At last the painting is complete! I am really pleased with it, it has to be the most detailed oil pastel I have done and I am delighted with how it looks. Someone will be very lucky whoever purchases it. I have a pile of photos to turn into paintings and will turn my hand back to a portrait. The big questions will be whether to maintain my momentum with oil pastel and see how it looks in a portrait or try another medium, such as watercolour or oil. I was looking through some paintings today and found a rough sketch portrait that I had completed in watercolour pencils, that's made me want to try them as well...mmm problem! Lovely icy weather. I decided to walk to work this morning due to previous car issues and more importantly for safety reasons. The footpaths and roads are treacherous with ice today so I waddled to work looking like I had wet myself. At lunchtime when I had finished work some of the ice had begun to thaw but that seemed to make the footpaths worse since the ice became sleaker and more slippy. Still I made it home without falling flat on my arse so all in all it worked out fine. The children at the school I work out were really delightful today, full of the excitement of the first day back, snow and wanting to share their Christmas present news. It really can lift your spirits and I do feel quite light and happy today. One child, who should we say likes to spin a yarn, had been telling me for ages that he was going to stay at Buckingham Palace for Christmas. I think we all need to have the smile wiped off our face from time to time and this was my time, it turned out that his auntie works there so in fact it was true - shame on me! My elder son has a science test tomorrow and a Geography test, so despite wanting to do a million other things I need to adopt my examiner head and test him. It's that lovely moment when you've scanned his books and formulated the question only to be met with 'We don't have to learn that!' or 'what are you talking about?' or even better 'the book's wrong!' What fun!