Christmas Aga Class 2016 BOOK NOW!!

Our Christmas Aga class is slightly earlier this year:

Friday 4 Nov

There are a few places left, so please get in touch to book your place

CONTACT EMILY

The class is with Sarah Whitaker, an Aga accredited chef.

It runs from 9:45am - approx 1:30pm and includes a tasting lunch of the food cooked.

We alternate each year with either a beef or turkey menu.  This year it's the Beefs turn to take centre stage!  So even if you came last year, do come this year and get yourself another set of recipes to help with Christmas.

Sarah is great at giving you ideas of things you can make and freeze ahead of time, helps you with juggling the ovens on the day, and how to retain the heat.

There is plenty of time to ask questions.

Sarah also brings her travelling shop, there are some great present ideas, useful kitchen and Aga things, as well as her brilliant recipe books

The class costs £65 

Autumn Berries Watercolour

We last did Autumn Berries in 2014 and the paintings were great, so we always meant to do it again, I can't believe it's taken 2 years though!

My lovely neighbour had made a great arrangement of autumn colours and berries and Claire had lots of great photographs for us to use.

We started by pencilling our chosen image and then masked the outline of the berries and filled in the smaller berries.

We had a few new people today, so Claire spent some talking about the papers we use here for watercolour classes, Saunders Waterford, in various weights 140lb, 200lb and 300lb.  Paper is so important, these papers are lovely and thick and hold alot of water, so when we create our wet in wet paintings, it holds and absorbs the water and colour brilliantly.

Best of all it's made in Britain, at St Cuthbert's Mill in the Cathedral City of Wells in Somserset.

After the masking was absolutely dry (we use hairdryers to help this process along!) Claire put in the colours for her first wash, creating some loose berry shapes behind the main berries.

Here is her almost finished painting, after she had started to fill in the berries. 

Here are brilliant paintings from the day, I loved the addition of the conkers too! 

They were really lovely to look at and enjoy at the end.  They should all be framed and on the wall for this autumn.  

As a PS, I had a lovely autumn walk yesterday around Kintbury, the colours were stunning

If you're local, look at the link, you can park near the Dundas Arms, which is lovely for lunch either before or after!

Kintbury Canal and Meadow Walk - 5 Miles

Hares Watercolour

My favourite - Hares!

I did get quite carried away with today's theme, from my hare necklace, to hare front doormat, hare napkins and my various paintings, prints and hare bits and pieces from the house, out on display either in the kitchen or hall!

They look lovely, either as a solitary hare or a boxing pair.

Real characters, all of them!

We had a gorgeous lunch of Orange glazed Salmon with beetroot, chorizo and lentils, I can definitely recommend the recipe

RECIPE HERE

Hares was a very popular class and booked up very quickly, so we will put it on again next year, just incase you missed out.

A Day at the Beach Watercolour

At the end of September we were back to Watercolour and painted Cromer Beach in Norfolk

It was a really good class to work on washes for the sky, sea and reflections, we were able to use some great colours as we were showing the beach at sunset.

Above is Claire's demonstration piece once she had applied her first wash with her mixed and chosen colours. 

And below is everyone's interpretation of the seascape.

Our Pebeo Paints Class

Sorry for the delay in posting this term's classes on the blog, I've got a new computer and it's taken me a while to work out how the photos work on here!

Our first class of the term was a new one;

Pebeo Paints

They are acrylic paints with a high viscosity and can be used on glass and also on boards and canvas.

You can create great effects with the fantasy paints and watch them bleed into the other paint you've put down. 

Claire demonstrated to the group, before they were let loose with their choice of colours

We had a break for lunch before continuing into the afternoon

Here is our finished artwork ready to go home ...

(Pebeo paints aren't quite dry for 24 hours so we had our gallery after the class on the hall floor!)

Beautiful butterflies, kingfishers, experimental patterns and a seascape

A busy day!