Flower Drawing & Painting Workshops.

I might be a few years behind dipping my toes into online creative courses but last month with flowers blooming around me I had the itch to paint and dived in big time. But first I kicked off with a live workshop with Norwich based botanical artist Verity Burton.

Verity co hosted the wonderful floral painting workshop at Settle - an extraordinary boutique cabin stay site near Norwich. While the rain pelted down for most of the day it didn't stop us collecting our days subject matter from the wild flower meadows and setting to work under Verity's calm direction. Dampened paper, free flowing inks and scratchy charcoals enabled fast work where there wasn't time to over think , it really was liberating. 

 

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We were treated to a delicous plant based lunch and all left feeling full and creativly nourished.

Online Courses 

I have followed Still Flower Drawing on instagram for a while so signed up for a few of Ellie's Live online courses. First up was artist and ceramist Rachael Cocker. Rachel's style and approach is very free with a focus on creating bold naive floral forms and pattern with gouache and pastels. 

 

The following week it was Moira Frith (Katie). Katie is an artist and biologist I have long admired for a her loose folklore and botanical inspired artworks. She shared so many of her personal ways of playing with watercolours which I'll defintly be exploring further.

To get the best out of the online workshops I soon realised pre - prep was key! I had the floral visuals up on an ipad before it started ( these are pre sent) and the course playing on a desk top computer and that worked well. I had the paints and drawing equipment all good to go and lots of jars of water and rags to hand, this way I wasn't  running around frantically looking for everything, interrupting the precious flow!.

All the Still flower drawing workshops are recorded and can be purchased if you can't make the live classes. But the best part for me is it's a commited time to just play with no expectation or deadline to meet.

 

Putting the courses into practice!

So with a few new approaches to floral drawing and painting, I spent a lovely weekend at Mum's verdent oasis doodling and painting. Mum hadn't drawn for years and after a few quick 20 secound sketches she was on a roll. Most importantly for me was that it gave us precious time together, dropping the chores and allowing time to slow.