Our House - Ali B

The trepidation I felt waiting for the parcel to arrive from Matthew was pretty intense and being last to go with all of those stellar artists ahead of me was quite daunting.

When I unwrapped the parcel I was blown away by the range of styles, techniques and media used and I knew straight away that I wasn’t going to be able to adapt my usual style of way of painting as it just would have looked incongruous with the rest of the project.

I knew what I wanted my subject to be, it was Sharon who gave me the inspiration to think a little differently and Jeremy shared his love of illustration so I embarked on a very different way of painting than I was used to.

I’ll let you watch the video to see where I took it and why and I’m not gonna lie, I HATED the paper and so the video is an interesting insight into how one artist can struggle with tools that she’s not used to but it’s always interesting to be pushed out of one’s comfort zone.

Did I say pushed? I meant shoved…

So this sees the end of this project and it’s been great to share the page with my ADD colleagues, this coming weekend (11th & 12th September) we have a collaboration of a different kind and if you would like to be among the first to see it, you can watch it go out live on our Facebook page.

All of us look forward to speaking to you at the weekend, ALi B

Our House - Part Five with Matthew

For my section of this painting, I was inspired by my surrounding area. The Peak District and this time of year the wonderful old cottages and their cottage gardens.

As well as an artist I’m a keen photographer and I love rustic, anything with rustic charm. Like the broken gate in this cottage scene.There is something about worn, old and rustic scenes that just appeal to me. The cottage I painted is from imagination, like a lot of my paintings, but based on a village near the spa town of Buxton called, Ashford in the Water. Known locally as Ashford in the Watercolour. As this village so pretty, every corner you turn has a paintable scene. 

Our House - Part Four with Jeremy

When we discussed Ali H’s idea of each of us painting a 6th part to a wider painting I wasn’t sure how this would work; how we could each paint a narrow strip containing houses of our individual interpretation without the whole thing looking a bit weird! It wasn’t after all the kind of thing that I’m used to doing and rather outside my comfort-zone but it has certainly been a challenge and a lot of fun! 

Ali H had started with her painting on the left, and Denise had then painted her contribution to the left of my space so I wanted to try and tie in some of the shapes at the edge of her painting with my own to try and make it flow a little, merging here and there.

About forty years ago I painted a picture of a tree-home to some deliberately ambiguous creature or other and I fancied a similar setting for my interpretation of the “house” subject.  I thought the tree-house was a good idea but I couldn’t see how I was going to handle all the masses of foliage at the top where everyone else so far had left so much sky showing. One idea often leads to another so I thought: what if the tree was dead, or if it was Winter, and the tree had no leaves on it. My idea developed then as a kind of illustration which might tell a story. What is the significance of the robin? What kind of animal lived here? Why is it for sale? Different people may have different answers to all these questions. 

I chose gouache for my bit because it is so forgiving and easy to correct and change. I love the flexibility that gouache gives an artist and I feel pleased with the end result.  

Our House - Part Three with Denise

I was looking forward to this project. I wanted to get cracking with my portion of the painting, but I was equally excited to see the other sections that had already been painted. I had seen a photo of Ali H’s section, but not Sharon’s.

The postman knocked on the door and I knew immediately what it must be. A very large, flat parcel, that could be nothing else. I knew I should message Sharon first who was soooo concerned about the arrival of the parcel, but I couldn’t help myself. I carefully opened the package to reveal the paper. I just sat and took it in. When we discussed the project, we had left the whole thing very open. We all knew it would be houses, but not exactly what we would do. The two sections already there were just so different from each other and I found that really exciting.

Just to be fair, I messaged Sharon, and could almost hear the sigh of relief across the internet.

I put the piece up in my lounge and just looked at it for a couple of days. Do you do that? Keep looking at a piece until it becomes obvious what you need to do? I do it all the time. In a way, there was no question that I would paint my own garden and house. I am very fortunate with where we live, but I have also worked especially hard this year in the garden. In terms of which part of the house, my studio is so important to me, and is such a large part of my life I couldn’t really paint anything else.

My pink rose was in full bloom, so I wanted to include that. I also really wanted to include my easel. This is just outside my studio, and is my favourite place here to set up to paint. It’s under cover, but outside.

The next decision was which section of the painting should be mine. I felt I could integrate my choice with Ali’s so that’s where I went. Sharon was right when she said adjoining her piece would be a challenge! I chickened out of that.

Then it was time to set up and paint. During the last few months we have all had nightmares with our technology. I tried very hard to set up so I could paint outside in front of the view. Unfortunately, this meant I couldn’t film easily as the sun and shadows just created too much interference on the painting. As this is meant to be a demo, I felt it needed to be visible, so I retreated with my sketches and a photo into the calm of the studio to create my part of the magic.

Once I was finished I replaced the painting into Sharon’s excellent packaging and relabelled it to send to Jeremy. It was now my turn for separation anxiety.

Finally, I sat down to edit the filming I had done. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed painting it.

I am looking forward to seeing each section of this project come to life.



Our House - Part Two with Sharon

When the idea of a joint project came up in our Zoom meeting, we all loved the idea.

Thrashing out the “what” and the “how” was fun. As you can imagine, there were some interesting proposals for the subject, but we decided on the Houses Project. Now as you know, I don’t do normal and I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could approach this with a twist. I went through the options of tree house, dolls house, fairy house etc. but finally decided on a lighthouse. There is something about a lighthouse, isn’t there? The raw elements and being isolated, at one with nature. I like the nostalgic idea of the lighthouse keeper out there keeping the shipping safe with that shaft of light splitting the night sky. Of course, nowadays, things are very different with the whole system being automated, the lone man out there in the elements is just a long-faded dream…

With this in mind, and the fact that I could make life exceedingly difficult for my companions if I put my lighthouse in the middle of the picture, I placed it on the end. I hoped this wouldn’t restrict them with their own creations and the flow of their pictures. It took me an afternoon to design, draw and create and it was fun!

The next stage of course was sending it on to the next artist, and that posed its own problems, I can tell you. It is quite a large piece, and the paper is quality, good and thick. So… it wouldn’t roll and go in a tube, and it had to be flat; who wants to paint on paper that is creased? I had foam board in the loft, and this is simply perfect for sending artwork. It doesn’t bend or crease, it is very light, and it is waterproof when you seal the edges with parcel tape.

Postage is quite easy now too; I can do most of mine online and all that was left was physically posting it. With Lockdown, I didn’t want to go to the Post Office, it didn’t fit in the post box of course, so I had to accost the postman the next day. No worries about that, he is a sweetie and as he took it said, “Oh! What is this? One of your paintings?”

At that point, there was a roaring in my ears, the world stopped spinning, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, it is isn’t it! What if something happens to it?” And I watched without a word, nodding dumbly as he carried it away to the van, threw it in the back and drove away… Precious baby paintings all on their own, travelling to a new home all alone… what if… ?

We can be such Drama Queens about our art, can’t we? I waited anxiously for days until Denise messaged to say that it had arrived. This was equivalent to that dreadful day when I first put my 11- year-old son on a plane all alone! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the big reveal every week and the videos that go with it. We all had a great time… who knows what we will get up to next time?!

Our House project By Ali H

‘Artist Demo Days’ is made up of six very creative people. We get very excited just talking about and exploring ideas. So I guess it’s no surprise that we want to use our creativity in what we share with you. We are constantly coming up with innovative ways to share our work. After giving you a flavour of our work with our Live demonstrations on Facebook, which have been so overwhelmingly popular, we have decided to take it further here on our website.

This project began on a whim during our weekly Zoom meeting when we were discussing ways forward. During the conversation, I said “I know...what about a collaborative voice of Art work where we all contribute to the same piece?” The idea grew and after several considerations about topics, we agreed on a line of houses. That’s where the creativity began and it has grown into something rather special and a little bit different. Each of us has added a “house” to the picture starting with mine, Ali Hargreaves, followed by Sharon Hurst, then Denise Allen, Jeremy Ford, Matthew Palmer and finally Ali Board. We have done our bit then posted onto the next Artist.

We have videoed ourselves painting our contribution and so basically you get six demonstrations all together. We will be releasing them one at a time...a week at time....so you can see the progression as each painting has been added on.

The big reveal will be after Ali B has added the missing part to our story. We hope you enjoy the journey and the anticipation.