Coastal Scenes - Watercolour

A brilliantly successful day! We had a full class of 8 yesterday, from beginners to experienced, and this included 5 different paintings being attempted, so Claire was kept on her toes!

We painted crashing rocks in St Ives, Coastal Path in Dorset, Perranporth Bay, a Hampshire beach and a harbour in Southern Ireland, quite a mix!

We mixed some lovely blues for the skies and seas, used plenty of masking fluid for our splashes and reflections and whether or not it was the topic itself it did create such a relaxing day.

Being a seaside day, we had to have fish for lunch and a scattering of seashells on the table!

Claire and I will shortly be deciding on our Spring 2010 dates, useful for both planning and thinking of Christmas Gift Vouchers. If you have any topics you would like to see covered, do email and let me know.

An Autumn Update

Beautiful colours are appearing everywhere, this is my favourite colour in the garden at the moment, bright pink inbetween the oranges, browns and greens.

Classes are booking up quickly for the remainder of the term, so I thought I would let you know how many spaces are available on each one, as of today:

Friday 16 October - Coastal Scenes = FULL

Monday 16 November - Winter Scene = 2 spaces left

Friday 20 November - Christmas Aga = 6 spaces left

Tuesday 24 November - Winter Scene = 3 spaces left

Tuesday 1 December - Christmas Flowers = 4 spaces left

Wednesday 2 December - Christmas Flowers = 2 spaces left

Hope to see you soon!

Watercolour Masterclass

Phew!! It was very stretching, this week's Masterclass. Claire was definitely pushing us to try new things and really tested our ability. There were quite a few moans and groans, stress and tension, but the beautiful sunshine and the large serving of Mary Berry's Divine White Chocolate Cheesecake definitely helped us!

The general idea of the two days, was painting dark into light, with negative painting included in that. We spent the first morning, pencilling our scene - a Market Place in France with "Mr and Mrs" eating their ice creams under a dark and shady stone archway.

The painting above shows where we were at after Day One; we had painted our first wash, windows, roof, archways etc. It all looked very soft and pale.

The painting below shows the finished painting. We spent Day 2, mixing a variety of dark browns, greens and creating blacks, to keep layering up our colour. The stone arch was actually bright orange to start with, which looked very scary! But we then put a dark glaze over the top and there was our stoney shade.

It was very hard to do the people, that is a class in itself I think!


Here is a row of the finished paintings, mounted, looking very professional. (If you click on the photographs, in theory they should appear larger in a new window on your computer).



Below is everyone hard at work! It was a great two days, we all left with a huge sense of achievement. Claire taught us so many new techniques and skills, we definitely felt we'd had a Masterclass!