Bluebells Watercolour - We are Back!

It was great to welcome back some artists for our first Watercolour class after 25 months!

Beautiful Bluebells; as well as watercolour paints we used texture paste for the pathway and pva glue and tissue paper to create texture for our trees.

We were joined by someone from the new local magazine Made in the Shire, who wrote a lovely review which I thought I'd share with you below:

What a day we had yesterday! We were lucky enough to experience one of Treetops Watercolour Workshops in Newbury, along with many other lovely people.

Treetops is such a stunning venue surrounded by countryside, and our Watercolour Tutor, Claire, was super at explaining every clearly and teaching us how to create our own pieces of art.

Included in our ticket was hot drinks, yummy cake, a very wholesome lunch, followed by a calming glass of wine.

The stroll round the grounds after lunch gave us all even more energy and inspiration to finish our creations, which we took home with us.

A highly recommend experience, either for yourself or as a gift for someone special!

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We enjoyed a delicious lunch of chicken & parma ham roulade, with wild rice, wild garlic and artichoke salad, and a crunchy bright vegetable salad with mustard dressing.  Dessert was Raspberry Cream Crush.

We are back for another Watercolour Class on 11 May, which is the stunning Isle of Scilly.

Bluebells & Silver Birch Watercolour

Last week we held a very popular watercolour class on Bluebells and Silver Birch Trees.

The 2 photos here show some early stages of Claire's demonstration piece.

Firstly everyone drew in their trees and used masking fluid, this took some time!

Once the masking fluid was DRY, a first wash of watercolour was applied, showing the background light, the pathway, banks and bluebells.

After lunch the masking fluid was removed and the styling of the trees and their leaves took place.

Blueberry Pudding

Here are our Bluebell Woodlands .......

National Trust Bluebells

Bluebells in Berkshire

Bluebells Watercolour 2015

It was a beautiful day for painting Bluebells

This is one of our popular classes and we do it most years

We cover washes, keeping the light, trees, foliage, "glistening", but the most important thing at the beginning is getting the path right.

Artists took advantage of the lovely sunny day and had a walk out in the garden and down into the woods to see the bluebells.

But got very distracted with other lovely things such as rhodedendrons and wisteria!

At the end of the class, Claire puts all of the paintings into professional mounts which presents them beautifully, it's always great to see what everyone else has done during the day and pick up some useful tips and advice.

Bluebells, Bluebells, Bluebells!

Wednesday morning started very misty, the Bluebells looked so bright when I went down to the woods, surrounded by grey and mist.

Our Bluebell watercolour classes have always been very popular, and if you click on the index on the right, you will see photographs from our past Bluebell classes.

Today's class was just for Beginners, and a few people who came back to us and used it as a Refresher class.  These classes involve a much longer introduction to the paints, papers, brushes, and plenty of time to play and experiment with mixing and creating colours before starting the painting.

Here are the amazing works of art from our Beginners!

The group managed to paint beautiful trees, they are very tricky to shade, position and look real, but the woodlands here with their meandering paths were very atmospheric.

The sun come out, it was a beautiful day and the blossoming wisteria smelt divine.

Our lovely artists!