Beginners and Refreshers Watercolour

It was a beautiful sight yesterday morning to see a mother deer and her two little ones eating at the bottom of the garden!

We had a group of Beginner and Refresher artists in yesterday

Claire spends the first part of the morning explaining about brushes, paper and paints.

Everyone can then have a play with the water and paints, watching how it moves, creating different shades of colour, working out how much pigment is needed to create stunning colours.

Today's painting was a lovely blue door, touching on plant pots and hanging baskets, pathways and brickwork.

There were some great Blue Doors!

Norfolk Sunsets in Watercolour

Last week with Claire we held a Watercolour class

Our subject was Sunsets 

It really was a lesson in colour and washes ... 

... lots of washes!

We had gorgeous moody skies

Beautiful fields, marshlands and windmills.

The paintings really show a peaceful finish to a lovely day.

Next term's dates will be out shortly.

Keep your eye on the blog!

Lazy Summer Days Watercolour Class

For our last painting class of this term, Claire chose Lazy Summer Days in Watercolour.

There was some tricky drawing to start with, the huts, their steps and perspective!

But after that, the lovely washes for the skies and sand were much more relaxing, followed by the blue sea rippling onto the shore.

Lunch today was delicious Salmon with fennel and tomato

served with giant couscous with feta, onion and sun dried tomatoes 

and a chicory, pomegranate and pumpkin seed salad

The pudding of meringues, cream, greek yoghurt, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries went so fast, I didn't get time for a photo!

At the end of the class, it was great to see the works of art displayed in mounts, so we could see one another's paintings.

Have a great summer everyone, the Autumn term dates will be out shortly.

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