Nicola has a very modern, simple and colourful style using bold colours and strokes with her oil pastels.  We were all given a small glass vase with Leucadendrons, an Australian native plant, for our subject.  She then demonstrated how she prepares a wooden board, which she prefers to work on,with a neutral-coloured pastel, scribbled loosely all over and then rubbed down with solvent to give a slightly toned base with the underlying wood grain still visible.  Next, she drew the outline of the flowers, foliage and the vase keeping it simple with no detail.  After selecting the colours for the flowers, she applied the oil pastels fairly heavily.   There was no layering or blending of the colours.  A variety of shades were then applied next to each other followed by the background colours.  We all tried this technique either on board or paper of either flowers or foliage to produce our own contemporary artworks.  After lunch, Nicola demonstrated the first stages of another picture of very bright flowers.  

This was a challenging workshop for most attendees as we were new to oil pastels and the techniques used.   As a result, we all learnt something new, were taken along a very different path, using flat areas of colour to produce the modelling of objects, rather than our usual shading techniques and to not be too concerned about the accuracy of the drawing.