After painting the view of our village, we set off the following week into the surrounding countryside and this 'Live in Lockdown' shows a local mazet set up on a rocky outcrop. At the time of writing (April 2021) France was pretty much locked down with a 7.00pm curfew and a limited travel range of [...]
Spring in the air and, after several Live in Lockdown tutorials on our Facebook page, we decided to venture out of doors. This is a scene looking down the road as you arrive in our village of Pouzolles here in the south of France. The small river is running at the moment but within a few [...]
Come and paint this picturesque scene by following my step by step guide. A couple of weeks ago I rode my motorcycle up into the mountains of the Haute Languedoc Park, about 30 minutes from where we live. It was a beautiful afternoon, ideal for just to rolling around the early Autumn countryside. I rode [...]
Here in France we are on a serious 'lock-down'. This means that we're housebound with trips out being limited to supermarkets and pharmacies. Light local exercise is permitted albeit with a printed statement and passport in your pocket, including dog walks. All this means that we'll be spending a great deal of time in [...]
With the whole of France now in 'lockdown', I find myself with a lot of studio time ahead. Painting en plein air is now off the agenda so I've decided to supplement our Painting in France YouTube channel with a series of 'How to Paint..'videos. Movement is limited to trips to supermarkets and pharmacies and [...]
SAA Artist's photo - You paint it. January 2020. A step by step watercolour tutorial of this shady scene I was perusing the SAA website after Christmas and I came across their 'Artist's photo - You paint it' January challenge. Every month an artist submits a photo as a reference for a SAA painting competition. [...]
'It was the night before Christmas..' A digitally painted Christmas card tutorial based on a scene set in our village. This was the brief I gave myself - to produce a digitally painted Christmas card.. I decided to base the painting on the view down to the church and chateau. I wanted to try and [...]
'Autumn in Paris'. An atmospheric oil painting by Russian artist, Yuri M. Bondarenko is the subject for this step by step watercolour tutorial. I don't normally encourage students to paint from a painting as you tend to get involved with copying the style too closely. Alternatively, I suggest working on a painting using another artist's [...]
Ah, those beautiful Italian Lakes - Como, Garda, Lugano Maggiore and Iseo - to name but a few. It's a really picturesque area and there are scenes crying out to be painted literally around every corner. This scene typifies the numerous small lakeside harbours where you can enjoy a cappuccino and watch the world [...]
I've seen this view of Beziers many times on postcards and always thought it would make a fine painting subject. When we finally found exactly where the view was from, we climbed to a higher terrace and included the wintry plain trees which I think add to the composition. We were on an exploratory walk [...]
