Work on our soldier portraits carries on and in the meantime we’ve taken photographs of of some of the gear that the soldiers carry. The photos will be used for a number of commemorative paintings that we’ll be doing, a few of which will be still life. One of the first steps in preparing to do a still life is to set up the objects you plan to paint. Ordinarily I like to paint directly from life whenever possible but since the equipment had to be returned the next day the only opportunity to paint it would be from photos. I took many pictures of the gear in different positions and will choose the ones that I like best, eventually one or more of them will become a painting.

When I started to set up the first items my cat Spike came along to supervise. An hour or so later Pete my nosy, little mutt had to investigate too.

- Cindy