Treetops

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Bluebells Watercolour

I started the day with an early walk amongst the Bluebells in the Treetops woods, they were perfect today, I took lots of photographs, and brought some into the house ready for the day's watercolour class.

It was a really good day, creating woodland scenes, with light creeping through and blankets of bluebells. We worked on our background, mid-ground and foregrounds. We used masking fluid and the glistening technique.

The pathways really help lead your eye into the painting.

I really like this photo of Claire below, not because of the technique she was demonstrating, but it just showed how she was completely colour co-ordinated with her first wash!!

Beautiful Bluebells

Monday, 13 May 2013

Poppies with CAMEO

Today was all about bright and beautiful poppies.

A local group returned to Newbury for a social day alongside painting a watercolour.

Claire helped them in her usual step by step style, explaining and demonstrating each stage in detail.

CAMEO (come and meet each other) are a support group (and lifeline they say) for parents of special needs children in Newbury, so today was a well earned treat and break.

Below are some of the finished paintings (some of which were painted by complete beginners!)

We discovered that the day was all thanks to William and Kate and the Royal Wedding!

Instead of presents, the Royal couple had asked for donations to their favoured charities.

One of the charities is the Berkshire Community Foundation, who received some money and they suggested that CAMEO apply for funding as William and Kate particularly wanted to support carers.

They were delighted to find out their application was successful; a great day at Treetops was planned, and we raised a toast to the couple at lunch, whilst also speculating as to whether the Royal baby will be a boy or a girl!

* See the film of Claire demonstrating "Poppies in a Meadow" on her website: www.saa.co.uk/art/claire

Friday, 10 May 2013

Summer Aga Class

Sarah cooked a huge feast of delights today at our Summer Aga class.

The recipes were put together with picnics, family celebrations and parties in mind.

Quick, easy and innovative.

We discussed how to make ahead of time, how to transport everything and then assemble them at the picnic.

As ever Sarah was full of her usual top tips and answered a wide variety of questions from Aga owners.

All the dishes used the Aga in a different way, so the morning was spent roasting, baking, grilling, wok-ing (!?), simmering, as well as Sarah showing us things the Aga could do that we'd never thought of such as the ironing and making yoghurt.

After the demonstration we enjoyed a delicious tasting lunch of all the food cooked, I didn't quite manage to take photographs of it all, but here is a selection.

Above is a gorgeous Halloumi Salad

A perfect 6" Pork Pie, made with the hot pastry method.

This was the best rice salad I have ever tasted, a delicious dressing, apricots, almonds and more!

Monkfish kebabs on a lovely Portmeirion dish, made especially for Aga, that can be hung on the runners inside the oven.

Pudding was the stunning chocolate cake, covered in whipped cream and fruit that can be seen towards the top of this post. Perfect with coffee.

A great day ..... Sarah will be back on Friday 29 November for Christmas Aga.

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

It's May! ........

I can't believe it's May already, we've got two great classes this month with spaces available,

Summer Aga

and Summer Flowers

Our Aga class with Sarah Whitaker is on Friday 10 May, from 9.45am - 1.30pm. It costs £65. Full of great tips and ideas, Sarah's demonstration class is great fun, and afterwards we enjoy a delicious tasting lunch of all the food cooked.

Summer Flowers, is a lovely class with Susanna Jarrett, a beautiful sweet smelling class with plenty of fresh and new ideas of decorating your home with flowers, using readily available flowers. There is the opportunity to create something amazing to take home with you. The day also includes a light lunch and a glass of wine. The class costs £80, this includes all of your materials, flowers, refreshments throughout the day and lunch/wine.

To book please email or call Emily 01635 44 850

For current availability on all classes click here

Thursday, 25 April 2013

Acrylics - Seascape

Another wonderfully mellow day with sunshine at Treetops.

Today, Claire showed us Acrylics with texture.

We painted a seascape taken from Porthmeor Beach in St Ives, with the waves crashing against the rocks.

Having painted the sky, sea and sand with only flat brushes, we then used texture modelling paste to create the rocks and swirling frothy waves that crash onto the beach. This can be done with either a palette knife or fingers.

The paste takes a while to dry, so we left it to work it's magic whilst we had lunch.

To achieve a lovely smooth finish, especially on our skies we used another product called liquifying medium, this gives a really good fluidity to the paint.

We used some great colours, and did alot of mixing, if you look carefully amongst the rocks, you will see aubergines, reds, yellows, greens. They may have been rocks, but there were parts in the sunshine, parts covered in seaweed, mussels and limpets, we really needed to give them some texture.