Archives for February 2018

I used this wonderful sunflower painting by watermill painting tutor Maggie Renner Hellman (with due accreditation) in an article I’ve just written for the English-speaking newspaper The Florentine about an Italian mathematician called Leonardo Fibonacci.

Next time you see one, count a sunflower’s petals, and invariably you’ll find there are 34 or 55 or 89. And look at the spirals of seed pods in the head: they usually come in sets: 21 one way with 34 the other; or 34 and 55; or 55 and 89; or even 89 and 144. All these are Fibonacci Numbers, part of a sequence of numbers discovered by the 13^th Century Italian mathematician. Each number in the ‘Fibonacci Sequence’ is the sum of the previous two: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377… These numbers keep cropping all over nature, not just in sunflowers. I’ll tell you more when The Florentine article is published.

It’s going to be a little early for sunflowers during Maggie’s course here this May, but there’ll be plenty of other flowers to paint. The photograph above of Tuscan wild flowers was taken near the Watermill in May.

So why not join us? We’ve only one room left on Maggie’s sun-filled, fun-filled, inspiring course, so hurry if you’d like to come. (I’ll show you Fibonacci numbers in an apple and a banana as well!)

We can promise you bright days and enthusiastic and inspiring tuition when Maggie joins us here again this May for another of her Courageous Colo(u)r workshops.

Here’s what some of her guests said about her course here last year: “Maggie is good at teaching in all mediums and with all levels.   She did wonderful demos in watercolour, acrylic, pastel and oil.  Every day we did critiques together and learned from each other. I highly recommend this art workshop as well as the most wonderful accommodation with great food and wine. A little piece of heaven in experiencing Italy.”

Another commented: “Our experiences at the Watermill were definitely the highlights of our tours! Maggie’s gentle and helpful manner coupled with technical skill and aesthetic sense opened the gates of motivation for students, making them comfortable in their new surroundings and primed for an exciting creative experience in those beautiful hills of Tuscany. I also appreciated Maggie’s husband, Lou’s ready assists for our physical comforts. What a dream adventure, the two of you, along with Bill and Lois, prepared for all of us!”!

Here’s a lovely oil painting by Maggie, of the village of Vernazza in the Cinque Terre. It is based on a sketch she made there during her week here and completed in her studio:

Maggie Renner Hellmann is a contemporary California artist who paints with love, passion and energy. Her work is characterized by a unique blend of loose, energetic brushwork and strong compositions of exuberant colour. She says: “I love the joy of color and the poetry of brushwork.”

Maggie is also an enthusiastic tutor who has been teaching for more than 15 years – and loves it! Her workshop will cover oils, acrylics, pastels and watercolour. She will encourage the beginner and challenge the more advanced painter. Maggie says: “In this plein air workshop, we will paint in various spectacular Tuscan locations. You’ll learn about, and practise, the core elements of successful paintings – color, composition, focal point, light source, values, positive & negative shapes, volumes, edges, brushwork & perspective, as well as how to use contrasts to give excitement and drama to your paintings and much more!”

Everything is included in the cost of your holiday at the watermill: tuition, accommodation (including all linen and towels), pre-dinner aperitivi, all meals and wines (including outings to charming local restaurants) and all local transportation (including transfers to Pisa airport and an excursion by train to Lucca or the Cinque Terre). You get to Pisa, Italy, we do the rest!

9-16 May 2018 

Maggie Renner Hellmann

Oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolours

One place left (or two people sharing)

To learn more about Maggie and her course at The Watermill, please click here.

This gentle watercolour of a market place flower seller is by watermill painting tutor Terry Jarvis. The soft colours and subtle shading produce a charming stillness.

You can join Terry and paint the flower sellers of Fivizzano, the walled Medieval market town near the Watermill where we go to paint on market day during our week-long courses.

Of course, you don’t have to paint the market stalls. There are plenty of other inspiring subjects, like the church belltower.

Terry is one of our most popular painting course at the Watermill. Why not join him here for a fun-filled, sun-filled, inspiring week, with all the renowned Watermill food and hospitality? We’d be delighted to welcome you here.

If happiness is watercolour painting, as Sandra Strohschein said yesterday, then part of pastel happiness is getting you hands dirty. That certainly seems to be the case for our pastel tutor Nel Whatmore. That’s Nel above, having just finished a floral pastel at Harlow Carr Rhs garden, the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden in North Yorkshire, England, where she is artist in residence.

Here’s Nel’s finished pastel (the flower is Iris reticulata)

The beauty of pastels is that you hold pure pigment in your hand,” says Nel, who ran a wonderful pastel course at the Watermill last year with her colleague Rebecca de Mendonça: “The unadulterated colour has an intensity I can’t match in any other medium. The textures you can achieve and the gorgeous array of colour is just fabulous.”

Come and see Nel at work – and try pastels for yourself. Nel and Rebecca will be back next year for another colourful pastels course, from Saturday 1 September to Saturday 8 September 2018. There are more details below.

We already have 11 bookings on this course, three of whom are non-painting partners, so we have room for three or four more painters. To whet your appetite, here are some pictures from Nel of last week’s course. Isn’t the one above incredible? It is Nel painting on a Watermill terrace early in the morning as the sun burns off the mist. Later on, some of the group joined her:

And here’s a picture of Rebecca demonstrating in the ancient village of Verrucola, where we go to paint on location on Mondays.

 Talking of locations, here’s a view of the Apuan Alps, where we go to paint on Fridays:

You can even pick our grapes, like Bec: 

Nel Whatmore and Rebecca de Mendonça have created The New Pastel School after years of friendship and mutual respect for each other’s work. These two experienced pastel artists share the tuition, combining their expertise and great enthusiasm for this versatile and exciting medium. See www.rebeccademendonca.co.uk and www.nelwhatmore.com for more about them).

They’ll help you to see that there are always diverse ways to do things, even when working with the same pastels. Of their first visit to The Watermill, they say: “We and our students were made so welcome. It was really lovely to savour so many aspects of Italy, including lots of delicious food!”

The course will include some plein air painting, studio based work and also trips out. Nel and Rebecca say: “We want to offer a new experience of using pastels outside and to introduce the joys of exploring how inspiring another country’s landscape and countryside can be. The atmosphere will be relaxed with one-to-one help, demonstrations. Join us and try something different.”

Everything is included in the cost of your holiday at the watermill: tuition, accommodation (including all linen and towels), pre-dinner aperitifs, all meals and wines (including outings to charming local restaurants) and all local transportation (including transfers to Pisa airport and an excursion by train to Lucca or the Cinque Terre). You get to Pisa, Italy, we do the rest!

Pastels

Nel Whatmore and Rebecca de Mendonça

1-8 September 2018

Three or four places

To learn more about Nel and Rebecca and their course at The Watermill, please click here.

A few days ago, we showed you a lovely new watercolour (above) of a vase of flowers by Watermill ‘Painter in Residence’ Sandra Strohschein. It brightened our day,

Sandra has sent us a few thoughts about why she was inspired by the flowers – and why she called her painting Happiness. She says: “When I was in the middle of a busy day I happened to look over at a beautiful bouquet of flowers sitting on my kitchen counter. Next to them, were some old grapes and a couple of tangerines.

“The sun was striking them in a way that just filled me with a surprising moment of happiness: that wonderful moment: when you see something completely random and it stops you in your tracks, where the only thing you can do is pause for a moment and appreciate the beauty. This for me is the essence of happiness: not contrived, but casual and spontaneous.”   

Sandra adds: “Maybe this is why I like watercolor so much: the spontaneity. We all talk about it but how to create it? Therein lies the challenge!   

“My process for planned spontaneity happens like this. First, I do a loose gestural drawing with my pencil to get a feel for where my brushes will go.   Usually this is when I plan on where I will keep my edges crisp and sharp.  

“In the painting Happiness, I planned these moments around the fruit at the base, the white daisy and the pink flower on the right.   With that plan I began the painting moving from one area to the next, letting colors spontaneously run together where I was not planning on a crisp edge. This all works out very well for me because I paint on dry paper.  It’s easy to hang on to edges when the paper is dry.   

“Of course, once an area is wet, that is the time to play and let colors mingle and merge. I prefer to mix colors on the paper rather than the palette.  This allows watercolor to be spontaneous.   Hopefully, if I have let watercolor be watercolor, my effort at controlled chaos will pay off. When everything is dry, I usually go back in and layer a few dark glazes to further emphasize the light and shadow. I also go in and dry brush a few things.  

“In the painting Happiness this is seen in the centers of the flowers and the blue lines defining the pottery. There are two moments that I love on the pottery: the way the blue line blurred at the bottom and the way the pink flower blurs into the pottery. I did not plan this, it just happened. Perhaps the paper had become a little wet and the colors ran. Instead of freaking out and trying to fix it, I just let it be.   

“I titled this work Happiness because that is how I felt when I saw the moment and all throughout the painting process. I stopped what I had been doing and immediately ran to my studio to paint what had excited me. I waited a long time to begin my life as a painter because I knew spontaneity would be a big part of it. Now, it is such a joy to be at a place where most of the time I am free to sit down and paint as the mood strikes. I hope you find yourself happy in your life as a painter too! ”   

 Sandra, our painter in residence for four weeks this Summer, will be spreading more happiness during her weeks here, painting not only flowers, but the wonderful scenery surrounding the mill. Her first two weeks are sold out, but we’ve places for the last two. Dates and detail below.

Sandra says: “The Watermill is one of my favourite place to paint and the hospitality is out of this world. “I’ve made so many great friends there over the years and I am looking forward to meeting many of them again as well as making new friends during our painting weeks.”

Sandra will teach in watercolour, but she says: “Students may choose to paint in acrylic or pastel as well as, or instead of, watercolour. I can instruct on how to put together a painting as far as composition, light, values etc… I cannot handle oil as I am allergic but pencil, acrylic, pastel…perfectly fine.”

Sandra’s first  two weeks with us, May 26 to June 2 and June 2 to June 9, are fully booked (you can join a waiting list if these are the only dates you can make.) We have two or three places left for the week June 9 to June 16 and four or five for the week June 16 to June 23, so now is the time to book on one of these inspiring courses.

We had a wonderful course with Sandra last year and our guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves. A couple of their comments: “Sandra was full of enthusiasm and talent and made every day a joy.  To have two chances most days to paint was utter heaven and in such wonderful surroundings. I didn’t paint a masterpiece but thoroughly enjoyed my week.  I hope to remember some of the tricks Sandy taught us and use them in the future.”

 “Many thanks to you both for a fabulous week. Your forethought, hard work and professionalism are very much appreciated. Nothing was too much trouble and nothing was at fault. You have created a gem. Please pass on our sincere gratitude to all your lovely people.”

Sandra Strohschein from Michigan, USA, has achieved an extraordinary mastery of her medium, transparent watercolours. She works in a fast loose impressionistic style, but above all, she produces passionate, emotionally charged paintings, full of energy.

As for her teaching, people frequently tell her about how much fun they have on her workshops and how nobody ever wants them to end. Another painting guest on her course at the mill said: “Watching your demonstrations was such an education and your kind and patient individual help was invaluable.”  

 Sandra Strohshein

Watercolours

Places left: 9-16 June AND 16-23 June 2018

Please click here to learn more about Sandra’s painting holidays at The Watermill.

I love the way our watercolour tutor Terry Jarvis captures the warm colours of the buildings in the unspoilt area of Lunigiana which surrounds the Watermill. Built largely of local materials, these ancient buildings fit into their surroundings in a way few modern buildings do. These are just a few examples from Terry’s portfolio.

Terry is one of our most popular painting course at the Watermill. Why not join him here for a fun-filled, sun-filled, inspiring week, with all the renowned Watermill food and hospitality? We’d be delighted to welcome you here.

Congratulations to our lovely pastel tutor Rebecca de Mendonça, who has been shortlisted as 2018 Artist of the Year by Artists and Illustrators magazine. The picture that gained her entry (above), London Afternoon, is in the exhibition of winning entries, at the Mall Galleries in London until 24 February.

Rebecca, who ran a wonderful pastel course at the Watermill last year with her colleague Nel Whatmore, will be back at the Watermill this September. Ten people are already booked in, but we’ve still a few places left: details and links below. Why don’t you come and learn the secrets of pastel painting from these two inspiring artists?

Here’s Nel at work early one morning last year on a Watermill terrace terrace early in the morning as the sun burns off the mist:

And why pastels? Nel says: “The beauty of pastels is that you hold pure pigment in your hand. The unadulterated colour has an intensity I can’t match in any other medium. The textures you can achieve and the gorgeous array of colour is just fabulous.”

Here’s a pleasant way of enjoying a colourful city dawn without getting up early or moving from your armchair. The painting above is a vibrant watercolour from Watermill painting tutor Andrew Geeson and you can see it being created in a soothing You Tube video.

So why not make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, the sit back and enjoy watching Andrew at work capturing a city dawn, by clicking here. Work in progress:

Better still why not come and join Andrew on his painting course at the Watermill this June. We won’t make you get up at dawn and you’ll paint rural landscapes as well as peaceful villages and market towns when the sun is well and truly up.

Andrew will be with us from Saturday 23 to Saturday 30 June 2018. There’s a link to more details about his course below. There are only a few places left.