A new online course: Sketching Spring Flowers

Posted: April 3, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

I know I haven’t been posting much on my blog lately. I always miss that. But I have a good excuse. I’ve been painting lots of spring flowers, and after being so inspired by all the tulips at Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville, I decided to turn all that intensive flower painting into a new online course: Sketching Spring Flowers.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I love to paint spring flowers in my garden. I once even filled an accordion sketchbook with drawings from my garden after I planted 200 bulbs from Costco. This year, alas, I have no spring flowers in my garden, or none that I know of, because we moved house in November, well after planting season. But my former garden, and the one in Nashville, were the inspiration for this course. And I’m hopeful that next year I will have spring flowers in my own backyard again.

Here are a few of the watercolours we draw and paint in the new class: hyacinths in my window, crocuses as they open in the sun, and a wide swath of tulips blowing in the wind. And here’s a link to the course. Have a look! And as always, the course is on sale for $30 USD or $42 CAN for the first week and goes back up to the regular price of $35 USD or $47 CAN after April 9, 2024.

My brush with royalty

Posted: December 28, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 125 Comments

In all the commotion of our recent move, I forgot to share a few bits of exciting news. A few months ago, along with six other Canadian watercolour artists, I was invited to contribute a watercolour that would be part of a gift to King Charles III to commemorate his coronation in May, 2023. I should mention that King Charles has always been a keen admirer and collector of watercolour painting, which has a long and rich tradition in Britain.

And so, half-sheet watercolours by me, Poppy Balser, Neville Clarke, Linda Kemp, Peter Marsh, Lin Souliere and Rayne Tunley are now part of the Royal Collection Trust at Buckingham Palace. Pretty thrilling stuff, right?

And then in the November issue of Plein Air magazine, more great news: an article about the king’s interest in painting and our gift to him. You can see all of the paintings on the second spread of the article (below).

And then yesterday I received this update about our gift to The Royal Collection Trust: I wanted to let you know that the seven watercolours gifted to mark His Majesty’s Coronation have recently been framed and hung in the Redgrave Room at the Queen’s Gallery, London. This is our space for lectures and other special events, so while they are not ‘on exhibition’ as part of the normal visit to the Gallery, they are being seen by all those who attend such events. The watercolours will probably remain there through June, so if any of your artists happen to be visiting London in the next months, we would be more than happy to show them in situ!

Alas, I won’t be able to see my painting hanging at the Queen’s Gallery anytime soon. But I will have the satisfaction of knowing that several pieces of Canadiana will be there. The painting I chose for the collection was “Winter Boatyard”. I wanted something that was authentically Canadian, and what could be better than a snow scene from one of my favourite spots in my former neighbourhood?

Thanks so much to Linda Kemp for organizing this special gift and to Poppy Balser for connecting with Plein Air magazine!