Marc Taro Holmes: watercolour on location

I love watching people draw and paint. We're all so different and have so much to learn from each other. A great way to peer unobtrusively into an other artist's process is through YouTube.

Anne-Laure Jacquart is an exuberant French YouTuber and Blogger who is well-worth a follow. One of her videos popped into my subscription feed of Marc Taro Holmes painting on location. She films him painting a street scene in Alvor, a small fishing village in southern Portugal.

A few things I found interesting watching this video of Marc in action include:

• the brush size

• his brush grip

• the board set-up

• the range of colours he uses in shadows

• "painting to looking" ratio

Related links

• Marc Taro Holmes (YouTube channel)

• Anne-Laurie Jacquart (Following the White Rabbit YouTube channel)

• The Urban Sketcher: Techniques for Drawing and Seeing on Location (Amazon)

• Marc's watercolour supplies list (Citizen Sketcher)

Project: Move it! Week Six

Here I am with the end in sight so I promptly bunked off Friday’s Boxfit class and fell right off my nutrition plan and into a pile of toast!

This is a great example of how I sabotage myself ev er ry time. These last five weeks have been good, but hard. Hard to get out of bed and go to the gym. Hard to remember to eat often enough of the right kinds of foods to make sure I don’t get too hungry and eat a pile of toast instead. Hard to be in a gym with other people who have been doing this intense exercise stuff for MUCH longer than me and have to so star jumps. Or mountain-climbers. Or chin-ups (more link bar-hangs in my case). Hauling my exhausted, weak-legged, lycra-clad self back up to my office to shower (yes they do have showers at the gym but I’m just too fat to deal) and get back to work and perspire out of my FACE for the next two hours while my body tries to come to grips with the fact my heart rate is back to normal.

Hard to then do it the next day, then the next and then the next - my choice, yes - but still hard. With lots of points where my Lazy Brain is saying “C’monnnn, you can stop now, you’ve done enough” and “Just stay in bed, it’s okay to rest, resting is part of fitness” and “Honey on toast. Honey. On. Toast."

“The comparison is the thief of joy.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

But I do it because I feel great. It makes me feel great. I am looking great. I’m much stronger. I love doing whatever I’m doing once I’m there. I’m doing it because if I keep doing it, this time next year I’ll be just like those other people in my class who can do burpees, and gecko-crawls and remember the boxing combinations. I want to be fit and strong for the rest of my life.

My potential for problems are all that “getting there” and the “cooling down afterwards” which I can handle when I’m organised and on my game, but it’s the part that is fraught with opportunities for my Lazy Brain to win points and drag me back to inactivity if I’m a bit tired or have snoozed too long or have missed afternoon snacks and people are cracking open the Arnott’s Mint Slices to share around the team for treats.

“Remember that it’s what we do most of the time that comprises our health, not what we do occasionally.”

— Dr Libby Weaver

I just wanted to acknowledge to myself, to my “self talk” that is isn’t all raspberries and unicorns changing my life. I haven’t just flipped a switch and it’s all good. My age-old sabotage mentality is the real battle I’m fighting here. Most days so far I won, but this last week has been a shaky draw.

Project: Move it! Week Five

And I’ve passed the half way mark. While I’m still ungainly and cumbersome in the gym and with my movements, I feel the progress I’m making. Each time I’m a little bit better, remember the routines a little longer, put more effort into each punch or squat or technique.

My “Lazy Brain” has not been so vocal with all the reasons to stay in bed in the mornings this last week. The routine of toting gear to the gym for work later has become an exercise of efficiency and regularity. People at work have stopped being surprised at my raspberry-coloured face and sweat-slick hair after morning boxfit sessions.

I’ve also become very keen on closing my Apple health rings every day. Making sure I stand every hour, select a workout before each session and walk lots on campus during the week.

Screenshot from my Apple Health app which tracks my movement, exercise and standing metrics.

I’m loving the changes I’ve made in my food too. Cutting out bread as one of the main vehicles of fats into my body (toast and butter) has been an easy transition to make than I would have guessed. Making sure I eat protein during the day really helps, so do the snacks mid morning and mid afternoon. Who knew that eating more food was gonna be the key to me enjoying exercise??

Today I had smoked salmon on fat slices of tomato with a smear of buffalo curd - a flavour explosion that satisfies everything!

My weekends have been a bit loose over the first half of this Move It! challenge, but now I feel like I want to move. Going for a walk or popping down to the gym or picking up an extra class is a lot easier nowadays. I have miles to go but I’m just loving this project so far.

For the first time in my life I have set a weight loss goal.

In the past I’d say something like “It’d be nice if I lost 5 kilos before this time next month…” and then did nothing really very much to work towards that goal. Yesterday I decided to commit to a weight-loss goal of “cracking the ton” which means to drop below 100 kilos by Christmas.

That’s four weeks away in case you didn’t know.

It’s a goal that I’m going to have to work at to achieve. It’s not going to be attached to any “organic” weight-loss, it’s going to take a bit of extra work to get to.

My other goal is to do one chin up. And right now, that looks like pure fantasy!

One of the reasons I decided to do this 8 week long Move It! challenge was to break the back of my fitness. To jam into that 8 weeks so much movement and exercise that I developed a level of fitness that would take the edge off working out regularly. To develop the habit, to learn the form and types of exercise that I like doing, and to keep going.

This is one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. I feel fantastic.

Charcoal ciabatta, buffalo curd, smoked salmon, tomatoes and pasteis de nata.