our french retreat - june 2024
16 June 2024
June means my annual trip to southern France to guide a painting holiday. 10 days where I share my love of painting outdoors with a small group of people giving them the skills to capture their memori...
2024 paintings Clear tags
lonely cottage
13 June 2024
I find these types of reference photos very intriguing. They may look bland and boring to other people, but to me they have so much potential - you can experiment with changing the colours of the elem...
lavender meadow in watercolour
2 May 2024
In just over a month I'll be heading to France to guide a 10 day retreat and one of the things we hope to paint will be fields of lavender :-) There's something so evocative about painting lavender in...
snowdrops in watercolour
25 April 2024
A very iconic symbol of the first signs of spring - snowdrops! They're so delicate and pure and super lovely to paint. In this lesson we also play with creating a bokeh effect - those circle highlight...
frangipanis in watercolour
9 April 2024
There's something so incredibly exotic about frangipanis. Maybe it's because they conjure up images of Hawaii and garlands of tropical flowers. But then there's also how fragile and pure they look, an...
a rock sculpture on the beach
7 March 2024
Join me on my favourite beach on the north coast of Spain. We visit every September and part of the tradition is that David builds these huge rock sculptures and I sketch them. Now you can paint one w...
white egret
22 February 2024
It's feeling rather spring like here in the Pyrenees, although I think it's only a short spell before winter returns again. I hope the birds know this, because they're wide awake already and the other...
delicate arch
1 February 2024
In 2011 we visited Utah and Colorado on a climbing holiday. The wonderful red rock formations, towers, arches and canyons, all set in the desert, were some of the best scenery I had ever seen. Long wi...
old door
25 January 2024
Who doesn't love watercolour paintings of old doors and windows? They have a charm all their own. And, certainly, a whole series of them hanging together would be really lovely. In this lesson we use ...