Plein air painting can be frustrating, exhilarating, but is always my favoutite pastime. Today I was lucky enough to paint at the top of the StArnaud range -the silence is very loud up there. Any other plein air painters listening?

It's easy to lose your mojo. I lost mine after weeks of working on a community event, working hard in the garden and trying to get work ready for various art events and venues. When I start procrastinating instead of getting into my studio I know that things are getting serious. I have high (probably unrealistic) expectations of myself and what I want to achieve - so today I have just been playing with paint, no masterpiece expected. One of my favourite mediums to play with is watercolour on Yupo. Yupo is a plastic sheet used in printing, very exciting to paint on as the watercolour slides everywhere -  definitely not for control freaks!

Today a busload of visitors from a local garden club came to the studio. This threw me into a minor panic - what would they say about my weedy wilderness? But then I sat down and looked at a few photos of how it looked two years ago when we began building our house, and realised that we've made some progress. As it turned out, they were more interested in my paintings, so I needn't have worried!

Here goes- my life as a blogger has begun! The banner image is  Lake Rotoiti, just down the road from the studio ...today it looks just like this, misty, dreamy rainclouds.