Charity Online Daffodil Watercolour Workshop

 

We are very happy to launch our new Charity Online Daffodils Watercolour Workshop with Claire Warner in aid of Hospice UK.

£10 from each workshop bought goes directly to Hospice UK and support The National Garden Scheme and their Spring Flower Open Gardens.  Have a look at their website and see if there's a garden open near you.

The workshop is suitable for all levels of artist including Beginners, so if you'd like to have a go, this is perfect.  Claire teaches in an easy to follow step by step style.

(Professionally filmed and edited by the Storey brothers).

Learn how to mix and apply watercolour paint, master the wet in wet technique used, discover how to create the daffodils trumpet shape and find the contrast and shadows needed, but most of all just enjoy this happy and colourful subject whilst painting.

We also have a Daffodils Materials Box available in our Online Shop with everything in that you would need for this workshop.

Your Online Watercolour Workshop will be sent to your email as a PDF document.

The PDF will include:

A link to your online watercolour workshop video

A materials list of what you need

A paint chart of the colours used

Art tips from Claire

Images of all the stages of the drawing and painting

YOU MUST SAVE THE PDF TO YOUR DEVICE WITHIN 30 DAYS, IT IS THEN YOURS TO KEEP

Enjoy Spring and welcome the sunshine with these bright and beautiful flowers.

The Workshop and the Materials Box are both available to buy from the Treetops Website

HERE

A Winter Scene Art Class

 

Our final Art class of the year with Claire

A Winter Scene

Claire demonstrated with pen which was then followed with a light wash of watercolour paint.

Beautiful pictures, you can feel the cold in them!

We warmed up with a festive casserole for lunch.

After lunch there was time for a few quick sketches.

2023 coming soon, keep an eye out for our newsletter via email or follow us on facebook

facebook.com/treetopswellbeing

Water Lily Pond Oils Class

 

Our Oils class was bright and beautiful, we painted Water Lilies amongst a vibrant green and blue pond, the end results were brilliant.

We all had such a lovely day, the majority of our artists had not painted with Oils before and they really enjoyed themselves.

Claire starts the class with a full demonstration of the painting for everyone to watch, before they start to put paint on the canvas.

As you can see they are all so different, I love this shade of pink with the green and blue.

Below is our family trio out to spend a lovely day together, we also had another mother and daughter come together too.

Lunch was Scandi Salmon, which was delicious followed by a pear and chocolate crumble.

We will definitely be holding another Oils Class next year, so look out for the date.

Cornish Harbour Watercolour Class

 

It's been a busy month at Treetops so far, so I am catching up on my blog posts.

These photos are from our Cornish Harbour Watercolour Class with Claire on 1 November.  We also used a fine black marker towards the end to highlight certain areas of the painting.

We started with a gentle pencil sketch of the Harbour

Followed by a gentle first wash of paint.  

Some of you may recognise the harbour as St Ives

We had some colourful boats and some beautiful water painted.

Lunch today was a delicious lamb and apricot tagine served with flatbreads.

Thank you everyone for coming it was a lovely day.

Autumn Term dates announced ...

 

Hello Everyone

Claire and I have our Autumn Term dates for you, featuring a great selection of subjects and mediums:

Autumn Colours with Reflections

Watercolour

Tuesday 4 October

Hummingbirds, Kingfishers & Peacocks

Iridescent Watercolours

Wednesday 5 October

A Waterfall in Wales

Acrylics & Acrylic Inks

Thursday 27 October

Boats in Cornwall

Watercolour & Indian Inks

Tuesday 1 November

Locks & Reflections along the Kennet & Avon Canal

Watercolour

Wednesday 2 November

Lily Pond

Oils

Tuesday 8 November

A Winter Scene

Watercolour

Monday 28 November

A Winter Scene

Pen & Ink

Wednesday 30 November

All of our classes run from 9:30am - approx 3pm

Watercolour classes are £85, and Oils and Acrylics are £90

This includes all of your materials used during the day, a 2 course lunch with a glass of wine and refreshments throughout the day.

Please book through the website and feel free to email me with any questions.

Welcome to February

February is the month for Valentines Day and all things rosy and red.

We would like to offer you £5 off our online Autumn Berries Watercolour Workshop so that you can enjoy working with a lovely red paint.

If you haven't tried Claire's watercolour paints yet, we will post you a FREE Poppy Red tube, with every pair of paints bought from her range.  (value £8.40)

Mixed with a little transparent yellow you can highlight on top of the berries for glorious orangey tones, or mix it with a little blue for the underside of berries.

Claire chose to have this gorgeous rich colour made as she was finding other reds were producing a colour that was too dull for her taste, and needed a number of applications to give sufficient coverage.  Poppy Red has become one of the most popular colours in her watercolour range.

All of Claire's paints contains honey, an ingredient which has been used over the years by colour chemists to produce extra translucent and vibrant colours.

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In Yoga red represents the Root Chakra

The chakras are the points in our body where our energy flows.  The Root Chakra is located at the base of your spine and creates the foundation for all the chakras that lie above it.  It helps you to feel grounded and able to withstand challenges.

Rachel, our Yoga tutor, has created a lovely playlist on Spotify and the first four songs are specific to the Root Chakra, it is lovely to listen to whilst relaxing, meditating and during a gentle yoga flow.

We would like to offer you Rachel's online Woodland Yoga Workshop for just £12.50 this month, take some time for yourself and discover how relaxing and gentle Yoga can be.  Once you have bought the workshop you can watch it again and again.

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In season this month, red and pink vegetables & fruit are beetroot, rhubarb, apples, red cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli.  But I thought, seeing as it's Valentines Day, and it's been a VERY long January I would share my Red Velvet Cupcakes recipe with you!  (Some of you may remember I used to run Colourful Cupcakes a few years ago, running classes and creating cupcakes for weddings and parties).

For the Cakes:

140g self raising flour

2 tablespoons Green & Blacks Cocoa

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

110ml buttermilk

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Christmas Red Colour Paste (needs to be paste not liquid colouring)

60g butter

170g caster sugar

1 large free range egg

Preheat your oven to 170c/325f/Gas3

Mix the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.

In another bowl mix the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red paste, mix well so the paste is blended well.

Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and pale.  Beat in the egg bit by bit.  Mix in a small amount of the flour mixture half of the liquid mixture and repeat.

Beat well.

This will fill 12 cupcake cases in a muffin tin. 

 Bake for 20 minutes.

  Leave them to cool slightly and then remove the cupcakes onto a wire baking rack.

For the Icing:

200g cold full fat Philadelphia cream cheese

75g unsalted butter at room temperature

450g icing sugar

1 tablespoon warm water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the sugar, butter and water together.  Add the philadelphia, beat until the mix is smooth and shiny.  Add the vanilla.  Use a palette knife to decorate the cakes.  You can add red sprinkles or crumbled red velvet cake to decorate.

Have a great February!

💕

Spring Flowers Watercolour

A really colourful day surrounded by very pretty Spring Flowers

We were painting Flowers from still life today, there were an assortment of pretty jugs and pots filled with daffodils, tulips, roses and foliage.

Claire explained about the various shapes of flowers such as trumpets, cups and saucer, and let us play with the flowers to help create our perfect little arrangement.  Top tips were to angle the daffodil and to show the centre of the rose. 

We sketched with pencil first, and then used some masking fluid to protect some of our defined edges before painting our first background wash.

After lunch we painted the flowers and foliage.  We then had a subtle background and a bright and beautiful foreground, so we had to work on our mid-tones and add some colour to blend the two together.

To finish we painted the jugs and added our shadows.

Here are our paintings:

At the end of the day, Claire puts the paintings into mounts and we have a small gallery, they looked great!