​Jenny had an enthusiastic, friendly style which immediately engaged her audience.  She introduced herself, explaining where and how she works and showing examples of some of her work, which is exhibited in various venues around the world.​

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She said she often starts with charcoal sketches, before starting on a painting.  She likes to work with acrylics, as she finds it the most versatile, but adds other media for interest. For this demo, Jenny loosely sketched out the outline of a beetroot, including its leaves, in pencil onto 300g cartridge paper, taped to board.  Using a variety of scrap papers (old maps, dress patterns, music scores and pages from old books) she collaged around the outline of the beetroot, creating the background.  Modelling paste was then applied to indicate the shape and texture of the beet and its roots.  Jenny took this opportunity to demonstrate some of the techniques you can use with paste, for example pushing it through stencils, scratching into it, and pushing or scraping it into desired shapes.

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Jenny started painting the leaves in 3 different shades of red acrylic with a flat brush, thickly, adding no water.  For the bulb, she mixed in a small amount of blue, adding water this time, for a lighter glaze.  The second layer was thicker but she then sprayed it with water and wiped some of the colour away!  Thin glazes of yellow and a darker red were painted over the bulb.

 

Different greens were mixed and painted on the leaves over the red.  Jenny then scratched through the green to show the red veins.  So effective!

 

After adding some highlights to the leaves, Jenny turned again to the background, adding a wash of blue over the collaged papers, cutting in around the beetroot.  She let some of the collage show through and added a bit of shadow with a darker mix.  Then a bit of splattering over the bulb and leaves and a light touch of black fluid acrylic to outline the leaves enhanced the composition.  The final touch was the application of some gold-coloured gilding foil.  Who knew beetroots could be so interesting!

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