I spent five days in Ullapool exploring the Scottish landscape, sketching rivers, hills, and harbours. Using charcoal, pastel, and ink, I created imaginative paintings that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Messy, challenging, and full of discoveries — just the way I love it!

This summer I attended a vibrant garden painting course with Tessa Pearson at Lund Studios, exploring colour, pattern, and mixed media techniques. Her expressive approach to florals—layering watercolour, gouache, and oil pastels—inspired me to loosen up and see gardens in a new light. In this blog post, I share my experience, studies, and creative insights from three joyful days of painting and learning.

Still life with Pumpkin (version 1) | acrylic paint with collage and crayons | 14 x 14" I enjoyed yet another mixed-media painting course at the lovely Lund Studios a couple of weeks back. I've become an addict that needs a "fix" every so often! This injection of new ways of working and thinking creatively really moves me on in my practice. It’s been an integral part of getting back into painting after an absence of many years when I focused purely on printmaking. Still life

My Day 4 drawing in charcoal, black ink and pastel A couple of weeks ago, I attended a lovely 4 day art course at Paintbox School of Art in Cockenzie near Edinburgh. The tutor was the lovely Kittie Jones whose work I have seen and admired for a long time. I do love these small scale art education enterprises which seem to offer a great learning experience for a fraction of the cost of an art degree. I used to run Horsley Printmakers which held printmaking courses for many yea

Acrylic Painting on wood panel with water-soluble crayons (in progress) Funny title, eh? Let me explain: I've been using a very limited palette in my recent mixed-media paintings. To help me remember, I've come up with this phrase: Lemon = Lemon! (no prizes there!) Meringue = Magenta (my paint tube is Quinachridone Violet but I think of it as magenta) Pie = Payne's Grey (an indispensible alternative to black - it's softer with more blue in it) With = White Cream = Cyan, a coo

The inspirational landscape seen from Bullclough Art School I've just returned from a wonderful painting course at Bullclough Art School in the Peak District National Park. Now you may have noticed that my previous blog post was about an art course in Yorkshire so I have indulged myself somewhat this summer! But the experience was so, so good that I feel fully justified in investing in my own personal creative development. I can wholeheartedly recommend it as a way to shake u

These mixed-media paintings were made during a five day "Walking and Drawing" course in North Yorkshire with Debbie Loane of Lund Studios. We travelled to some marvellous locations and enjoyed working out of doors - no easels, just on the ground on long pieces of paper folded into a concertina. The shape really suited the wide panorama views of the moors and valleys we were seeing. The fields were a lovely fresh green, with the distinctive dark lines of dry stone walls runnin