After what I definitely consider to be a run of a good few weeks at the easel, I suppose an ‘off’ week was only ever a matter of time away! The past week has been one of those weeks when I struggled with both subject matter and with execution! I had something quite different in… Read More
This week’s watercolour paintings were proof of the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention! The necessity in this case was time. Since the pandemic took hold, I now have less time than ever before for painting! I won’t bore you with the details of why this is the case but it really… Read More
After all the restrictions of working on the perspective of last week’s train station painting, I was keen to liberate myself with something altogether more free and easy this week. A weekend or two ago I had to return north to scatter my mum‘s ashes. One of my favourite parts about returning to the ancestral… Read More
Regular readers will know of my affection for Brighton’s train station and my various attempts to portray it. I think this affection was the starting point for some recent picture research where I was looking for atmospheric images of train stations. I can’t remember if I was also looking specifically for black and white photos… Read More
When the weather was as its recent best, we took a short trip along the coast to Rottingdean. The main aim was to try to avoid Brighton’s increasingly crowded beaches. It was a good move for lots of reasons – not least because towards the end of the afternoon we took some ice creams for… Read More
There are some subjects that just seem to attract watercolour artists, and I think the fish market in Venice is one of them. Off the top of my head I can vividly recall paintings set here by Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet, Keiko Tanabe and Gary Tucker to name only a few. Often, if you’re anything… Read More
This week’s post is inspired by a recent challenge that watercolour artist Jem Bowden issued to the followers of his blog/e-newsletter. As many readers will be aware, I’m a tremendous admirer of Jem’s work and really enjoy and learn from his updates and videos. You can see more of Jem’s work on Instagram, YouTube and… Read More
On Saturday 16th May I did my first ever Instagram live interview and watercolour painting demonstration! Here’s how it looked on screen with Philippa (aka @5ftinf) and I deep in conversation! For better of for worse – you can still see the entire interview and demo on Philippa’s IGTV channel. View this post on Instagram… Read More
Before Covid-19… … I was due to be heading to Cambridge this weekend for my Alvaro Castagnet Masterclass workshop. This was booked back in January and I’d been so looking forward to it. As the saying goes however, the writing was on the wall some time ago. I resigned myself to it being cancelled long… Read More
My recent trip north to attend my mum’s funeral was originally intended to last no longer that four or five days at most. Once there however, it just seemed to be the ‘right place’ to be. It also felt that to stay there, to be surrounded by mum’s belongings, by all the decisions she’d made… Read More
