Beginners Watercolour Class

A warm welcome to a full group of Beginners looking to explore and learn all about Watercolour with Claire.

Our subject and inspiration for the day was a beach in Jersey

Greve de Lecq

Everyone spent time learning about papers, paints and mixing colours, before starting their main painting with a beautiful wash and continuing the day in step by step stages.

Below are the finished paintings, they are great!

 

If you missed this class, we have a downloadable Beginners Watercolour Workshop on our website here:

HERE

it's about an hour long and you can learn at your own pace, stop, rewind and rewatch again and again.

We also have a Beginners Materials Art Box which is a great addition to the workshop, you will save about 20% buying it all together in this way.

Beginners & Refreshers Watercolour

Last week we had a very successful Beginners & Refreshers Watercolour class with Claire.

First thing is learning about the paints, brushes, papers and mixing

Claire demonstrates in a step by step style and offers plenty of support throughout the day

There were lots of techniques in this painting of a misty morning, washes, reflections, shadows, trees, foliage and creating the mist itself.

Below are the finished works of art ...

Claire is back this week for Swathes of Sunflowers, I have two places left if you would like to join us

9:30am - approx 3pm

£75

all materials, a 2 course lunch and a glass of wine included

Beginners Watercolour Snowdrops

Our Watercolour term started with a Beginners and Refreshers class

Claire starts these classes talking about the paints, brushes, papers and technique

after this everyone gets a chance to play with the paints and water

The next stage is starting the masterpiece!

The paintings today were fantastic and incorporated so many different techniques, water, trees, reflections and masking.

The snowdrops look lovely in the foreground and also along the banks in the background.

Below is our finished gallery of artwork

Brilliant!

Welford Park, near Newbury, has now opened it's doors for visitors to see their stunning snowdrops.

It's really worth a visit with your camera, sketchbook and wellies.

Opening Times

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

September's Beginners & Refreshers Watercolour Class

We had a lovely start to the new term last week

our Beginners and Refreshers class

Claire covered so many skills in today's class and they coped brilliantly!

The day started with learning about paints, paper, brushes and mixing before moving onto technique.

Claire showed the group how to put a composition together, sometimes using parts of various photos and images.

We had a rest over lunch before putting all the finishing touches on the paintings.

At the end of the class, Claire presents the paintings in professional mounts and displays them for us all to see.  It's great to see them away from the scruffy boards and messy tape.

If you look closely at the barn and the hay bales you can tell which painting our Farmer Artist did!

We will be holding another Beginners class in January.

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