I started the year with this painting of a jay, which had been living in my head for a few months. It needed to fly free! I like to learn more about each animal I paint. Did you know I studied zoology at university for a while? So I learnt about its acorn stashing habit …
Here we are in the middle of the third lockdown (if you are in England – different in Scotland and Wales) and it’s a toughie. The first we had the gorgeous spring weather, the second we had Christmas to look forward to, but this one is grey and cold and damp. Well, I need to …
Providing a diversion – beginners’ watercolour course Read More »
I set myself a New Year’s resolution to launch my own online courses….for all those people who couldn’t come to workshops. Scroll forward and COVID happened. It made online courses even more necessary, but gave me less time to develop them. Too much fire fighting! Scroll forward and finally I have done it! To coincide …
Yesterday, I lead a workshop with ShopKeepArty.com to paint a stag in watercolour. Isn’t it amazing that you can be painting with people in Canada, USA, across Europe and into Australia all at the same time? ShopKeepArty runs free taster sessions each week at 2pm GMT on a Tuesday and Thursday and also paid for …
On Thursday I did something new…. an online class with over 200 people. Shopkeeparty.com run free sessions twice a week, so I did I did one all about painting animal eyes in watercolour. It was not without drama. Having done the tech test on Weds, I woke up to find that the telephone wire which …
I’ve been busy writing a series of articles for The Leisure Painter about watercolour portraits. After all if I can paint a cow I can paint a person. Right? The challenge is to train your hand to do what your eye wants and secondly, to learn to believe what you see. We all have so …
Exercises to stretch your portrait drawing muscles Read More »
Trees are crucial to our landscape paintings, so I have done a short film about painting them in watercolour. First, here a really useful poster from The Guardian – it just goes to show trees are not green lollipops! Now you can hop over to YouTube to see the film: https://youtu.be/oAOo8PlaOrI If you want …
I promised my weekly class to try and do an online lesson, and after a struggle with tech I’ve done it. In these odd times, I thought you might want to paint along too. I did a pen and wash of a colourful market, from the photo below but trying to feel I was really …
I took a very interesting class on Domestika with a superb Spanish artist called Ale Casanova. https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/949-artistic-portrait-with-watercolors I like my layered portraits (see https://lizintheshed.wordpress.com/2019/11/21/portrait-in-layers/ for example), working over a purple underpainting or grisaille. But, I am finding it too controlled and I like a bit more sponteneity. Then I saw Ale’s work, and it really …
Hello, I’ve been quiet as in January I decided to do the Sktchy 30 faces in 30 days challenge. Delighted to say I managed to do it, but it took up a shed load of time. Then I have been writing my second book for Crowood Press and, also delighted to say, I delivered it …