Potting up an Art Class

When a boiling hot day is forecast, do all your gardening as early as you can in the morning. Then, as a well-earned reward, enjoy a pot of tea. And so here I am, sipping tea and blogging late on a very warm Sydney Saturday morning in March.

It's been a fun morning too. I've been selecting and potting up a bunch of succulents from our succulent garden, in preparation for the watercolour workshop on cacti and succulents which Pam will be running on Wednesday, March 28. I'll add in details of the class at the end of this posting. If you're in Sydney and interested in joining Pam for a relaxed, enjoyable few hours of watercolour painting, get in contact with her. And beginners are welcome!

Here's the first tray all potted up ...

And here's the other one.

As you can see from the photos, there's an amazing variety of shapes, colours, leaf forms and plant forms. To cover the whole variety found within the amazing world of cacti and succulents, you'd need a thousand trays. So we just kept it down to a couple of dozen little pots, as a beginner's representative sample. Here's a few of them ...

As soon a people clap eyes on this Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' they want one. I've done some other postings on Copper Spoons before, such as here. They are very easy to propagate, and autumn is a nice time for them, as they are starting to color up right now with that coppery glow.

I'm a sucker for variegated leaves (here and there, not everywhere!) and this little Crassula looks like the perfect subject for the soft tones of watercolours. 

We have far more succulents than cacti here, so recently I popped down to our garden center to see if I could add a few cacti to the mix, and I fell in love with this cute little spiky person — I've named it 'Arizona' — and its spherical pal.

So here's the info you need if you want to book yourself into Pam's March workshop on cactus and succulents. As well as the monthly workshops, every Wednesday morning she also holds a casual drop-in art class at The Bakehouse Studio in Marrickville.

Also, at the same venue, The Bakehouse Studio, she and ceramicist Lisa Hoelzl host a regular Open Studio for painters, potters and ceramic artists every Friday. Pictured below is one of Pam's watercolours, of cacti growing against an old church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

MARCH WATERCOLOUR WORKSHOP – ‘Cactus & Succulents’
THE BAKEHOUSE STUDIO 54 Renwick Street, Marrickville NSW
Wednesday from 10am – 1pm, March 28
For more details, visit Pam's website at https://pamelahorsnell.org
Or, for info and updates,
Visit her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pamelahorsnellartist
And her Instagram feed at @pamelahorsnellartist