I have just done 3 days of painting at Bullclough Art School . Earlier in the year I decided I wanted to learn something new and have been interested in trying oils. I signed up for a course at Bullclough with a tutor called Tom Voyce.

It was excellent. The venue, up on the Staffordshire moorlands, is fantastic. An interesting and beautiful house with adjacent purpose built studio that overlooks hills and huge skies. The group was mixed and felt the right size. We were well looked after and very well fed.

Tom as a tutor was excellent, concentrating on process rather than finished work, and using his method of image construction as a framework to help us. There was some demonstration but not too much and lots of helpful suggestions and individual and group feedback. It was a method of painting I have never used or really understood and although we used acrylics in the end the principles were identical for oils.

We worked on multiple pieces at once and I found this helpful as no one thing became too precious and you got a bit of distance from each one and came back to it with fresh eyes. I ended up with no complete piece but learnt loads and really enjoyed it.

We started off with 2 minute paintings of the hills, went on to sketching and collecting reference images and then worked on 4 to 6 boards each.

The boards were painted with a Naples Yellow ground. The one I am putting up was one I chose to without a ground to see what happened and is much colder than the others.

Then we sketched the image in red.

Fern acrylics

The next step was to put in the dark tones using phthalo blue, and even at this stage the image starts to form.

Fern acrylics

Then the whitest areas were added.

Fern acrylics

After this and ochre for areas of green and then further painting.

Fern acrylics

Fern acrylics

I cannot believe I managed to resist the temptation to overwork these and although this is not a finished “work” it is clear to me that working stepwise can produce a much more interesting image.

Fern acrylics

I did several others and this is one of the garden. the yellow here is obvious resulting in a much warmer and more summery image. I am also pleased in this one with the very dark areas I have  created leading to some pleasing contrasts.

garden acrylics