Banish the Winter Blues Watercolour

Last week we had our annual 'Banish the Winter Blues' Watercolour class with Claire.

This year the theme was Snowdrops and Crocuses.

Most of the group managed two small paintings during the day.

Great paintings from everyone!

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

A Little bit of Perspective......

Yesterday's Watercolour Class was themed Perspective, after some requests for some drawing help and advice at previous classes.

It can be quite complicated in drawing and can lead into dangerous mathematical territory, but Claire's plan was to simplify it and to start with focal points and vanishing points.

Above is her talking the group through horizon lines!

Claire chose Venice, one of her favourite cities to paint.

With the narrow canal, buildings either side, and windows and shutters galore, it was a really good drawing exercise.

The drawings (using a ruler) took most of the morning and wore away many erasers!

But they looked fantastic, and with a bit of help from Claire the drawings reached a really good stage by lunchtime.

Claire and I did comment that due to the concentration it was the quietest class we have ever had! 

After lunch, it was time for the watercolours to come out

and for the washes and detail to follow.

The finished paintings were amazing, so much atmosphere, colour and Venetian feel.

It was a long day for the artists but I think they went home having achieved a great deal.

After all the stormy weather yesterday, the lashing rain and dark skies, it was lovely to get out this morning (mainly to check for tree damage) and see the snowdrops and the sunshine.

See you after half term.

Amazing Acrylics

We had an amazing day with Claire yesterday, learning about Acrylics.

It was a great group and we enjoyed gorgeous sunshine, bright inks and acrylic colours, a delicious lunch and worked ourselves very VERY hard, as the photos below will show you.

After wetting our paper, we used these vibrant inks either by dropping them on, or making them move around with the brush.  They make fantastic patterns.

The photo below, shows some of the group making a start on their base cover.

The theme we had today was flowers, either as a still life or an abstract form, so there were plenty of floral ideas and shapes to choose from.

Unlike Watercolour paper that absorbs water and colour very quickly, the inks just sit on the paper we used today, so they take a while to dry, you can see the shine on the one here.

Ideal for us to have a nice quick break in the sunshine whilst they dried! 

we all loved this so much and thought it a work of art just on it's own! 

After the base layer had dried, we covered it with school white PVA glue, scrunched up a large piece of tissue paper, then smoothed it out over the top of our painting, using a rolling pin to smooth out any large air bubbles.  It creates a wonderful textured surface for us to work on.

After it had dried, (more sun, more biscuits!) we re-wet the piece of paper and added yet more inks to create a second layer of depth and interest, without losing the lights and darks we had already created.

Then it was time to get to work with the acrylic paints and start creating our masterpieces!

Some people got VERY carried away and managed two or three, all different and when it came to our gallery at the end, the room was full of stunning, bright and beautiful acrylic paintings.

A fantastic day!

Here are ALL of today's painting from our very talented ladies

 (note: some had never painted acrylics before) 

if you click on the photo, it will enlarge the painting so that you can get a closer look

An Impressive Day!

Summer Term Watercolour dates will be published shortly