Pissouri, Cyprus - watercolour class

In the art shop in Kouklia I bought this olive tree painting, as a souvenir. I was also given the phone number of the artist, as she might be willing to give lessons.

Well Ros Kelly and I finally connected over the weekend and we arranged for me to go to her house for a class today. She lives on the British Forces Base about 10 minutes from here. Her husband teaches at the school there. She paints in watercolour and acrylic and her husband paints in oil. In previous years they had an art shop in Pissouri and they are in the process of buying a house in Pissouri for when her husband retires. She has only recently been putting her work into the shop in Kouklia (which is a co-op and she works in on Thursdays) and I was her first or second sale. Both olive trees.
I showed Ros what I had been working on and she made some suggestions and gave me some encouragement. I will be doing a bit more work on the fisherman and the geranium. She then talked to me about brushes, paint and paper, making recommendations and talking about her preferred materials and why. We then stretched and mounted some paper, something I hadn't done before. You do this so that it wont buckle or pucker when it gets wet from the paint.

Then we went through a series of techniques, some of which I had done before but with Ros there was the added value of discussing when and why you would use the various techniques. I also used some of Ros' brushes and learned how to use a "Rigger" for very thin lines, wax for resistance, credit card for dark lines and scraping paint off, salt and saran wrap for textured effects. 2 hours flew by.

I made an appointment to go back in 2 weeks for another class. This time we will use the paper we stretched and paint an olive tree. So now I am on the lookout for a paintable olive tree.

Driving back, on the lookout for that olive tree,I had to take a picture

of this tree covered in pink blossoms. I have since found out that almond trees blossom can vary from white to pink.

I think I also want to paint grape vines

but these are disappearing in the weeds.