Pen & Wash Class - Lake District

On Monday we welcomed 10 artists for a Pen and Wash Class.

 

Claire had chosen a lovely bridge in the Lake District near Borrowdale in Keswick as the focus.

Time was spent on the layout and placement of the bridge and setting, before trialling different ways of using the pen, whether it was through lines, cross hatching, dotting and shading, and with different thickness of pen.  It's a very relaxing process.

After lunch, everyone mixed their paints ready to apply gentle washes across their picture.

For lunch we enjoyed a warming Smoky Chicken Stew, from  BBC Good Food Magazine, served with lovely fresh Treetops baked sourdough.  Followed by warm Gingerbread Cake and clotted cream ice cream.

Here is the Gallery of pictures from the day.

Our Spring and Summer Dates are now available to book on the website!

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Pen & Wash Class

Friday started with a brief covering of snow, but it had all gone before our Pen & Wash class started.

The theme was A Spanish Port, and Claire had chosen a lovely colourful image from Port Sa Playa in Valencia.

The artists used permanent pen to create their sketch, using their imagination and creativity to capture the essence of the original.

A light wash of watercolour paint was added at the end, the idea is not to 'colour it in', but to add splashes and hints of colour.

We enjoyed beautiful sunshine for most of the day.

Delicious pudding today, a jaffa cake ice cream loaf cake!

One of our artists captured this lovely photo of Spring blossom from the garden before she left.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Winter Scene Pen & Wash

Another day, another Winter Scene, but this time was a Pen & Wash class

Our artists spent a large part of the day drawing their scene from Bourton on the Water in the Cotswolds

Before adding washes later on in the day

Some glitter to give a frosty atmosphere

One of our artists, brought in her home made cushions that were en-route to the Cats Trust, we managed to take half of them off her hands and monies into the charity's pocket, they were gorgeous.

That's the end of term folks, thanks for joining us this term and year, we look forward to seeing you  in 2020.

Claire and I will be sending out the new dates shortly, watch the blog dates page and you email inbox

Pen & Wash Winter Sunshine

We had a lovely Pen and Wash class today, sketching Sturminster Newton Mill, an old flour mill in Dorset.

The group started the morning with a light pencil sketch to position their Mill, weir and the walkway.

This was followed with permanent black pens to create tones.

A Watercolour wash was then added.  The paints had been mixed with alot of water to create tints of colour.

And from one Mill to another ......

Today we used paper from St Cuthberts Mill in Somerset,  Saunders Waterford 200lb 425gsm watercolour paper, which is the perfect weight and has a great surface for this technique.

St Cuthberts Mill has been making paper since the 1700's, taking advantage of the pure waters from the River Axe.  They manufacture high quality artists papers using one of the few remaining cylinder mould machines in the world.

And here are a few sketches to round off the day!

Thanks everyone for a great day.

Pen and Wash In the Garden Day

When Claire and I planned this class many months ago, calling it 'In the Garden', we didn't expect to actually be able to be outside in the garden sketching!

I sent everyone an email saying hats and suncream, we are heading outside!

We found plenty of shady little spots for our artists to settle and make little pen sketches of flowers, plants, trees and even the house!

It was an incredibly chilled day, although Claire was kept busy having a larger area to get round and see everyone.

Once the sketches had been done, some watercolour washes were applied over the top.

Great practice for summer holiday sketchbooks!

Well done everyone and thank you sunshine!