Painting holiday news & Patchings Festival
Under the yew trees, Burnett churchyard.
I’m delighted to announce that I will be tutoring a painting holiday in 2017, for Alpha Painting Holidays. This will be in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, UK, which straddles England and Wales. I would be so pleased if you’d like to join me for this, and I can hardly wait to be painting at some of the locations.
Full details will be announced at Patchings Festival, where I will also be demonstrating at Alpha Painting Holidays’ stand on Sunday 12th June. (Holiday bookings will open after this time.)
I’m also lucky enough to have had a painting accepted for the open exhibition at Patchings (in partnership with the Artist and Leisure Painter magazines) which opens the previous Thursday (9th of June).
It would be nice to meet you there if you are attending the festival this year. Further details of the festival can be found here:
https://www.patchingsartcentre.co.uk/patchings-festival-20…/
Spring trees on a peaceful byway.
Pictured here are another two recent plein air paintings.
The first is a lovely churchyard I discovered at Burnett, North Somerset. Challenging particularly for the reason that my board was dappled with light and shade, and also for the fact that someone came to cut the grass just after I started the first wash. She must have reduced its height by all of 2 millimeters! (I prefer it when they allow grass to grow long in churchyards, where the often ‘unimproved’ nature of the grasses can be a great refuge for insects and other wildlife. And artists.)
The second painting is of a byway on top of a hill near Compton Dando. I went to find it specifically because I looked like it would have a good view across the valley, opposite from that which I can usually get to. It didn’t really, but it did feature some nice trees, many covered in ivy, just before most of the leaf buds were open.
It was a very quick painting – earlier in the day I had tried to paint a ‘tree portrait’, and got bogged down in detail. Here I tried to hold back most detail (and strongest tone) for the tree at left.
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