Annie B is a Spanish food and sherry aficionado who runs cooking courses and sherry tours from her beautiful town house in Vejer de la Frontera. I was delighted when she got in touch after seeing my sushi sketch to suggest I paint a Spanish food themed Christmas card (above) for her business Annie B’s Spanish Kitchen.

I gathered sprigs of umbrella pine and Annie sourced local ingredients from the market before we raided Annie’s kitchen for extra props and spread everything out on the table in her patio.

After finishing the pen and watercolour painting (which was punctuated by a delicious lunch) I scanned it into Photoshop, added Annie B’s logo, cropped it and added a festive red border before preparing the image for printing.

The original (un-cropped and logo-less) watercolour painting (above) was auctioned on eBay to raise money for Arte Vejer, a community group which promotes visual arts and creativity in and around Vejer.

The auction was a great success, raising over 150 euros for Arte Vejer, that really made my Christmas happy.