Plein air workshop on Burbage Edge, August 3rd 2024

It was a wonderful day on Burbage Edge South, overlooking the beautiful Higgar Tor, with far reaching views over the Peak District. Five lovely students joined me for the workshop, and we started talking about what to look out for when outside painting as soon as we set off from the car park.

Although it was not peak purple heather season yet, we found plenty of these gorgeous shrubs to add lovely pops of colour in our paintings. When we arrived on the spot, I started with a demonstration of my process in creating a plein air painting. We talked about finding a view and composing the painting, preparing the canvas and deciding how to best approach translating the vast panorama in front of us into paint.

Then I demonstrated judging values and colours, making sure that relationships between elements were correct. After all the hard work, I jumped into putting down nice painterly brushstrokes and adding the striking colours of the scene.

After the demonstration, the group jumped confidently into their own paintings. It was impressive to see five beautiful landscapes unravel, whilst I helped with any tricky bits that might have come up. This was followed by a well deserved lunch break, and a lovely chat about art over biscuits.

The rest of the afternoon was equally delightful, with plenty of time to paint, chat and relax, asking any and all questions about the painting process. Once the paintings were finished, we packed them up securely to take back to the cars and took one last peak at the stunning scenery.

It was a pleasure to teach such a friendly group. Afterwards, I received emails saying how much they enjoyed the day, and how much they appreciated the atmosphere, complete with some pictures from the day.