I was very happy to catch up with the extended family of the friends I was staying with – this includes their three sons, lovely wives and beautiful grandchildren. It’s always hard to do any sketching at all during social events, so anything on the page is a win – and a special way to remember the visit.

The first outing was to visit B&J. They have four (very artistic) children and also had family from England visiting (four adults and three children) so the house was full and very busy.

After showing the kids my book, I did some blind contour portraits, and then they wanted to have a go!

Shortly after, we sat down for a meal with lots of conversation. There was a lull in the conversation while dessert was being put on the table, and I then saw an opportunity to do a sketch. (The family wanted me to do a demo!)

So this is what I did of the view in front of me – alternating between line and colour and using ink (Fude pen) watercolour and watercolour pencil.

Later that week, it was organised to meet the other two families for afternoon tea. It was a wet day, and E was baking. I was working on my laptop at the dining table but I managed a few sketches to document what was happening in the kitchen.

A cake for afternoon tea and then lunch.

Afternoon tea was wonderful – so great to catch up with Z&A and L&E and impossible to think about sketching. But towards the end of the visit, I got shown some incredible iPad drawings by one of the boys. We discussed how to draw ellipses (he loves drawing cars in dramatic angles), and then I did a super quick observation-based version of one of his prehistoric animal drawings. This sketch is enough to remind me of a lovely afternoon and all the other conversations I had that day.

A close-up of the air fryer cake sketches.

And lunch – pizza muffins.

Ha! It’s funny that the food theme keeps recurring!