Oils and watercolour
Penelope Anstice, from Scotland, is an accomplished painter in oils and watercolours. After gaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, she worked at the Verrocchio Arts Centre in Italy. She has also lived in the Netherlands and in London where she had her first teaching opportunity at the well-known Heatherleys School of Art. She still runs an annual Summer School watercolour course there.
Penelope returned to live in Scotland in 2006 and continued to teach private groups both home and abroad. She now has a studio in Dundee, and as well as flourishing as a professional artist, exhibiting regularly in a number of galleries, she is also much in demand as a tutor. In this, her first visit to the Watermill, Penelope will teach in both watercolours and oils. For those using watercolour they may want to add a bit of pastel on top for a bit of extra interest and texture.
Penelope’s painting philosophy
Penelope says: “I was still in time for some of the more academic teaching at Edinburgh Art College in the 80s, where we had compulsory life drawing every week, and I still believe in instilling those basic principles of drawing and painting, which underpin all good practice.
“My aim when teaching is to show people as much technique as possible: with sound knowledge of the building blocks of painting, students can begin to find the confidence to put their own stamp on their work.”
With lots of easy-to-follow demonstrations, Penelope will concentrate on the key elements of painting: composition, drawing, colour-mixing, tonal contrast and mark-making. She says: “I don’t leave students just to ‘express themselves in paint.’ Without the necessary basics this can lead to frustration and despondency. Self-expression develops over time as people’s confidence and understanding grows and they are able to move away from the purely representational. I believe all artists can develop their own ’language’ after the initial groundwork is in place to give it support’.
