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If you've been following me on Instagram you'll know I've stumbled into a new colour combo - Blue Black Indigo and Quinacridone Magenta. Why I launched into new paintings with these colours without having given them a road test in my sketchbook is anybody's guess! So here's a quick sketch using these colours along with white and Pastel Lemon.

Day 4 of Louise Fletcher's 'Find Your Joy' taster course was about limiting materials as a way to boost creativity, which sounds incongruous, but it's a tried and tested method of working for many artists. My 'Curiosity Series' was just such an exercise which I loved doing, as it seemed that much of the choice paralysis was taken away which enabled me to focus on getting the most out of a limited number of materials and colours.

Every painting I make has failure points in it somewhere and most of them teeter on the edge of failure for days or even weeks! But I usually figure out a way to resolve whatever I feel the problem is, armed with a flexible and adaptable process that gives me lots of options to try. Day 3 of Louise Fletcher's 'Find Your Joy' taster course was all about feeling free to make unsuccessful work and letting it go.

I instantly felt better and more energised by the brighter colours, and letting myself use scissors felt like a huge relief! My carry overs from part one were the charcoal and the credit card- though I notice I didn't really use this in the same way.

There were a few materials limitations ( 3 colours and black and white, with paper taped off into smaller squares) but after that the instruction was just to play with paint for 30 minutes, making lots of expressive marks with tools and drawing mediums that were experimental and mixing as many colours as possible

The first part of the challenge was to pick up colours that you don't usually use and select a range of tools that are unfamiliar to work with. The second part of the challenge was to then revert to more usual colours and tools but this time add in a couple of items from session 1. The key for this exercise was to try and focus on the feelings that arose as we worked.