old ruin near home with artist Renee Walden

old ruin near home

20 August 2024

Urban sketch of old ruin, Pyrenees, Spain.

Sketching an old ruin near our home. Listening to the sounds of sawing and hammering from our place. It certainly is not as tranquil as it looks in these photos. But these are happy sounds!

We've finally started the restoration of our very old house and the first step is a new roof.

We're one month into the project already and we've been living in our cellar. But today the big beams went up and it feels like our ruin is turning back into a house again. Hopefully before winter we'll be on the way to creating a home.

My plein air setup for watercolour painting

A free lesson for you!

One of my all-time favourite paintings of a stormy day in a ruined Roman town in Spain.

You can do this! Let me show you how. Join my community to receive this free video tutorial.

Join here

how versatile is potters pink?

1 July 2026

Potters pink is very pretty, dusty pink with an old world feel. It granulates beautifully and is very lightfast. While pretty on its own, it’s a super versatile colour to use in all sorts of ways. J...

a vase with white flowers

24 June 2026

Here's a deceptively simple painting delivers maximum impact for minimal effort — a wet-in-wet background and a limited palette do most of the work, while the result glows with light and looks far m...

summer flowers & an old fence post

16 June 2026

There's something irresistibly paintable about a weathered fence post half-swallowed by summer wildflowers. It's the contrast that does it — rough, sun-bleached wood against the soft, fleeting delic...