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.

Venice Watercolour

On a beautiful day last week our artists (and Bambi) joined us for a Watercolour Class.

The subject was Venice, a place we have painted some years ago.

previous Venice classes

Claire used the lovely Saunders Waterford heavyweight paper, perfect to keep the transparency in this lovely painting's shadows, reflections and glazing.

The class started with 'vanishing point' exercises, which were needed for drawing in the buildings.

Below are the finished works of art ....

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

Beginners Watercolour Spring 2014

It's been a busy week, yesterday we had a Beginners group for Watercolour.

Claire puts nervous artists at ease with her gentle encouraging manner, and they all produced amazing works of art by the end of the day.

The morning is spent talking about and looking at different papers, brushes and paints, your tools are very important in helping you create the best possible masterpiece.  Claire particularly emphasises the quality of paper.  We use alot of St Cuthberts Mill paper, either Bockingford or Saunders Waterford, it has a lovely thickness, quality and finish to it, it can absorb all the water and paint we throw at it too!  Best of all it's British, made near Somerset. 

Today's class was a pretty landscape which is a good subject to break down into stages for beginners.

After everyone had had a good play with paints, water and flow, Claire started them off with the first wash, which was to create The Sky.

If you get a great first wash, it really helps the rest of the painting develop.

  

The buildings had already been sketched onto the paper and the paints were mixed to help create the mountains in the distance, the paint gently merging into the water to create a really strong mountain (or hill) scape.

A touch of Rose Madder, on the door, creates a focal point. 

In the foreground you can add flowers, a road, pathway or some foliage.

At the end of the class, Claire displays the paintings in lovely mounts and creates a gallery for us to admire everyone's work.

It was a great day with some fantastic paintings!

We look forward to welcoming you back for more watercolour classes.

As mentioned, here is the link to Claire demonstrating painting Poppies on YouTube

Poppies

Watercolour Goodies for Sale

Claire in conjunction with the SAA, has produced this gorgeous Watercolour Pad.

Perfect for taking out and about with you, it is available from Treetops for £9.95

It contains 12 sheets of heavy 100% cotton, 200lbs Saunders Waterford watercolour paper.

*

Also available is this Wooden Art Box, that contains:

3 SAA brushes

 6 SAA watercolour paints

(lemon yellow, raw sienna, rose madder, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, french ultramarine blue)

a plastic palette

set of 3 pipettes

plastic eraser

fabel castell 9000 graphite lead pencil B

It contains over £80 worth of art materials, but the Treetops introductory price, whilst stocks last, is £49.50!

PLUS Claire will also add a sample paper pack from St Cuthbert's Mill and a free brush case.

To order please email me emily @ treetops-newbury.co.uk or call 01635 44850.

And to learn how to paint the beautiful poppies on the front of the pad, visit Claire's video:

Painting Poppies with Claire

Simply Venice Watercolour Class

We had a lovely day yesterday painting our Venice scene. It wasn't as simple as the title suggested! There was quite alot of drawing to start with, to get the important skyline of buildings just right, they create a silhouette that can only be Venice.


Keeping in the watery Venice style, it was a painting that had several washes and we needed a good strong paper to take all the water we were brushing on. Claire had brought some Saunders Waterford paper, which is a very good quality 300lb heavyweight paper and perfect for the technique we were using of very loose washes, very typical of Claire's painting style (and also perfect for when she splashed her painting with the wrong paint, and was able to get it out, a thinner paper would have worn out, we all learnt a very useful technique there!)


We also had two new colours today, which were gorgeous, a green called Viridian, and a purple called Manganese Violet, both of which we used for the Gondolas, they were so vibrant, we had to be quite careful when mixing them up not to make them too strong.

It was a very chilled day, the sun shone, and we heard about two proposal stories from Venice!

We are now breaking for the Easter with Watercolour and will be back on Wednesday 28 April for Sunflowers in Provence, a lovely, big sunny painting.