Every week a group of like minded people get together to paint, drink cappuccinos and explore different materials and techniques together. Recently we have taken to painting indoors as the amount of rain here I think has almost surpassed the UK so in the warmth of an old Tuscan house we have explored our ideas using sea life as a starting point. A couple of us decided that we would work on black card for a change to see what type of outcome we would achieve. I used acrylics as a base and then went on to create depth and highlight in oil pastels, the two materials really compliment each other, if you are thinking of doing a mixed media piece. I have to say painting an octopus was not quite as easy as I thought it would be although I shall definitely be painting on a black base again with acrylics. So from here we are now going to create some compositions using sea life with a little more inspiration from Haekel. If you would like to see some of the other studies, take a look on Facebook at art club Italia.