The weather has continued to be a challenge this week. Whilst it may have been raining cats and dogs outside, I have spent some time inside my studio, nice and warm, working on my latest project.

The Scottish Design Exchange approached its artists to see if any of us were interested in getting involved with the Edinburgh Cat and Dog home, to produce pet portraits for a fundraising charity auction. Essentially, we were to be sent a photo of one of the animals up for a DC option and paint it.

As someone who regularly takes on commissions for pet portraits this was an easy YES from me. I received a photo of Coby, so got to work on my task. I hope they are pleased with the result and it helps to raise much needed funds and find a home for Coby. My next commission is two guinea pigs, so that will be a new challenge for me.

This week was clearly a week for charitable work and helping others. I spent an enjoyable day with other Rotarians running the Young Technologist challenge, which involved about 120 secondary school pupils from around the area constructing flashing beacons from what looked like a couple of pieces of wood, some screws and glue!

As the artistic one amongst us, I was on calligraphy duty for all of their certificates. At the end of the week I had the pleasure of supporting my friend Sylvia with her first photography exhibition. It was a huge success. She had shot beautiful photographs of inside Glasgow School of Art during her training many years ago, but they had not been shared until now.

Their content was particularly poignant ,in view of the fact that this beautiful Charles Rennie Macintosh inspired building burned down in recent times .

This week’s challenge is to paint a wedding venue in St Andrews in order to produce ceramic coasters of the venue as gifts for the wedding party. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to work with the venue afterwards, to offer them to future couples getting married there.

Rhona x