A Spring Woodland Watercolour Class

Today was all about trees and creating a lovely woodland scene.

Claire demonstrated the techniques needed for creating shape and tones to the trees

There were some beautiful pathways

Some artists got very excited by Claire's Bluebells woods, so went for those colours instead!

Really lovely, thanks everyone for coming, see you all again soon

Wild Animals Watercolour Class

A great day painting Wild Animals

Plenty of elephants, some polar bears and a leopard 

We loved the icy colours of the polar bears

And the strong warm colours of the wash in the elephant painting above

Claire spent time explaining and demonstrating the contrast between the light and darks of Watercolour paints.

Springtime Aga with Sarah Whitaker

It was lovely to have Sarah back on Friday for our Springtime Aga Class, delicious recipes, top tips and some great questions from the floor!

In the two hours, Sarah managed to fill every oven of my 4 door Aga and made a spiced lamb casserole, some tasty sea bass, new potatoes, a lentil and aubergine daal, a courgette tart, bread, a prawn and avocado salad, mushroom tarte tatin.

For pudding there were some gorgeous honey and ginger peaches, and an upside down toffee pudding.

And just to continue to show how the Aga can roast, grill, bake, steam, simmer etc, Sarah showed the speedy fried egg trick and the Aga Popcorn! Great fun.

After Sarah's demo, there was time for a tasting lunch of all the food cooked and an opportunity to pick up some bargains in her travelling shop of kitchen goodies.

Sarah will be back here for Summer Aga on Friday 6 May.  

10am - 1.30pm

£65

To book please email me

emily @treetops-newbury.co.uk

A Misty Morning Watercolour

We had some very atmospheric paintings last week.

Claire suggested that the artists used a limited palette of colours

and those who paint with us regularly to try colours that they don't usually use

So we had some beautiful shades created from

Quinacridome Magenta, Cobalt Violet, Quinacridome Gold and Cerulean Blue, all paints from the SAA

The cobwebs below were created by some very patient application of masking fluid!

Snowdrops Watercolour for Beginners/Refreshers

 

Stunning Snowdrops

Painted by our Beginners and Refreshers group this week.

At our B&R classes, Claire spends time at the beginning talking about paints, brushes and paper.

There is then time to experiment and play with the paints with and without water, mixing them together and watching how they interact with one another.

Claire uses a lovely thick paper from St Cuthberts Mill in Somerset.

The one we used yesterday was Saunders Waterford paper.

They are well worth following on twitter or facebook if you have either of those, as they regularly post some fantastic works of art from people.  Very inspiring!

Claire shares plenty of tips (and provides notebooks for writing it all down!) so by the time our artists are ready to start their painting, they are fully prepared ....

Today we had a delicious Mary Berry Salmon lunch alongside brown rice/quinoa and this very tasty Warming Pesto Butter Bean Salad from Deliciously Ella and her new Every Day book.

A lovely day, great group and great paintings.

Even the deer were relaxed!

If you want to see some beautiful snowdrops, Welford Park, near Newbury is now OPEN