The weather today has been beautiful, lovely sunshine and warmth, exactly they way I like it.

August 2012 is now history, we have entered September and days have started getting shorter again. That on its own would be quite depressing, not to mention that, in London, it will get colder and wetter again.

I have been fighting off the winter laziness with different ideas over the years. One of my favorite one is entering for an interesting evening or online course.

In spring, I signed up for a 10 week painting class in Central London. Before joining, I Googled the teacher and the subject and decided, I was interested enough to dedicate 10 evenings to it.

And what a choice it was!

No matter how interesting the subject is, if I do not see the sparkle in the teacher when teaching, how do I awaken the sparkle in myself?

Fortunately, the teacher, young Portuguese Visual Artist and Art Tutor, Nelson Ferreira, has the ability to draw the sparkle from his students, and guide to produce paintings that are worth the effort. Nelson’s expertises are always spot on, his tips and tricks sometimes closer to geometry and mathematics then to painting.

It amazed me what sort of techniques, shading, fading, blending and Nelson’s favourite technique “scumbling” can be done in one painting to maximaze the effect and achieve the result desired. Nelson gave us good basic information to start off and then added to it every time we needed to move on.

Of course there were evenings where I was not sure about the result or how to carry on, but that was all part of the learning curve. The paintings I have finished in Nelson’s class were very different to what I expected (a portrait and a landscape of Indian Temple), they exceeded my expectations.

To add to this, the classes were small of about 10 students; that was great as we had Nelson’s attention and help when needed.

I am now looking forward to another class like this, it certainly brightens the ugly weather we might be having soon, lifts the mood and keep the soul happy. Evening classes during winter are great way to take the mind of the ugly weather, learn new skill or two and meat great people with similar interests. I recommend it.

If you’re interested you’ll find me at one of these this winter.

I have incluede few paintins for your inspiration: Hercules - by a friend of mine, Malta Harbour, Portrait, India Taj Mahal – by me