Come to T with me!
On Watercolour A to Z, our online journey through the watercolour alphabet, we looked at how to describe the form of an object using just two colours (A), then with three or four more, allowed them to bloom and flow freely…
When is an iguana not an iguana?
Quinacridone Gold, Quinacridone Red, Duochrome Blue Pearl and Indigo with body colour and scratching out. The answer, of course, is when it's a croissant! You may be familiar with the recent viral news item about an iguana that was spotted…
Landscape Heavy?
Within a few days of publication, my book, Tate: Master Watercolour, was named 'Book of the Month' by Artists & Illustrators magazine. I was delighted, of course, but that quickly turned to disappointment when I discovered that the first precious sentence of…
Master Watercolour
Master Watercolour is a practical book project that began in September 2018 and took me more than a year to complete. My first task was to look through the entire Tate Gallery collection for works in watercolour that I believed…
Reading the T’s and C’s
I've just returned from a three week walking tour around La Gomera, one of the smallest islands of the Canaries. COVID-19 put paid to our annual seven week trek across Spain, but with only eleven active cases of the virus…
Using the hand to train the eye…
In the latest edition of Seeing Things, my regular podcast on Frome FM about the visual arts, I talk to Paul Crummay from The Drawing Room in Wells. Next door to Heather Wallace's Heritage Courtyard Gallery and Studios, The Drawing…
In the frog house!
Many years ago, my mum bought a frog. Not a real one, but a wall-eyed, green and black-striped, purple-bellied beanbag frog, which (when my brothers and I weren't hurling it at one another), took up semi-permanent residence on the sofa…
Angry Art?
A long time ago, when I first began teaching art, I suggested to a class that we try our hand at abstracts. I remember one student staring hard at her paper in silence for about twenty minutes and then, setting to with the…
When the bubble pops…
La Finca Paradiso is a green oasis in the Almerian desert; a 33 acre bubble of tranquility where we make time stand still so you can concentrate on your painting and drawing... oh, and your tan... and swimming... and breakfast, lunch and supper of…