Children's watercolour class.

This was a lovely session where the massive range of tones and colours from a simple palette can be achieved this colour mixing exercise can be used for reference by the children on future projects, and the session proved quite relaxing too! I love to see how some of the children do small tidy samples, and others do bigger 'looser' samples. This exercise is great for any artist, regardless of age, but do remember to write down the colours you are using!

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Arthur's DIY with the children.

What a lively workshop. Arthur taught the children all about woods, screws, nails and sawing. They all had a great time having a go. Arthur brought along some wooden stilts he had made which cause quite a stir! The next workshops will involve making tool boxes and bird boxes.

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Thursday 4th childrens watercolours with Nimbus!

What a fab day at The Canalside studios.  The young artists had spentva couple of weeks looking at different techniques, and this week applied them to having a go at landscapes. It vwas great to see them move away from blue skies and explore using different colours, from the smokey city scapes to vibrant island interpretations. Towards the end of the day we were joined by the beautiful Nimbus! A young Great Dane, belonging to Tabitha!

Children's introduction to watercolours.

The New Year heralded a new course! Our young artists were introduced to watercolours by creating vignettes of watercolour techniques, this included, wet in wet, wet on dry, graded washes, solid washes, resists and many more. The results were great and we look forward to seeing these new skills being put to use in future masterpieces!

Kuretake watercolours rock!

My lovely friend Sharon Curtis, from glitter angel, http://www.glitterangel.typepad.com, introduced me to Kuretake watercolours. I was delighted when I was given some from my son at Christmas. Needless to say that limbo week between Christmas and New Year was spent having fun with these paints. kuretake are opaque watercolours so are a bit like gouache, or acrylic but the pigment is amazing. I am exploring different techniques with water based paints, which takes me away from my comfort zone of oils. These are not the greatest paintings I have done, but they were fun to do and I think it is nice to share failures along with our success stories.

The children explored techniques of using simple pen and ink tyo create their artwork.  They practised different shading techniques, such as cross hatching, to create 3D images just using fine liner pens. The challenges with perspective raised their ugly heads again, but I think you will all agree they did very well!

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Children's drawing course

I am always amazed at the amount of detail these young artists apply to their work. We are still using fabulous inspiration from nature to practice and improve drawing skills.

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Tuesday 8 September Painting Class

What a great day! Some wonderful paintings and drawings done by the students.

 This painting was done by Julia. I love the colour combination and the moody sky. Just the water and reflections to do so looking forward to seeing it finished.

 Julie's squirrel in acquarelle is developing beautifully. She has really mastered getting the fur and the softness of the fluffy tail.

This is only Jim's second ever watercolour painting. I love the bright colours. Just need to put in the darks and he will have a very nice painting.










If you would like to have a go at painting, drop in next Tuesday and see us in action.  It's only £5 per session, either morning or afternoon with no committment. So just turn up on the day!

Tuesday 1 September Painting Class

September already, where has the year gone?
A few of our regular students are on holiday this week, but those who came made the most of their time and got stuck in to their paintings.

Here are a couple of photos from the day.

Jim has now completed his watercolour painting with trees and water. It has turned out really well and I have persuaded him to get it framed. Canalside Studios will be organising an exhibition of students work at the Navigation Pub on Hanbury Road.  Watch this space!

Julie is a new student. She has done some drawing before but wanted to have a go at coloured pencils. I suggested she try acquarelle or watercolour pencils. See her loveley drawing of a squirrel below.  Lots more work to do but it promises to be a very nice picture.



Post by K Hotchkiss, Freelance Artist and teacher

Tuesday 25 August Art Class

The students at today's morning art class continued with their pieces. See the results below.

Ruth started the painting on the church whilst on holiday. She just needs to finish the snow and she'll have a winning Christmas card! Ruth has now completed bridge in the snow. She's going to have a choice of Christmas cards this year !

Jim's first painting is coming along very nicely. I love the contrasting colours of the bright sunny day and shadows beneath the trees

Roma's gorilla has grown some hair! Beautifully handled in watercolour - not the easiest medium for fine details!

A triumphant finale on Friday

One of our artists can now put her feet up and sit back and enjoy the fruits of her labour! This tiger is to be one of three, the others being a lion and a gorilla, and is acrylic on canvas.   Roma builds up her painting by using numerous layers of colour to add depth and interest to her paintings. We will be posting a picture of her lion and look forward to her starting the gorilla very soon. We will try to post pictures of the gorilla as a work in progress.

Thursday - Children's Botanical Art

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Karen to attend a demonstration on coloured pencil drawing. The artist was a botanical artist, who had won awards for her illustrations of apples. Botanical drawings can have up to 40 layers of colour on them and have to be absolutely correct. Even with today's technology it is argued that the camera cannot capture the true 'essence' of the plant. This inspired me to have a go at botanical drawing with the children. They collected their own plants from the canal side centre and attempted to capture all the details such as the veins on the leaves. This was a particularly challenging task so I was delighted to see how well the children did however one particular young artist showed a Stoke of genius with her detailed drawings!

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