Its the beginning of the school year in NSW, and the first day back for students at the Bligh Park campus of the Eagle Arts Vocational College where I have been helping with the art lessons for the last couple of years. The school is an alternative for students  who for whatever reasons are not able to fit into mainstream schooling. This year our continuing existence depends  on a number of changes being implemented to comply with some bureaucratic clampdowns  from the education department.

The focus  this term is to be on Australia and Australian art, I haven't had time to look into the specifics of how we will handle this yet, but in my initial lesson, which is only one hour a week, I took in the paintings I have been doing in recent weeks to show that painting is something that can be done because you want to do it and  it is something that is satisfying and enjoyable, and they way to get better at it is to do it often and regularly... and then we used the landscapes as subjects for their own drawings.

Monday afternoons is portrait practice time with my 'student'

the first portrait group of the year at the Hawkesbury Community Arts Workshop, at WSU Richmond.
8 year old Savana two 40 minute portraits

it was  cloudy  with some scattered raindrops today... some sketches

using an umbrella to keep the raindrops off

I had less than an hour to paint this morning