Porthleven Watercolour Class

On a rather muggy day yesterday we held our Stormy Seas Watercolour Class with Claire.

I have to start with the photo above as this is a lovely new Beginner and her first attempt at Watercolour!  Never be afraid to join us and give painting a go, we have small groups and the most amazing tutor to teach you.

We were shown some beautiful images from Porthleven in Cornwall, which has fantastic waves and stormy seas in the winter.

A Stormy painting at Treetops always includes toothbrushes and masking fluid flicked across the painting!

I'm sure you'll agree the paintings are all incredibly atmospheric.

I logged onto a webcam that sent a live stream from Porthleven, lovely and calm yesterday of course, but if you want to take a look it's here

A photographer called Carla Regler has some amazing photographs taken in Porthleven, Cornwall and all round the country, I can definitely recommend making a cuppa and visiting the gallery section on her website

Below is our own Gallery of some of the finished paintings mounted.

All that concentrating requires lots of food!

We had a variety of salads today served with a spinach, nutmeg and roasted red pepper roulade.

Claire will be teaching at Marlborough Summer School next and will be back at Treetops for a lovely bright and breezy Summer Florals at the end of August

Find out more HERE

Stormy Seas & Stormy Skies Watercolour

We had a brilliant day with Claire today painting Stormy Seas & Stormy Skies

To start with we used a heayweight paper, 300lb Saunders Waterford from St Cuthbert's Mill in Somerset, we needed this for the amount of water we were using, the building up of rocks with texture paste and the scraping technique that was then used.

Here are some close ups of the textured areas

We also used toothbrushes to spray effect crashing waves

Last few places ... Stormy Seas & Stormy Skies Watercolour

We have a few places remaining next week on

Tuesday 5 November

for Stormy Seas & Stormy Skies

This will be a great watercolour class with Claire Warner, that will create atmosphere, movement and texture.

We will use some other materials to create our paintings, not just watercolour.

Any levels of artist are welcome.

9:30am - 3pm

£75

All of your materials, a 2 course lunch, a glass of wine and refreshments throughout the day are included.

Email me to book your place

Rockies Stormy Skies and Seas Class

 We welcomed our Rockies group from Wokingham, back again for another fun art day. 

Claire had some amazing photos from West Bay in Bridport.

There were some lovely washes to start with, the beach in naples yellow, light red and then burnt umber.

The sky was for the artists to create with their chosen colours such as naples yellow, cobalt blue and light red. 

After the first wash had dried, there was a second wash on the sea which was cerulean mixed with indigo.

The key was then to keep the light colours from the first wash in the sky and build up the dark stormy clouds wet in wet style.

Light red and cobalt to create a lovely purple hue, indigo and a mix of ultramarine blue with burnt umber.  These stormy colours were only diluted with water slightly, so that the colours stayed dark.

Hard at work!

I love the colour card created below

Drying some of the washes with a hairdryer

After lunch everyone had the chance to try a smaller painting with the skills learnt earlier in the day.

Lunch was a delicious lamb and cranberry tagine, with pistachios, yoghurt and mint.

Squash salad

Giant couscous and quinoa salad with almonds, lemon and parsley

A lovely day, with some occasional festive singing!

Winter Seascapes Watercolour Class

This week was our final week of term for Watercolour, so we chose a Winter Seascape and a Winter Landscape, several people came to both and created some great works of art.

This seascape picture was full of atmosphere, dramatic dark skies, roaring waves and spray, and if you look carefully there are several seagulls spotted about.

We used 300lb Saunders Waterford paper, it's really thick and heavy so can hold alot of water, which is very useful when using today's wet on wet technique.

There were some lovely reflections in the sand.

Below are some teeny little paintings Andrea did, it's great to see people having a play with paint!

Today's class was especially good because out of all of these amazing paintings, we had someone who was a complete beginner and two ladies who had only been with us once on a Beginner Class!  Great achievements!