Charles Evans - watercolour workshop 15 November

Wellington Heath Memorial Hall was a superb venue for this workshop led by Charles Evans.

First he gave us a quick demonstration of a highland beach scene.

You can watch him do a very similar demo on YouTube.

There's also plenty of other demos on YouTube and his website has lots of resources including step-by-step projects that you could work through.


"Trust me, I'm an artist." Not the first time Charles has used those words but trust him we did as we followed his guidance to create our own variations of a scene on the island of Bute.

We started with just the drawing and without knowing where we were going with it.

The images that follow show some of the progress, the finished painting and then our own efforts displayed on stage.

Brian Steventon - Café scene in acrylic

Sitting outside a café is one of the great pleasures when taking a foreign holiday and what wonderful subjects they make for painting. Brian brought with him some sketch books that show he makes full use of his time when out and about, whether on the continent or in Britain. His demonstration painting was based on a painted sketch which he showed us before beginning to paint.

Brian works with a variety of media - oil, watercolour, pastel - as well as acrylic. You can see more of his work at www.briansteventon.co.uk  and find out about what he offers in the way of workshops, holidays and as a tutor.

Brian used 2.5mm MDF board cut to 14" x 14" and primed with two coats of gesso (one coat horizontal, one vertical to give a little texture to the board). He showed us the colours he worked from in a stay wet palette but all his mixing was done on white enamel plates or dishes. He had drawn in the main outlines in advance so he was able to begin by blocking in some of the colour with a broad brush.

You can follow through the progress of the painting with the images that follow.