The painter, Raoul Dufy, was what they call a French Fauvist. My mother and I are quite keen on his colourful palettes and charming scenes – not at all fashionable or deep but just lovely to look at, really (at home we had a print of The Harvest above our dining table for years). Well, on a fine, spring Sunday  down at Morley Collge, SE1, we had a go ourselves. Mum brought along her private collection of Dufy stuff: a book, wrapping paper, various postcards, (the book especially got some envious looks as it’s now out of print), and so, suitably inspired we turned to our still life subject matter.

We splurged right in and started painting a part of the arrangement. Our efforts were, of course, pretty dreadful.

The tutor duly did her stuff for the next few hours and instructed us in the ways of the watercolourist. We got tips on colour mixing and for testing out your palette on a spare strip of paper, several different brush techniques and ways to mix materials (coloured pencil and wax).

To help us with our composition, we tried a few exercises with just a coloured pencil. We tried sketching what we saw using our non-writing hand, and then we stood so that we could not see the drawing board itself as we drew, but only the flower arrangements we were representing. Both liberating and challenging.

If you look the final achievements of the class I think we made remarkable progress throughout the day: