Service Description

Eggs, Bread, Sugarloaf and Oil: Everyday Essentials and The Land of Cockaigne Make your own lazy-tasty land using the every essentials of eggs, bread, oil and a sugarloaf. We’ll make a landscape out of these elemental foodstuffs and create our own land of plenty where oil drips from trees and eggs roll right into your plate made of bread amid a background of sugarloaf mountains… First we’ll do studies of each food item and then we’ll put them all together in our own unique food landscapes. Why not situate yours on an island? (Optional) Or be inspired by the Bidfood advert in which they created food landscapes where the trees are broccoli and the suns lemon slices. Borne from a desire to present a truly comprehensive picture of all miniature painting, and emerging from my latest ongoing research into the world of the 1001 Arabian Nights, these classes are like a cabinet of curiosities for miniature painting. The TALES classes comprise 3 strands: Objects and Ingenious Devices, Natural Marvels and Wonders and Characterless Characters. If, like me, you find stories and marvels irresistible, join me in painting a collection of marvels, wonders, everyday objects, theatrical devices, mechanical ingenuity, strangenesses and curios… in short, THINGS that are in stories and paintings and that are not easily defined as animal, vegetable or mineral. Cooking pots, cups and jugs; tables, takhts and thrones. From flags and bows and arrows and a multitude of tools to clever clocks, musical instruments and astrolabes, we cover them all. Humans have found wonder in the tiniest fleas and the wide open seas and the far flung stars (and now we’re going to Mars). See through the eyes of Sindbad and wonder at natural marvels that include composite creatures, giraffes and even a ginger cat. These things are the stuff of stories, the razm o bazm (fight and feast) of the Shahnameh and the magic everyday fabric that is the stock in trade of the Nights.