Generally known as
Mim, short for Hermione, which is a bit of a mouthful
for general use, she has been interested in art and
painting for years, gaining an O' level back in the day!
However, life, as ever, took up a lot of time and energy, so
it was only many years later, when she ‘retired’ early
with her husband Steve to Provence, that she was able to
start picking up a paintbrush again. Given the lovely
scenery and, of course, the wonderful light, it was
inspiring to try & paint the beautiful mountains, lakes
and pretty
villages, which are literally on the doorstep.
She found that her
paintings proved to be popular, so she asked a friend to
help with a web site to publicise her work www.mimi-art-net
and along the way, she managed to show, and
indeed even sell, her paintings, framed & unframed, along
with greetings cards. This is where ‘husband Steve’
became an in house printing manager with a supply of
plain, glossy cards bought from a printing company in the
U.K. Well, he was a marketing director in his day, so
how the mighty do fall!
Originally part of a friendly group
of painter friends, she has recently stepped out to try
and
share her enthusiasm for watercolour in particular and
started her own group to try what she calls easy art.
She really wanted to show, as opposed to teach, some
friends how to enjoy the freedom of mixing lovely
colours with not only water, but using different
techniques of salt, wax crayon, cling film and masking
fluid.
So, that is how this
venture called Mimi’s EasyArt started only a few months
ago. Several friends, who had long asked Mim to show
them how to paint in her free and easy style, gathered
together at a mutual friend’s house and suddenly two
hours just passed in a flash. She started by showing one
of her cards of a simple scene and everyone mixed their
paints and began by painting the sky, always a good place
to start, then moving on gently to give generous sweeps
of a sea colour before adding the essential sand for the
beach. Then it becomes fun to add dots of colour to the
beach and throw on some salt, sit back and let it dry before
gently rubbing out the salt- et voila, you have a
painting called Sky, Sea & Sand!
Given that everyone enjoyed
themselves and lost any shyness very early on, it is a
shame that all sharing activities have been stopped for
the moment by Covid 19, not a huge deprivation in the
big scheme of things of course, but it inspired Mim to
pursue her idea of sharing the fun by organising a
watercolour session on Zoom! The first one happened a
couple of weeks ago and again, two hours just vanished
with everyone finding ways of showing their efforts on
camera and just about avoiding dripping paint on the keyboard!
The results are starting to appear on the EasyArt site.
Mim plans to
continue, so this web site is also a way of sharing
all the efforts of the easyarters online, many of them
enthusiastic beginners. Please do feel free to contact
her with any questions or new ideas they would also
like to share and join in the fun! |