into a wall.

In my class there is a nice lady called Cheryl and a very knowledgeable man called Bob. And there's me. That's all. Just three little squirrels. Bob makes quilts. He's a quilter. Cheryl likes watercolours and isn't too keen on all this modern art business. She likes decorating and last year she went to Egypt. The teacher's name is Fiona and she is cool. She made us cups of tea and told us about the names of the different parts of a paintbrush. And we learned about tonal qualities and how to mix paint properly and clean brushes properly and how to use the colour wheel and we made paint charts, which was equal parts tedious and weirdly therapeutic.

And the best bit was when the previously mentioned helpful human opened up the gallery for us and Fiona took us through the exhibition and talked to us about the paintings and the techniques that had been used in them. Bob and I liked the same painting best. And I got to get all up close and personal with four works by the amazing Tommy Watson. They were just astonishing and beautiful and incredible and amazing. This one wasn't in the collection but is a bit of a favorite.

Next week in painting class we are going to actually paint. Fiona is going to set up some fruits and we are going to paint a still life. I am actually totally excited to paint the fruits. Especially because right at the moment I am just loving the work of Polly Jones who paints still life works that I really enjoy looking at. You can look at her paintings too, on her blog. She does genius things with fishbowls.

So painting class seems like a winner so far. Next week, fruits ahoy. I'm gonna bust out that filbert (that's a kind of paintbrush - see, with the learning) and go nutso bananas on my canvas kingdom.