Railway Garden – An Adventure in Watercolour

This water-based media course is aimed at people with different levels of experience who would welcome one-to-one support and want to develop ideas and extend their creative approach.

Come and join Edinburgh artist Sarah Knox who is well-known for her atmospheric watercolour landscape painting and is brimming with enthusiasm about working en plein-air. She will share her tips about painting outdoors and will talk you through her influences and techniques.

Following a studio demo – you will seek inspiration outside and will draw with ink and stick or watercolour – searching out repeat motifs such as the lines of planting, the shapes and structures of sheds and beds or paint fellow artists drawing in the garden. Sarah will demonstrate how the process of making multiple drawings and paintings will inform work in the studio. In the afternoon – we will refine ideas: using colour more adventurously and reimagining studies.

‘Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily, so as to express myself more forcibly’ Van Gogh

The day will finish with sharing our artworks and reflection on our experience.

Preparation: please bring visual resources – photos or sketches of gardens or landscapes which we can refer to in the instance of bad weather and adapting to an indoor workshop.

Materials to bring:

Sketching stool (or option to take a chair outside)

Sketchbooks including good quality watercolour pad or paper

B pencils/charcoal/ erasers

Chalk or oil pastels

Brown ink and a stick

Watercolours and range of brushes

A3 drawing board with bulldog clips/ masking tape or drawing pins

(larger A2 drawing boards are available at the venue)

Sarah will bring samples of watercolour paper for participants to try

Most important of all: wear warm layers of clothing.

Tea and coffee are provided but bring a packed lunch and soft drinks.

To book, please click on this Eventbrite link