The Rockies Return ....

This photo sums up our class yesterday, lots of laughter and fun!

Along with tons of drawing, perspective and lines ... before anyone was allowed to pick up a paintbrush!

It was lovely to celebrate a shared birthday of both our tutor Claire and Maggie, who came with her Wokingham Rock Choir friends.

Nearly the end of term .....

What beautiful weather we are having!

Next week is our last week of term and there are some spaces available on one of our Watercolour classes with Claire Warner.

Wednesday 2 July

Summer in the Med

A great painting with plenty of colour

9.30am - approx 3pm

£70

(includes all of your materials, a 2 course home cooked lunch, a glass of wine and refreshments throughout the day).

Suitable for all levels of artists.

Come and enjoy a lovely relaxing day. 

A Lazy Day on the Thames - Watercolour

A lovely painting day yesterday with Claire; A Lazy Day on the Thames.

Claire demonstrated a Henley on Thames scene, but there was also a Marlow scene and a Wallingford painting.

Beautiful blues for the sky and river. 

We mixed up three greens and masked various parts of our painting that we wanted to keep white and fresh.

I think everyone's ducks look very cute!

We have some spaces left on Wednesday 2 July - Summer on the Med, before we break up for the Summer Holidays.

A Celebration of Sunlight - Andalucia

Rain was due, but we ended up having a lovely day on Wednesday, whilst we painted an Andalucian scene.

There was alot of drawing involved, so the room was silent for quite a long time during the morning!

We discussed the vanishing point, and spent a while on perspective, as we started by drawing the lines for the building, it's balcony, windows and roof.

Pretty plant pots, tables with wine, and clever shadows really bought the paintings to life. 

Having a little rest outside ......

Delicious lunch today, Nigella's Spanish Chicken, Chorizo and New Potatoes, served with a lentil and beetroot salad, crusty bread and a green salad.

But pudding was very english, berkshire strawberries, served alongside meringues, double cream, blueberries and raspberries.

A very successful day.

Claire will be running another painting holiday to Andalucia in October, please contact me if you would like details.

Sunshine at Treetops

We've been enjoying the lovely warm weather at Treetops.

The wisteria is looking beautiful both looking out and looking back at the house.

Fingers crossed the sunshine stays for our Watercolour class this Wednesday

A Celebration of Sunlight in Andalucia

*

There are some spaces left on a couple of our July Watercolour classes:

Summer in the Med - Wednesday 2 July

and

Summer Sunshine - Thursday 3 July

Both classes run from 9:30am - approx 3pm

Bluebells, Bluebells, Bluebells!

Wednesday morning started very misty, the Bluebells looked so bright when I went down to the woods, surrounded by grey and mist.

Our Bluebell watercolour classes have always been very popular, and if you click on the index on the right, you will see photographs from our past Bluebell classes.

Today's class was just for Beginners, and a few people who came back to us and used it as a Refresher class.  These classes involve a much longer introduction to the paints, papers, brushes, and plenty of time to play and experiment with mixing and creating colours before starting the painting.

Here are the amazing works of art from our Beginners!

The group managed to paint beautiful trees, they are very tricky to shade, position and look real, but the woodlands here with their meandering paths were very atmospheric.

The sun come out, it was a beautiful day and the blossoming wisteria smelt divine.

Our lovely artists!

Cricket on the Green Watercolour

Today's Watercolour Class with Claire was Cricket on the Green.

 

We had an experienced group in today, so Claire had put together a painting full of things to challenge us, the first thing was getting the drawing angle and perspective correct on the cricket square.

We spent quite a long time on our drawings!

There were aspects we could add or take away, it was our own picture to create, so some added a village square in the background, more trees, fence etc  

Most people were very worried about the people.

Claire demonstrated her 'peas and carrots' theory, so we could get the ratios right, we used masking fluid to keep them white whilst we applied our washes.

We finished our cricketers with shadow, shading, hair and hats, they looked fantastic!

Not everyone managed to finish, it was a long day!  The two paintings below are almost done. 

One of our artists had bought along a photograph of a cricket green special to them, so it was lovely to see it coming to life.