Dear Friend,

The big news this month is a major new initiative we have set up: an exciting ‘virtual’ online painting week at the Watermill. Every day of the week, for a couple of hours, you will be able to paint along with inspiring tutor Mike Willdridge, painting beautiful scenes at the Watermill and nearby. We think it will be almost as good as the real thing. (Not quite! So you may want to join us for real next year!)

At the top and the bottom of this introductory section you will see Mike’s paintings of four of the locations, and there are more pictures to entice you in the section below, together with details of how to register for this unique venture. We think it will be a perfect way to beat the coronavirus blues, enjoying painting sessions to brush up your technique in the online convivial company of like-minded people. We are expecting a lot of interest in this new initiative, so if you would like to join us, please register as soon as you can.

Just click
https://watermill.net/ for more info

You can find out more about our online sessions, in watercolour or pastels, just visit our Courses Online Page - here.

Meanwhile, in real life... We are confident that things will be more or less back to normal everywhere by the end of this year or the beginning of next, and we have organised another exciting season of our world-renowned creative holidays for 2021, in painting, creative writing, knitting and Italian language. Already they are filling up: we have more than 200 bookings out of a potential total of some 250/260.

So if you want to find out what all the fuss is about for real, now is the time to reserve your place. There are more details later on in this newsletter, but you can also just click here to see our updated Watermill website and to be inspired.

In this month’s newsletter we:

• show you some prickly night-time visitors to the Watermill;
• introduce more of our talented and inspiring tutors for 2021;
• tell you about the virtual ‘Evening in Posara’, painting in pastels with Rebecca de Mendonça
• show you around the Bronzino bedroom and contemplate his glittering portraits
• reflect on how knitting is good for your health
• condemn erudite vernacular utilised irrespective of necessity (!)
• celebrate a cheery Italian word, magari
• give you all the latest availability of all our creative courses.

Happy reading!

It may have been breakfast at Tiffany’s
but how about lunch and dinner
at the Watermill?
Credit: Paramount Pictures

Bring a partner: there's plenty for them to do

They don’t have to participate in the course, but they will be able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the mill and, whenever they want, to come out with you to our beautiful locations.

We also offer a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.

Almost as good as the real thing! Spend a 'virtual' week painting at the Watermill

The Watermill is proud to announce an exciting new initiative to help you beat the coronavirus blues! We have teamed up once again with our friend and painting tutor Mike Willdridge to produce a fascinating virtual painting week here.

Yes, every day for a week you will be able to join Mike online and paint along with him live as we make ‘virtual’ visits to the lovely locations we enjoy during our Watermill painting holidays: an imposing castle, market day in a walled mediaeval town, a nearby fishing village, the cloisters of a quiet convent, and a hilltop village with imposing mountains in the background.

Fivizzano market,
where you will pay a
'virtual' visit on Tuesday.

You'll enjoy daily interactive sessions on Zoom. Full of fun, it’s just like an international painting club where you can enjoy the convivial company of like-minded people. You will paint along with Mike every day from Saturday 28 November to Friday 4 December 2020 inclusive. Beginning at 2.30pm (UK time), each session will last a couple of hours or so. It’s the next best thing to being here and it will bring Italian sunshine and memories of la Bella Vita to brighten your days.

And to help give you the real flavour of a Watermill painting week, as well as those live daily paint-along sessions, you will also receive mouth-watering Watermill recipes, for you to try out at home. After each painting session there will be an exclusive video of Mike’s demonstration to refresh your memory.

There will also be a daily gallery where you can post your paintings and admire the efforts of your fellow participants' paintings. And you’ll even have a chance to win one of Mike’s outstanding paintings.

Mike Willdridge works in a wide range of media and is an enthusiastic and energetic tutor, often encouraging his students to be bold and to take chances. His classes are always light-hearted and fun. He will concentrate on watercolours, but is also happy to help with gouache and acrylics. A comment from a previous painter: “Mike Willdridge is a most inspiring tutor whose energy and enthusiasm encourages students to develop both their visual awareness and confidence. His patience and good humour create an enjoyable atmosphere in which students thrive.” Another said: “Mike is a superb tutor and his online, interactive painting sessions our inspiring and fun.”

Unlike many online painting programmes, Mike’s will not expect you to ‘look over his shoulder’ for a long demonstration, and perhaps be allowed to ask the odd question or two. No, you will be painting along at more or less the same time, trying out the watercolour techniques that Mike has shown you, step-by-step. He will demonstrate some basic techniques for only a few minutes before you start painting the same subject at home. Then, after you have had your turn, Mike will move onto the next part of the process. Lois Breckon will be on hand to feed your questions. Each session will last a couple of hours.

Before each session Mike will supply a photograph, sometimes a practice painting, and, if appropriate, a drawing of what is going to be painted, plus a list of equipment and colours for your palette. We will send these to all the participants in the session. After the session we will send you a link that will enable to you revisit Mike’s step-by-step teaching, and you will also be able to see the paintings sent in by the participants.

A montage of mouthwatering Watermill dishes.
Picture: Pam Smart

And there is more: Lois will supply you with recipes for some of the renowned mouth-watering Watermill dishes, from Gorgonzola soufflés to chocolate cake from Capri; from tasty appetisers to succulent chicken involtini.

And there is even more: at the end of the week we will put all the participants' names into a lottery and the winner will be sent one of Mike's original paintings from the online course. (To comply with the law there has to be an element of skill in a lottery these days, so were going to ask you a question about the Watermill and its painting locations. Readers of this newsletter will have a head start. The question is: what is the name of the walled mediaeval town where we go to paint on market days on Tuesdays?)

The cost?

It obviously takes a good deal of time and effort to organise the sessions and in administration and personal communications with each of the participants. So we think the virtual painting week at the Watermill is incredibly good value for money: £70 (British pounds) for all seven daily sessions and all the add-ons. That’s just £10 for each one of these inspiring, interactive online sessions. (This is a block booking: If you can’t make it each day, you will still receive access to all the videos, the daily gallery and have an entry into the lottery for your chance to win Mike’s original paintings.)

Here’s how to register

Please register by using our Courses Online Booking Form - here.

Why not also paint with Mike at the Watermill for real?

Painters in the Watermill walled garden.
Picture: Francesco Lastrucci

When you’ve enjoyed working with Mike online, why not join him for real, on one of his Watermill courses next year? There’s been such a large demand that we have opened up the second week for Mike, 28 August to 4 September 2021.

You can also learn about all our renowned creative courses, in painting, creative writing, knitting and Italian language, by clicking here. We would love you to join us!

Prickly night-time visitors

Here are a couple more night-time visitors to the Watermill grounds, spotted by Flavio Terenzoni, using one of those night-vision cameras to spy on the nocturnal wildlife around the Watermill.

These two prickly customers are istrici, our native porcupines, sharing the Watermill grounds with deer (of various sizes), badgers, foxes, wild boar and goodness knows what else in this protected environmental habitat. The picture above is a still from the video made by Flavio. You can see the whole video (some 30 seconds) by clicking here.

Picture: Flavio Terenzoni

As a guest at the Watermill, you will hardly be aware of our nocturnal visitors as you sleep soundly in your comfortable beds in your elegant bedrooms, but it is nice to know that we are sharing the wonderful countryside of Lunigiana with a host of other animals. But you may be awoken by a dawn chorus. We have an active population of birds and they can be noisy in the mornings, especially in the spring. Here (left) are some hungry youngsters contributing to the melodic cacophony.

Beautiful pastels from Rebecca’s online ‘Evening in Posara’

Our heartfelt thanks to Rebecca de Mendonça for a lovely online session early last month on the art of pastel painting. More than 100 people participated, many of them trying pastels for the first time.

The subject was a view from the nearby walled mediaeval town of Fivizzano, looking down the Valley of the River Rosaro towards Posara in the distance.

Here’s (right) Rebecca’s demonstration and below is a montage of a few of the paintings sent in by participants at the end of the session. We are sorry we haven’t room for all of them, but many thanks to those who sent them in.

So that you can see them a little larger, I made one of those fun, 30-second Facebook slideshows with these and a few other images. Just click here.

Rebecca will be back with another online session on Thursday 19 November at 2.30pm UK time. Please register your interest by useing our Courses Online Booking Form - here.

As well as watching and painting along with Rebecca online, why not join her for real, on her Watermill course next year, Saturday 26 June to Saturday 3 July 2021? To tempt you, here’s another beautiful Rebecca pastel, of the gate to the walled village and castle of Verrucola, where we go to paint on Mondays before a tasty lunch in a traditional Italian trattoria.

Rebecca will help you to capture the architecture and landscape of the beautiful Watermill painting venues with a combination of materials: soft pastels, pen and ink, Conte crayons and pastel pencils, separately and in combination, to achieve lively sketches and finished pieces.

The Watermill’s Bronzino bedroom celebrates a painter of glittering portraits

To whet your appetite for a Watermill creative week, we thought we might begin a series of ‘tours’ of our Watermill bedrooms, all of which have been painstakingly restored and, we think, elegantly decorated. They are all named after famous Italian artists, mainly of the Renaissance but also moving into the later Mannerist period.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bronzino, both the 16th-century Florentine painter and the recently redecorated bedroom named after him, pictured by the illustrious contemporary Florentine photographer, Francesco Lastrucci. That’s Francesco’s overview of the Bronzino bedroom above. We have made one of those fun, 30-second slideshows with more of Francesco’s pictures, which you can see by clicking here.

Agnolo di Cosimo (1503–1572) (above left) is usually known as Bronzino, perhaps because of his tanned skin, or reddish hair. He was a Mannerist painter who trained with Pontormo and was court painter to Cosimo I de’ Medici. He is noted for the glittering portraits of the grand Duke and his family.

Below (left) is a picture of Eleanor of Toledo, Cosimo’s wife, and their son Giovanni de’ Medici. Giovanni looks a little bored to me, but well aware of his status in 16th-century Florence society. Eleanor’s dress and jewels reflect the power of the Medici family, but I always think she looks a little sad.

Left: Eleanor and Giovanni - Picture Uffizi gallery, Florence
Right: Bronzino’s charming portrait of Bia de’ Medici

The Bronzino bedroom commands great views over the courtyard and gardens, with the Apennine mountains, the backbone of Italy, in the distance. It’s the perfect setting for a couple or two friends sharing (we can make the double bed into two singles). Come and join us: we promise you will have a bigger smile than Eleanor’s, whichever Florentine genius you choose, Bronzino or Brunelleschi, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Ghiberti, Gentileschi, Ghirlandaio, Lippi, Uccello, or Vasari (more about them in later newsletters). Details of all our renowned creative courses can be found by clicking here. Come and celebrate Italian genius with us.

Just to remind you that we are Cool and Green

Left: Vicki Norman’s evocative oil painting of sunshine on a nearby vineyard

Just in case you were worried that it may be too warm for you in the summer months in Italy, don’t forget that we are a thousand feet above sea level and enjoy cool breezes from the mountains. But within the Watermill complex itself, we are also Cool and Green!

We have installed air-conditioning units in all our bedrooms and in the public rooms (the dining room, the sitting room, the studio). They are all powered by our array of photovoltaic cells, installed last summer, which are already making more than enough power to ensure that we are self-sufficient in electricity. We have now produced more than 20,000 kilowatt hours of solar-powered electricity and what’s more, we’ve saved more than 14 tonnes of carbon dioxide production.