Higham Hall artist in residence week successes October ‘14

We do like to keep things interesting at Higham Hall so an ever changing program of daily activities organised with George Cooke (principal) recently offered lots of different students and evening audiences a full gambit of art activities to be involved with in full day workshops and then watch in the evening kept me on my toes (quite literally) on a weeks residential art break as ‘artist in residence’ mid October.

It was a fantastic week of an ever changing painting subjects using lots of different media and it was really rewarding from a tutors point of view to see so many different students trying new things and really getting to grips with the creative techniques I was teaching. There were students from all sorts of backgrounds, levels of interest and ability all coming together under a single banner each day with a real open mind and willingness to learn. Everyone had fun too which was fantastic and with enthusiastic audience interaction each evening whilst watching me demonstrate, really rounded each day off perfectly for everyone.

With a mini exhibition at Higham Hall of my work displaying different subjects and media, this also added to the excitement of the artist in residence week and with a fully booked hall there were lots of guests who were able to see the show at different times to suit them based around their own activities and events within the hall and in the great outdoors also.

A thoroughly rewarding experience had by all and with sales of paintings and audiences who attended the exhibition throughout the week, the evening demonstrations and the popular theme workshops during the day it was a really rewarding experience had by all.

Would I do it again? You bet!

I’ll be teaching again at Higham Hall very soon in February ‘15 Expressive Drawing Techniques using lots of different media and I’m really looking forward to helping students develop their skills once more.

With places limited to 12 students only early booking is highly recommended to avoid disappointment.

For further details visit

http://rdcreative.co.uk/art_holidays/expressive_drawing_art_break_higham_hall

and visit www.highamhall.com

Higham Hall, Bassenthwaite Lake, Cockermouth, Cumbria CA13 9SH.

All at sea with Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club!

What a great turn out on a rough night for my demonstration for Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club on 23 October ‘14. 

With the weather outside doing its worst it was a good idea for me to 'do my best' and with a dramatic seascape in mind with crashing waves over the rocks, a storm outside lashing against the windows, the subject was quite apt!

I began by quickly getting into my creative stride sharing lots of hints, tips and techniques as I worked with vigorous energetic pastel marks...with plenty of audience participation keeping me on my toes throughout!

A totally enjoyable evening demonstrating for everyone the true merits of just how a fantastic pastel support such as Canson Mi-Teintes ‘Touch’ 350gsm can be to assist creative expression when working vigorously with pastels! 

Wild weather, wild coastal image and a wild man at the front demonstrating with pastels! the painting being pretty much finished within the 2 hour sitting (or standing in my case!).

Back in the studio a few days later I ‘calmly’ put the finishing touches to the painting which will now be printed in the May issue of ‘The Artist’ magazine in my ‘Coastal cliffs and Ocean Colours’ article. 

A big thanks once again to Harrogate and Nidderdale Art Club for the invitation and thanks to all who turned out to watch – the ‘thunderous’ applause right at the end was just great - it matched the weather once again didn't it!

For further information I’ll be teaching 'Dramatic seascapes with mixed media' (watercolour and pastel) on Canson Moulin Du Roy ‘not’ at ‘Patchings’ art Festival, Calverton near Nottingham on 6 June ‘15 so all are welcome to join that event.

There will be two workshop sessions at Patchings sponsored by Canson on the day – one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

The price of the all inclusive workshop will be about £30 to include a very generous goodie bag of Canson papers and FREE entrance into this prestigious art event and my tuition as well! fantastic value for money!

For further details about this exciting event and the great offer see await the April ‘15 issue of ‘The Artist’ magazine available in all good newsagents from 27 February or visit http://www.painters-online.co.uk/ 

Upon reflection with East Keswick Art Group

It is always a pleasure to teach a new art group different art techniques so it was absolutely great to be invited by Jackie Goldby who is an active member of East Keswick Art Group – an outstanding skilful art Group with mixed levels of ability known for their great work, to invite me to come and teach them recently.

Choosing a river study with flowing waters and mixed media art techniques I began to demonstrate just how responsive loose expressive watercolour can be for such a subject, especially when combined with pastel. 

Choosing ‘Langton Prestige’, the high quality 100% cotton rag content watercolour paper by Daler-Rowney, the high white of this ‘not’ surface watercolour paper worked exceptionally well creating great resonance of colour and sharpness of brush stroke whilst soft pastel over watercolour washes allowed lot of different surface marks to be created with lots of beautiful and expressive effects.

It was great watching the paintings from everyone develop to wonderful finished paintings at the end of the day which everyone was proud to take home. The little show we put on right at the end was thoroughly appreciated proving once again that realistically that every artist cannot work in isolation or a vacuum and an open minded approach (which this great group most certainly had) proved dividends throughout the day.

I wish East Keswick Art Group the very best of successes and hope to be back again in the near future.

For further information about East Keswick Art Group visit http://www.eastkeswickart.co.uk/

Rhythm and flow with Pateley Bridge Art Club

It is always a pleasure and joy to visit one of my favourite Dales in Yorkshire  - Nidderdale and what a great opportunity to combine art with another visit and paint with Pately Bridge Art Group in the heart of the Dale! 

‘River reflections’ was the theme for the day so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring along several sketches and reference photos created and taken during the Summer months form favourite walks along the River Nidd. 

This beautiful river twists and turns its way through Nidderdale flowing past many a lovely village including Glasshouses where we had our workshop in the quaint village church hall with beautiful countrside all around us.

Choosing Canson Mi-Teintes ‘Touch’ paper, (which is a superb support for pastel painting and available in 14 different and carefully created key colours for artists to paint upon), I selected ‘Burgundy’ colour for my support. 

The river study demo soon started to unfold into a colourful and expressive painting for the group working in a very expressive way to allow the colour of the support to really show through and help the painting maintain an 'earthy warmth' throughout to it.

Great finished results by everyone who took part and another superb day had by all with pastels painting on Canson Mi-Tientes 'Touch' 350gsm  pastel paper helping create some fabulous results. 

We can all thank Canson for thei papers but a special thanks is given to Dayna Cowper Programme Secretary for Pateley Bridge Art Club for all her organisation and co-ordination for the workshop helping to make this wonderful workshop such a great success.

I'm looking forward to teaching Pateley Bridge Art Club again in the near future. Just say the word and I'll be back - especially since this is my favourite Dale! 

Further information:
Canson Mi-Teintes ‘Touch’ paper is available in 14 different useful shades and tints.

http://en.canson.com/pastel-colour/canson-mi-teintes-touch

Canson papers are available from all leading art suppliers to include www.jacksonsart.com 

First class paintings on French papers

The Autumn season of full day workshops organised at Follifoot Village Hall, North Yorkshire ended on another high mid November with a full class of students creating some really outstanding Yorkshire Dales scenes with me using pastels on the fabulous Canson Mi-Teintes ‘Touch’ 350gsm pastel paper.

I was delighted to introduce this exciting, responsive pastel support to everyone following a wonderful 4 day event at Birmingham NEC at ‘Art Materials Live’ 6 – 9 November 2014.

Having first worked for ‘The Artist’ magazine painting water lilies in 2 full workshops sponsored by Daler-Rowney using ‘System 3’ acrylics I then joined Canson and the French team for the remainder of the show demonstrating the responsiveness of the papers to all sorts of artists. Great fun!

At Follifoot too there was a real buzz in every class as students discovered for themselves throughout each of the Autumn seasons workshops just how responsive Canson paper really are in all sorts of new and exciting ways. for creative expression.

Subjects such as River reflections with overhanging trees seascapes (always popular) and Dales scenes with pastels showed all who came just how great 'just letting yourself go' can be with everyone creating some lovely paintings in the workshops.

Using Canson Moulin Du Roy 300gsm (140lb) ‘Not’ and 'rough' watercolour paper for our mixed media classes, and Canson Mi-Tientes 'Touch' 350 gsm pastel paper, all who took paprt really experienced just how forgiving and easy to use the top quality Canson papers were to create great expressive and colourful paintings.

Roll on the next Autumn '15 workshops. We will be using the Canson papers a lot more in the future, I guarantee it, especially since everyone found the papers absolutely great to paint upon!

Just as a point to note, there won't be any Spring Follifoot workshops due to my commitments to residential art breaks and a new teaching holiday in Spain in 2015 and lots lots more other exciting art events for you to share with me!

For further information visit http://rdcreative.co.uk/art_holidays

The magic of the moors at Cober Hill

Having recently returned from a fun packed inspirational painting break at Cober Hill (Sunday 5 October - Wednesday 7 October) near Scarborough, the painting break I ran has filled us all with lots on new painting ideas with students eager to return ASAP!

With full day studio painting, evening demonstrations  and outdoor painting directly on the moors, it was a delight to see how everyone enjoyed it so much and with superb painting results.

Exploring different painting media on different papers and surfaces it was really great to help guide and encourage  all enthusiastic students just exactly what was possible when combining different media together - even outdoors!

Knowing the landscape close to Cober Hill had so much to offer with lots of different inspirational views, on the way to Fylingdales moor for our sketching and painting field trip on Wednesday we passed through some superb woodland on the way visiting the highest point of the moors close to Cober Hill to take in this superb view overlooking the valley in the early morning November sun - superb!

Realistically we were lucky to have a window of opportunity to paint on the moors in such changeable weather and experience the dramatic landscape at first hand at Fylingdales Moor for a few hours sketching. This was all we needed and perfect for all to soak up the atmosphere and experience the dramatic light and paint the beautiful colours and textures of the moorland heather in particular. The rising mists through the distant trees over the moor was quite spectacular.

Fylingdales Moor is very unique. Lone trees are scattered through the wide moorland expanse landscape almost acting as sentinels for this remarkable landscape. They made the perfect focus as well for our moorland landscapes later created with acrylic on canvas in the studio adding gesso and pumice to express the textures of the moors still further!

It was really great to teach a class full of really enthusiastic students lots of different creative techniques, share may different experiences, exchange ideas and above all have a really great time together painting some wonderful moorland paintings.

Finally a big thanks to all the staff at Cober hill who really made this art break for us all that bit extra special.

I’m looking forward to teaching again at Cober Hill and with bookings being taken NOW for the next art courses this is indeed great news.

Thanks again everyone. It was just great!

Here are the next three for 2015

1. Sunday 22 March - Friday 27 March ‘15. Contemporary seascapes with pastel and watercolour.

2. Sunday 6 September - Friday 11 September. Expressive landscape techniques with Watercolour and pastel

3. Sunday 22 November - Friday 27 November. Autumn landscape theme painting break with acrylic 

Get your skates on. Bookings are now being taken!

For further details for the above residential art breaks and to book your place on these exceptional art courses (which are superb value for money I might add) at Cober Hill, Cloughton, Scarborough please ring the administration team at Cober Hill on 01723 870 310 or email: enquiries@coberhill.co.uk

www.coberhill.co.uk

Cober Hill Newlands Road Cloughton, Scarborough YO13 OAR

New art career on the rocks!

Well actually, I'm riding the crest of a wave as it happens! My seascapes are pretty popular at the moment in all sorts of galleries which is absolutely great!

Taking advantage of this amazing early Autumn weather we recently headed for the one of our favourite costal spots on the East Coast of yorkshire - North landing near Flambourough.

The weather was spectacular and I just couldn't resist doing a spot of drawing in this amazing cove. 

With the tide rushing in, ideas for later studio paintings were quickly drawn, remembered and put to paper. 

With the crashing, rolling waves being so attractive, Alfie couldn't resist trying to 'tame and control' them again taking the occasional soaking in the process which put a mile on our faces! 

Here are the results of just some of my latest seascapes with reference from Flamborough, Bempton and near Saltburn.

Over the ocean
Mixed media on Saunders Waterford 140lb (300gsm) 'Not' watercolour paper
15 x 21 inches
Available

Heading out
Mixed media on Saunders Waterford 140lb (300gsm) 'Not' watercolour paper
15 x 21 inches
Available

Gannets are really powerful birds and so majestic in flight - a perfect inclusion in this East Coast painting bringing everything to life and one new finished painting to add to part of my 'Wildlife in context ' series for our forthcoming exhibition 'All Paintings Great and Small' from 16 April - 4 May 2015 at North York moors visitors centre at Danby, North Yorkshire.

It's going to be a great exhibition!

Back to Flamborough
Pastel on Canson Mi-Tintes Touch paper
9 x 12 inches
Available

More to come....I'll keep you posted!