Festive Flowers Class 2014

Our term finished on a Christmas high, with a lovely day of Festive Flowers.

Susanna had lots of ideas to help with decorating and theming the home this Christmas.

There were some great ideas involving gold leaf, jam jars, glitters and glue.

Using some lovely red flowers, berries and foliage, Susanna showed everyone how to make a simple hand tied bouquet, which would make a lovely gift at Christmas.

Susanna then demonstrated in great Blue Peter style how to put together a stunning Christmas Wreath.  We were shown how to wire fruits, walnuts and cinnamon.

After coffee and time spent looking at Susanna's selection of books, magazines and cuttings for more inspiration, everyone had time to make their own Christmas Wreath.

I love how they are all so different.  Yet they are all full of gorgeous colour and festive bits!

After lunch, Susanna taught everyone how to make small corsages from left over bits of foliage, berries and flowers, with floristry wire and tape (and festive ribbon!)

This kept everyone quiet for a while!

Susanna will be back in the Spring for more Flower Classes. 

Winter Landscapes Watercolour Class

Happy Smiles on our last day of Art Term!

Claire demonstrating today's Winter Landscapes painting.

Below are the finished paintings; 

Spot the ducks in this silvery wintery painting...

I love the ducks below!

At the end of the class, Claire presents the paintings in professional mounts, which instantly smartens them up, the tape is removed, the paintings are taken off the scruffy board and for a few moments you can't quite work out which one is yours!

It's great to see everyone's work at the end of the day, how different they can all be, even though everyone started with the same palette of colours. 

(Thank you to Matt for taking over today's photography so well!)

Today's composition was inspired by several ideas and images that Claire had.  She showed everyone a really interesting way of putting together a painting.

First of all she had a sketch of some farm buildings and a farmhouse.

From this she thought a wintery lake with reflections and trees would look really good in the forefront of the composition. 

Everyone sketched this out, masked the areas that were to stay pure white and snowy.  This rubbery texture dries and works as a resistance as you paint lots of layers of colour over the top.

Claire had these photos from the floods near her parents house, which she used to help sketch out the trees, reflections and water.

It's really useful to keep a filing system of reference material, even if it's simply; Seascapes, Landscapes, Flowers, Animals etc

We look forward to seeing Claire back at Treetops in January.

If you are interested in starting to learn to paint with Watercolour, or think you'd like a refresher class, then join us on Wednesday 21 January, for Beginners Watercolour.

Winter Seascapes Watercolour Class

This week was our final week of term for Watercolour, so we chose a Winter Seascape and a Winter Landscape, several people came to both and created some great works of art.

This seascape picture was full of atmosphere, dramatic dark skies, roaring waves and spray, and if you look carefully there are several seagulls spotted about.

We used 300lb Saunders Waterford paper, it's really thick and heavy so can hold alot of water, which is very useful when using today's wet on wet technique.

There were some lovely reflections in the sand.

Below are some teeny little paintings Andrea did, it's great to see people having a play with paint!

Today's class was especially good because out of all of these amazing paintings, we had someone who was a complete beginner and two ladies who had only been with us once on a Beginner Class!  Great achievements!

Aga Christmas Parties Class

Sarah Whitaker returned to Treetops for a new Christmas Class

Christmas Parties

Lots of great ideas for canapes, suppers and preparing ahead.

As Sarah cooked a delicious assortment of food, she was also talking us through how the Aga worked, how to use it efficiently and amazed us with how much she can actually stack inside the ovens!

After the demonstration, there was plenty of time to ask questions, do some shopping and then enjoy a tasting lunch of all the food cooked.

You can buy Sarah's great recipe books from here 

Sarah returns on Friday 6 February 2015 for a class

Making the Most of Your Aga 

Acrylics with Palette Knives

Acrylics returned to our timetable on Wednesday.

A day full of experimenting, colour and texture.

Claire started off demonstrating a Flower Market, showing some clever techniques and styles using various types of palette knives.

As usual there was a great array of inspiration from photographs and paintings. 

After lunch (I must mention the delicious Rachel Allen's Toffee Apple Crumble & Vanilla Ice Cream!) the artists had time for another masterpiece, this time onto a canvas.

We will be putting together our Spring Art dates soon, we are currently taking bookings for:

Beginners Watercolour - Wednesday 21 January

Watercolour Flowers - Thursday 26 February