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.

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premixed greens for watercolours

9 September 2026

I'm off to Italy next week for my last retreat of 2026 and I'm getting all sorts of things ready. One of them is, of course, my palettes. One of the questions I get asked a lot is how I decide which c...

from plein air sketch to finished painting

1 September 2026

A couple of weeks ago, while hiking with friends in Val Ferret on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif, I made a decision that will surprise no one who knows me. An hour in, we stopped to shed ou...

sketching retreat in spain : sept 2027

11 August 2026

My first watercolour retreat in Spain — Cabo de Gata, September 2027. Four years ago I moved to Spain. I've been painting here ever since — and quietly planning the day I could share it with you. ...