A Winter Scene Pen & Wash Class

We had great full group for our last day of term.

Our popular Pen & Wash Class.

There were some fantastic black pen drawings today.

Claire demonstrated how to add colour to them with a light watercolour wash, remembering to keep the whites of the snow, and to add reflections in both snow and water to create depth.

Below is an example from Claire's inspiring sketchbook.  It's always great to look at for ideas. 

Below is Claire's demo picture towards the end,  you can see the smiley face in the top right hand corner of the board, this is to remind the artists from which direction the sun is coming from, this really helps with the shadows. 

Here are some wintery pictures, in the afternoon we also got some artists going on to try animals and birds.

Well done everyone, see you in 2017!

Rockies Stormy Skies and Seas Class

 We welcomed our Rockies group from Wokingham, back again for another fun art day. 

Claire had some amazing photos from West Bay in Bridport.

There were some lovely washes to start with, the beach in naples yellow, light red and then burnt umber.

The sky was for the artists to create with their chosen colours such as naples yellow, cobalt blue and light red. 

After the first wash had dried, there was a second wash on the sea which was cerulean mixed with indigo.

The key was then to keep the light colours from the first wash in the sky and build up the dark stormy clouds wet in wet style.

Light red and cobalt to create a lovely purple hue, indigo and a mix of ultramarine blue with burnt umber.  These stormy colours were only diluted with water slightly, so that the colours stayed dark.

Hard at work!

I love the colour card created below

Drying some of the washes with a hairdryer

After lunch everyone had the chance to try a smaller painting with the skills learnt earlier in the day.

Lunch was a delicious lamb and cranberry tagine, with pistachios, yoghurt and mint.

Squash salad

Giant couscous and quinoa salad with almonds, lemon and parsley

A lovely day, with some occasional festive singing!

Acrylics and Collage Class

Friday was our new class - Acrylics and Collage with Claire Warner.

Our artists bought photos, images, sand and shells with them to help create their pictures.

They worked on a canvas board, attached to cardboard.

Claire demonstrated the various techniques needed.

It may be quite hard to see on the blog but some of the pictures do have real photos and magazine/paper cuttings glued on to them.

The shells below were attached to texture paste to build up around them.

Everyone really enjoyed using the acrylics in this way, mixing the paints to match the colours of their images to help blend them together.

If you look closely at the birds below you will see they started as torn out pieces from a newspaper

Below is an unfinished painting, we thought it was a great idea, to incorporate the artist's grandchildren into a painting.  Hopefully we will get to see the finished painting.

Below is my favourite beach shot from last week's trip to the 'Wild' South West!

Not the best week of weather to go, but a great excuse to sit by the fires on lovely sofas!

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Mawgan Porth, North Cornwall