How to Paint a Complex Street Scene in Watercolour Discover how to simplify perspective, light and shadow to create confident sketches and expressive paintings. One of the biggest challenges facing every artist is standing in front of a beautiful street scene and wondering where to begin. Whether you're sketching in a bustling French [...]
Atrani is on the Amalfi coast in southwest Italy. On our tour through Italy this summer I hoped to be able to visit Atrani as it was the location for the Netflix film 'Ripley' Based on the 1999 film 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' starring Matt Damon. The new version is moodily filmed in black and [...]
After painting the view of our village, we set off the following week into the surrounding countryside and this 'Live in Lockdown' shows a local mazet set up on a rocky outcrop. At the time of writing (April 2021) France was pretty much locked down with a 7.00pm curfew and a limited travel range of [...]
Spring in the air and, after several Live in Lockdown tutorials on our Facebook page, we decided to venture out of doors. This is a scene looking down the road as you arrive in our village of Pouzolles here in the south of France. The small river is running at the moment but within a few [...]
Come and paint this picturesque scene by following my step by step guide. A couple of weeks ago I rode my motorcycle up into the mountains of the Haute Languedoc Park, about 30 minutes from where we live. It was a beautiful afternoon, ideal for just to rolling around the early Autumn countryside. I rode [...]
With the whole of France now in 'lockdown', I find myself with a lot of studio time ahead. Painting en plein air is now off the agenda so I've decided to supplement our Painting in France YouTube channel with a series of 'How to Paint..'videos. Movement is limited to trips to supermarkets and pharmacies and [...]
SAA Artist's photo - You paint it. January 2020. A step by step watercolour tutorial of this shady scene I was perusing the SAA website after Christmas and I came across their 'Artist's photo - You paint it' January challenge. Every month an artist submits a photo as a reference for a SAA painting competition. [...]
'It was the night before Christmas..' A digitally painted Christmas card tutorial based on a scene set in our village. This was the brief I gave myself - to produce a digitally painted Christmas card.. I decided to base the painting on the view down to the church and chateau. I wanted to try and [...]
'Autumn in Paris'. An atmospheric oil painting by Russian artist, Yuri M. Bondarenko is the subject for this step by step watercolour tutorial. I don't normally encourage students to paint from a painting as you tend to get involved with copying the style too closely. Alternatively, I suggest working on a painting using another artist's [...]
Ah, those beautiful Italian Lakes - Como, Garda, Lugano Maggiore and Iseo - to name but a few. It's a really picturesque area and there are scenes crying out to be painted literally around every corner. This scene typifies the numerous small lakeside harbours where you can enjoy a cappuccino and watch the world [...]
