Wow!
Some 120 people signed up for the first of our interactive, online painting sessions last Thursday, in which Randy Hale showed us how to put ‘pop’ into our paintings, converting a mundane photograph into an arresting picture. The painting above is the one that Randy made during the session.
As part of the service, those who join our sessions also get the opportunity to put their paintings into an exclusive gallery – and at the last count four dozen of you had already done so, and more are still coming in. You can only see the Gallery if you signed up to the session, so I thought it might be pleasant to make a small montage of half a dozen of the contributions, picked entirely at random, for others to see.
A big thank-you to all the participants, to Lois Breckon for so ably hosting the session, and of course, to Randy himself who not only led us through the painting brushstroke by brushstroke, but who also gave a critique of a sentence or three to each of those who submitted their paintings to the gallery.
We are so pleased to have created an international community of online painters (we have participants from many parts of the world, from Australia, via Singapore and Israel, through Europe and into the United States of America and Canada.) They love getting together every Thursday to learn new skills and enjoy the convivial company of like-minded people. *Even if the timing in your part of the world means you can’t join the session ‘live’, we make an edited video of it, which is available to participants the next day, so they can paint along with the tutor in their own time.
Our next online session is with our Watermill painting tutor and good friend Mike Willdridge, who has been inspired by the celebrated watercolourist Edward Wesson to choose a simple but dramatic snow scene as the subject of his online session next Thursday. Just click here to join up. This is Mike’s practice painting:
And if you would like to see the programme of online sessions organised by the Watermill for the next month or so, please click here,