What could be nicer, after a Winter walk, than to return to a warm fireside with a nice cuppa?
Your challenge for this month is to find ways to represent the notion of comfort, safety, domesticity and home. 'A Nice cup of tea' might well symbolise all of those things but I encourage you to dig a little deeper and see what comes to the surface.
Stage 1. Consider. Use your sketchbook to record your thoughts through words and images as appropriate – you have time to expand on these thoughts later.
There is the obvious option to paint a lovely hot drink and many of you have already done this in class projects and workshops – cups, mugs and vessels in general present the challenge of finding correct proportions and ovals in perspective.
That is a great starting point.
But where do your thoughts take you when you are settled in a comfy chair with your hands cupping a warm mug? What do you see, smell, hear.... how can those feelings be transferred to the page?
Maybe there are other key elements; a book, crossword puzzle, your diary, a favourite blanket...Consider the small, everyday things that make up this part of your day.
Perhaps you have a cat purring on your lap, the radio playing, you hear birds singing or the crackle of a wood fire. What is your personal soundtrack to this gentle distraction?
I have a piece of music that plays in my head for that first (epic) hot drink of the day - it is the Spartacus Adagio by Khachaturian. Since that music was used as the theme to the Onedin Line, I picture tea clippers on the high seas, very apt you must agree! What is your hot drink music?
George Orwell wrote an essay on the eleven (golden) rules to making tea, A Nice Cup of Tea, 1946. You might consider your own rules/rituals and produce a Maslow style diagram as an art piece.
Celia Imrie wrote her Nice series of novels about ex-pats in the South of France, titling the third , A Nice Cup of Tea.
Tea (or coffee, chocolate etc) represent many cultural and political agendas. So, already we are, mentally at least, off the sofa and skipping along a maze of thought directions!
Over to you.....