La Clusaz painting weekends

Our relaxing informal watercolour weekends are perfect for individuals or groups who would like to learn watercolour painting or who would like to improve their techniques, as well as learn new ones.

One of the most important aspects of watercolour painting is colour mixing. Our courses offer tuition in colour appreciation, watercolour techniques, tone and hue and much more. They also involve painting outside - en plein air - to capture the true beauty of the scenery!

Our June and July 2010 weekend painting holidays will be tutored by Sonia Hawes, Bee Morrison, Diane King, Joanne Boon Thomas,

Sonia Hawes has sketched in South America, Antarctica, China, and Europe amongst other places and has a great enthusiasm for encouraging students to have a go and to discover their potential.

She is a qualified teacher and has run Adult learning classes in art, life drawing and creative writing for over ten years. She runs workshops for local authority events and art groups, takes part in The Big Draw and Northamptonshire Open Studios, paints in watercolour, pastel and acrylic and runs summer art days from her home in Eydon.

Her painting weekends aim to give individual and group help to students of all abilities to enable them to go home with sketches, small paintings and photographs which can be used as a starting point for further work. She also includes tutorials on sketchbooks and the use of different materials. 

Bee Morrison is an international artist, art holiday organiser, author, demonstrator and watercolour tutor. She holds an Honours degree in ART, fully qualified teaching certificate and has over 30 years of teaching experience. She is artist in residence at Bridlington, is the author of 2 books in print, and has appeared three times on national television. Bee also has her watercolour portrait of Her Majesty the Queen in the Royal Collection 

Diane was born in Glasgow in 1954, brought up in the north east of England, and has spent nearly all her adult life in south Manchester. She is a self-taught colourist, fascinated by how we see and feel colour.
She works mainly in watercolour, and occasionally mixed media and has recently threaded her experiences of visiting Africa, Greece, and Scotland into her work. She enjoys the flexibilty of watercolour from the flowing wet-in-wet painting to using undiluted paint to create foreground detail.

"The wonderful unpredictability of water colour means that every picture moves in unexpected and exciting ways, each picture offering new problem solving opportunities and great fun. I feel the inspiration for my work is somewhere between capturing the moment and the recording the journey and enjoying both! Colour has always excited me. Moods emotions, feelings are conjured and reflected in colour and tones. Colour makes my heart race.Colour stops me in my tracks, always makes me want to look again and share. It may be pink and orange streaks across an urban sky, or millions of green in an old dry stone wall!