Painting workshops in France and Spring is in the air. You can always tell, when old friends return to these warmer climes from their Northern winter hibernations and all are keen to draw and paint sunlit scenes. Freshly brewed coffee and a fine selection of chocolate biscuits also help..

For the past two weeks several students have been working on a view through open windows onto a sunlit courtyard with an olive tree and Mediterranean backdrop – ‘work in progress’ seen above and below. I’ll be putting this up as a step by step tutorial in the near future. It’s a challenging subject, but once you’ve constructed the windows and window frame, the rest is plain..painting.

While some students continued with longer personal projects, others, just back to the area were keen to splash bright colour onto a spring time scene. Typically this week we had a student come along as a complete beginner. His wife had bought him a lesson as a surprise birthday present. Excellent idea. Not having put brush to paper since childhood he was a little apprehensive, to say the least, but all went well. By the end of the morning he’d produced  a fine painting of a pastoral scene. His wife was amazed when she arrived to pick him up, I’m glad to say, and he booked into next week’s lesson.

I also particularly liked the painting  done by a regular summer student  of the shepherd herding his sheep across a pine filled mountain slope. Great atmosphere and lighting. It can often help when you find a particular card or photograph that catches your imagination. Even better if it’s one of your own.

We’re also very busy fine tuning our week long Painting Holidays in France which start on May 26th. There’s a second week in June and two weeks in September. There are still some places available for our week in June and some in the September weeks. Click here if you’d like to know more.

Please feel free to get in touch if you have any art related questions and I’ll do my best to get back to you.