Friday Morning Block Creative Core 10-11.45

Here’s what we’ll be painting over the next few weeks…

Week 1 — Calendula Glow 🌼

Friday 30th September

Our monthly Botanical Watercolour classes started this month, and I wanted to bring a little whisper of that into our weekly classes too.

We’ll be painting calendula from life, focusing on those gorgeous petal shapes and experimenting with a different shaped brush to help create them. Keep yours botanical or loosen things up and make it a little more abstract… putting your own style into your painting is very welcome.

Week 2 — Beyond the Wall 🌾

Friday 9th October

Inspired by one of my own reference photographs taken near Garlogie, this tutorial is all about capturing that beautiful golden field beyond the old stone wall.

We’ll explore texture and varying greens, rather than reaching for the same green throughout, as well as having plenty of practice with that big atmospheric sky. Lots of lovely wet-into-wet watercolour, allowing the paint and water to do some of the work for us.

🍂 Two-Week October Holiday Break

Week 3 — Twilight Owls 🦉

Friday 30 October

For Halloween week, I wanted to embrace the season without going full-on Halloween… so our little owls are only slightly spooky and still very sweet!

This painting has a lovely storybook feel. We’ll create an old twisting tree, delicate bare branches and a soft atmospheric background before adding our little family of owls, each with their own expression and personality.

There’s lots of freedom to make them your own… sleepy, curious, wide-eyed or perhaps just a tiny bit eerie.

Week 4 — Pin & Paint 🧵

Friday 6th November

For our final tutorial of the block, we’ll finish with something completely different.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about painting the tiny glass-headed pins, little spools and sewing details. We’ll concentrate on really looking at our lights and darks to give those tiny objects shape and dimension, while exploring lots of different textures.

We’ll also be trying a new technique that we haven’t used in class before.

A really fun and playful painting to finish a wonderfully varied block… botanicals, landscape, storybook owls and something completely different to end. ❤️