Open Painting

We're well into writing the 2010 courses here at NPS, one of which will be a new 'monograph' style workshop on Turner. One of Turner's greatest achievements was the realisation of what he termed 'indistinctness' and what Art Histrians tend to call his 'Open Pictures'. Turner's insight was that given enough visual cues the viewer will 'complete' the picture for the artist, and do so far more compellingly than if the painter provides every scrap of visual information; thus a swirling mass of color becomes a much greater sunset than the delicate ones of Claude ever were, a vortex of green and blue, an angrier sea than Van De Velde ever achieved by 'fine' painting.

Since I started painting I've been a bit obsessed by this, so here are a few of my latest efforts - the re-posts have been ammended in the studio since the last shots were uploaded.

Studio Opportunity

I'm writing this post from the depths of the Loire valley, where we have taken nearly three weeks away from the business, to think about the School (as opposed to work like mad in it), to write the 2010 brochure, and make decisions..

As the School is going from strength to strength, we have decided to look for a painter who can deliver my courses in the unlikely event of me breaking a leg, going under a bus, or whatever - somebody to provide ad hoc temporary cover and work with my excellent studio assistant/technician Tim. If the School ever expands (at this rate it will) this person will be our first choice to run any extra courses we host.

If you have easy access to North Norfolk, and feel you want to do this (bearing in mind you'll be teaching in my style) - get in touch, and we'll take it from there.

Robert Gamblin visits The Norfolk Painting School

We were very honoured to host a days on location painting for Robert Gamblin and his partner last weekend when he took time from a visit to Europe to visit the Norfolk Painting School.

As a colourman and picture restorer Robert has an encyclopaedic knowledge of painting techniques, and the vision to use modern, stable materials to create Old Master and Impressionist effects that will last.

Here is Robert on the saltmashes at Morston in Norfolk taking a relaxing morning, before heading off with us in search of a ruined abbey to paint later in the day. It is not too far fetched to say that Roberts materials such as Megilp and Cold Wax have enabled students at the School to recreate some of the most challenging Old Master techniques both with ease and without concerns about toxicity; we look forward to working with him for many years.

2010 Course Ideas

We've been taking bookings for 2010 would you believe it; so I've started to work on firming up my course ideas.

After 2 years of running technique based courses, I've decided to run a few monograph style courses, based arounnf the styles, techniques and approaches of outstanding artists. The idea behind this is that this is how I taught myself to paint; close observation of good artists.

Turner and the Italianate landscape, will be a course on Romantic, sublime landscape painting; Turner, Cozens, Girtin and their ilk. We'll look at both the philosophy of Romantic landscape (sublimity, Goethe's colour theory etc etc), and the actual ways in which it was done, both from a studio and plein air perspective.

Constable and Dutch naturalism, will be a course on the Northern European tradition of realism; Altdorfer, Ruisdael(s), Hobbema, Constable, Seago etc. Again we'll take the philosophy and terms of reference these painters used as a base to learn their techiques from both plein air and in the studio.

Monet and the science of light, will be a course on Impressionism, optical theories (equiluminence, pointillissim, sim contrast etc), plus the lessons of French landscape from Corot to Pissarro.

Simply Skies will be a pure technique course, several days of sky painting covering various styles and periods. Finally we'll be offering a longer Essential Oils foundation in oil painting, which will assume nothing and be suitable for the absolute beginner.

For the time being there are a few images at the top of the entry of test pieces for the techniques I'll be teaching in the Turner course. We'll be offering about 40 places for each course (5 courses) over the year, so if you want one drop Jane a line as soon as.

Procedure for daily paintings

Get a very difficult photo or go outside. Work out a focal point and from that determine your compositional plan

Decide between a tonal and colour approach; you'll have both in every picture of course, but one should be dominant. The approach should work with your composition.

Start by unifying the elements in the scene to create as few 'blocks' of colour or tone as possible; if the painting was resolved with just these abstract blocks it should be a pleasing and interesting arrangement of shapes.

Block in your shapes, then develop them with tones/hues, keeping your lit areas opaque and the shadows translucent.

Try to minimise the detail to a few important and suggestive - rather than illustrative - marks.

The finished result should take 20 min to an hour, do one every day; if you can't think of a scene do a copy of an Old Master with this process.

Self teaching

Well it's halfway through our teaching year here at the Norfolk Painting School, and I've seen a number of students, both new and from last year and am more convinced than ever that success is 99% approach and 1% talent. For what it's worth here's my approach.

Start a painting every day, if you can't paint one plan one

1. Start a painting with a story or intention, make your compositional, tonal and colour choices from this.

2, Write a working sequence for the painting; mine is: Plan-Imprimatura- Sketch-Block-Model-Detail, with the middle stages repeated as neccessary for indirect passages. Each stage should have a limited aim

3. If it goes wrong figure out why, if you can't refer to Greg Kreutz's book, your friends or me.

4, If a particular effect eludes you (say a translucent rainbow), find a painting with one in it and go and see it in a gallery; you'll probably be able to work out how it can be tackled.

Practice in this manner is the most effective way to learn, backed up by practical books or courses that address specific things in your painting (plein air, mediums, sketching etc) and give you a framework for your own work.

Practice is a double edged sword; practicing bad habits simply ingrains them, so the golden rule is practice- assess- plan, then practice again and so on.

On a recent course we knocked out a daily painting every hour on 9x11 inch panels to get this method into the student's heads; the results were very encouraging.

'Vantage' show pictures

Gosh have we been busy here; hence the lack of posts! Late spring is our busiest time of the year in the gallery, as it's when we host my annual show, this year's was called 'Vantage' and featured views from the coast between the rivers Glaven and Great Ouse. Here are a few from the show.

Painting moving air

I've covered this a bit in my precis of Constable's techniques, but over winter I played about with recreating Constable's sketching and studio techniques.

At the heart of Constable's work is a fascination with the transient effects of weather, or more correctly how weather (clouds, mist, rain, wind) effects the apperance of light. Constable used two methods for capturing this; direct spontaneous studies, and more considered studio pieces.

With the sketch method the main issue is overcoming the problem of creating layered (indirect) colours with wet paint. Typially in direct painting, transluscent light effects are impossible to achieve, as the paint mixes wet into wet. Constable overcomes this with the simple device of a coloured imprimatura, which when lightly covered with transluscent pigment (say lead white) allows the effect of transparent light to be created. If this is counterchanged with passages of opacity, a very credible effect of light can be quickly achieved.

The studio method is based around indirect painting, although this does not mean that a imprimatura was not used. In addition to the imprimatura, transuscent and opaque passages, a further overworking of medium rich paint can be used to create the suggestion of flickering, moving skies.

Back to School!

Well I'm back to teaching now, with courses booked through the year and a few extra having to go in the diary to meet demand!

Over winter I tried out a load of new kit and redesigned the courses, based on the last couple of year' experiences and feedback; my aim was to make it as simple as possible for people to get into oils. In the past I've been guilty of offering a broad range of equipment and information on the foundation courses, it's all good info, but I wondered what would happen if I got absolute beginners to focus just on the basics.

The picture above shows three absolute novices to oils at the end of a 3 day Essential Oils course, these are 40 inch direct paintings of an oil from my gallery; as you can see they were delighted with their efforts; as was I.

It just goes to show how simple painting in oils can be if one follows a process. In case you were wondering I did not paint anything significant on the canvases, and nothing that appears as it ison the finished pieces. My usual method is to talk (theory), show (demonstrate) and help only if requested to do so.

Notes on Constable's technique

John Constable is a seriously underated and over-replicated painter; the familiarity of pieces such as the Haywain belie the originality and energy of his work. Over winter I set myself the task of looking closely at his depictions of weather; here are a few observations in no particular order of importance.

Working Method: Constable is a great direct (wet on wet) painter, but his early pieces in particular were approached with the intention of working in a staged, indirect or wet over dry technique. His indirect technique owes everything to Ruisdael, who typically used a split imprimatura of salmon pink and a warm earth - overglazed with an Asphaltum style glaze in the foreground. Constable's direct painting really takes off when he starts his skying (plein air) studies. In these he made great use of simpler, single colour imprimaturas, typically a 'bole' colour of red lead - or in the case of tinted papers a blue, ochre or grey,

Use of Impasto: impasto paint both appears brighter than and advances compared to thin paint.Constable makes great use of impasto to create areas of sunlit clouds, light breaking through clouds - and , particularly in his large studio pieces, spots of bright glittering reflected light on foliage. When combined with the glow and depth of an hs imprinatura - a simple plein air can have a great deal of 'layered' optical depth and complexity, despite being a direct oil. Constable's use of impasto in the fore and middle ground is less succesful, but again Ruisdael often laid his foreground paint in both thickly and crudely and JC may well have been following the convention.

Optical sky effects: JC uses the two main optical mixing effects in his skies. He often scumbles veils of dark, brownish cloud over (presumably dry) brighter clouds; a good example is in Kelvingrove where he uses a warmish brown veil to create a sense of depth and an advancing lead in to the picture. These appear to have a dryish resinous medium in the scumble as they are transuscent and broken but thin. Most of Consytable's effects of shimmering glisting light vcan be replicated with scumbling amnd glazing over a dry underpainting with a transluscent white (lead). In this manner advancing brownish cloud, bright impasto and transluscent fleeting lights are placed over the underpainting to create an effect of great movement and complexity.

Colours; Constable uses a cool dutch palette - but see the note on imprimatura above - he also used the newly available cool Prussian Blue, which when admixed with umbers creates a range of cold subtle greys. His skies rarely feature a warm blue from Lapis or Smalt. PB60 Indanthrone/Delft blue seems to be a good modern base for Constyable style cold skies, reserving Prusian admixed with white for the coldest, cleanest blues, and the PB 60 for the cloud mixes.

If there is a demand for it I'll post up a step by step for a copy of a specific Constable.

Back to the Studio

Well it's the end of my four month break from teaching at the Norfolk Painting School; I've just ordered the fifty (50!!!!!) canvases for students who are booked in for March. In fact my teaching year started in a way last Saturday with a demonstration to the Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle, a group whom I am very proud to be a member.

At the start of the winter I wrote down a list of things I wanted to learn;

• how to create the bright intense but transluscent blue of a clear sky
• how to create saturated but luminous and transcent sunsets, (ie without overglazing impasto)
• how to paint an impression of moving air without dragging the eges of clouds etc
• how to use megilp to recreate some of Turner's effects
• how to recreate Constable's use of impasto on the lit edges of clouds
• the use of wax in mediums
• understanding how light temperature effects modelling
• understanding how the colour of light changes percieved local colours
• ditto shadows
• understanding simple and complex modelling of form
• having a go at portraiture using the system taught to a friend of mine in Florence.
• working en plein air over winter on 20 min studies
• taking up a life class and trying life painting
• understanding the use of 'notans'
• Improving my grasp of creating the illusion of detail using abstraction
• trying out Turner's colour beginnings to create glowing imprimaturas
• the detailed practical use of all of the Gamblin mediums we imported for the school: cold wax, neo megilp, gamsol, galkyd, g gel, galkyd lite etc etc, plus the AQ and ASO paints, both individually and to the various recipies suggested by the mfr.

I also wanted to make a better study of Bacon, Van Gogh, Picasso and other painters who I don't particularly appreciate. I've always felt that while one must hold one's own opinions, if enough otherwise intelligent and cultured people think something is great, one must try hard to understand why, rather than just dismiss their opinion as wrong.

Finally I wanted to rewrite our courses for 2009 and incorporate anything of use I learnt, and to teach Tim (my studio assistant /apprentice) so he could help me with the 2009 intake.

As it turned out I managed to make a great deal of progress with most of this, and I'll be posting up some of my results from time to time; after I've revealed it on the courses.

Dark skies over Brancaster, oil 28x24 inches.

Sometimes simple is better, this was intended to be a more involved beach scene, but I liked it as it is. It's a bit crude as the oils are direct.

Rainbow materialising over the Wash, oil 10x12"

just a fun little atmospheric sketch; these have little value as works in themselves but are invaluable for studio working after the event.

Summer light, Burnham Thorpe graveyard 9x11 inches

I don't often rely on a knife this much but it was just the right tool for this 10 minute study of bright light in the atmospheric georgian graveyard at Burnham Thorpe.

Snow and Sleet over the coast from Weybourne, 9x11 inches

Often in norfolk the snow seems to fall in columns straight over the sea, so here's one as seen from the ridge over Weybourne painted loosely and rapidly for future reference.

Near Creake, 9x11" study

just another typical plein air of norfolk skies, these are really just colour sketches and sources for studio oils, but some have a value as informal paintings in their own right.

Studio notes; modern pigments

Given that I spend most of my time messing about in the studio with materials that would have been familiar to Rembrandt you might be forgiven for thinking that the Norfolk Painting School is a backward looking school, but you might be suprised.

In fact I've been looking just as hard at the new wave of modern pigments and materials available to contemporary painters and seeing how they can be used with traditional methods.

Many of the new transparent earth pigments (transparent oxide red, yellow etc) are so finely composed in terms of their pigment size, that they let enough reflected light through the paint film as to almost flouresce in a glaze, particularly laid over a suitably reflective surface, such as smooth white impasto.

My new delivery of Neo Megilp from Oregon has given me an opportunity the Old Masters never had; to try an impasto application of these incredibly luminous pigments and the results are no less than staggering; for the first time in my career I can see how Turner might have began to get some of the luminosity into his skies using the same principles, albeit with duller pigments and a more challenging (being shorter) resinous megilp formulation. I'll be messing about with this stuff over winter to see what it can do on various test pieces.

On the subject of modern pigments another couple from Gamblin have impressed me recently; chromatic Black and Quick Dry White.

Chromatic Black despite its name isn't a black at all, but a very dark complimentary grey intended (just as Payne's grey) for the subtractive mixing of hard to find complimentaries. For those of you unfamiliar with the principal it goes like this.

Imagine you have a bright orange which you with to desaturate, if you put black in it it will go muddy, use white and it will go chalky, in both cases not only desaturating but taking on the character of the colour you mix, so while you can do it this way it's unsatisfactory.

If however you put a bit of blue into the orange (blue being the complimentary or opposite) the orange will just appear a little less orange, rather tham muddy or chalky - in other words it is desaturated.

Put more blue in still and eventually you will get a perfect grey that is neither orange nor blue, carry on and eventually you will get less and less orange until you get blue. So that in a nutshell is subtractive mixing - put opposites in to deaden colours: orange/blue, red/green, yellow/violet and so forth.

However finding complimentaries is easy with primaries and secondaries, but gets more challenging when one wants to find compimentaries of subtle mixes. The old standby for this was Payne's grey a kind of universal de-saturator which would desatrate a little less aggressively than black, but could easily kill colours if overdone. Davy's Grey was sometimes used as a softer alternative, but as a single pigment (Davy's is a mix) didn't work at all with some colours.

Chromatic black is a modern alternative, a perfect complimentary grey, made from just two colours, both translusent with small pigment particles that can be added more easily than Paynes to desaturate. It works very well indeed, and isn't at all bad as a glazing colour for shadows, certainly livlier than Payne's and capable of appearing deeper than Davy's.

Quick dry white is a little less impressive, I hoped it would be a good alternative to PW1 (Lead), which I use in block ins to create quick drying underpainting. QDW is a mix of Titanium and Zinc whites with the addition of an Alkd resin to speed up the drying of these tw pigments. Quick it is compared to these notoriously slow pigments, but its fat oil content rules it out as a serious alternative to lead for underpainting.

As a mixing white though it performs very well, having neither the hopeless brittle translusency of Zinc or the deadening opacity of Titanium. The alkyd in the tube also make it good for creating the kind of stable impasto that can be overglazed in time (although more time than lead).

When working with mediums it also seems to have some of the 'tooth' of lead, floating well over and holding on to passages of medium rich paint that leaner overpaintings would lift. Whether this is caused by the alkyds I'm unsure, but it does make it useful as a lead replacement for mid to upper passages.

Both of these pigments are available fom the Norfolk Painting School (www.norfolkpaintingschool.com), and as with all of our stock I'll be happy to give you a brief hands on demonstration of how to use them before you buy.

Fronting the Storm; geese over Scolt Head

A 40x30 inch oil study of pinkfooted geese, dwarfed by a building storm over Scolt head on the North Norfolk salt marshes. The canvas was executed rapidly with transuscent layers of oils to capture a sense of the rapidly shifting light, rain and wind, with subtle colour key changes used to give the block of weather some atmospheric depth.

Fading Light, 9x11 inches

A plein air study, worked over in the studio to create the optical colours; these are 'impossible' colours for direct painting so one has to work them over as soon as possible wet over dry before the memory of the scene fades.

Early light holkham, oil 20x24 inches

A nice little study of light, notice the geese; a common sight this time of year over Holkham Bay.

Burnham Thorpe church 20x24 inches

A rare example of me working entirely in a direct alla prima style; no glazing, no scumbling - just oils as they were laid down.

Afterglow, Holkham oil 20x24 inches

A simple oil of fading light, now winter is upon us my interest in nocturnes is re-emerging!

North creake church from the hill 9x11 inch panel

A great example of the kind of working study we produce on the 'On Location' course, simply a painted sketch intended as a record of weather.

Late rain, Brancaster 40x30 inch oil

En Plein Air study

Cley from the marsh 10x12" study

A few plein air panels and new larger studies.

Over this summer I was out and about with students working in the field, and had the opportunity to knock out a few panels and sketches by way of demonstration. These lively little studies are simply about capturing a sense of light, place, atmosphere and weather, and are used at the School as source materials for larger paintings.

Since closing the School for 2008, I have had the opportunity to work up a few larger 30x40 inch canvases in this evocative loose style to produce contemporary oils which have lots of imaginative space, suggestion and atmosphere but are far less resolved than my usual studio oils. I like these very much, and despite being a direction that some of my traditional customers would not expect it's my hope and expectation that by working this concept up over the winter I will be able to produce a show that will bring my current patrons with me as it were.

Test: Gamblin Neo Megilp

Gamblin Neo Megilp is a modern version of Turner's favoured painting medium Megilp (sometimes called Megulph or Maroger's medium).

Megilp is a gelled medium traditionally made from black oil (Linseed with litharge), and mastic resin boiled into a silky gel. Gel mediums are hard to describe in terms of how they work except they more or less allow one to work in a layered manner wet on wet, rather than waiting for each layer to dry, with the initial layers of paint staying put while you work over them lightly or blending if you increase the pressure. As you might imagine this allows you fantastic control over the paint film as one can create amazing transitions.

Alternatively you can work wet over dry with Neo megilp to create not just traditionl glazes, but also areas of translucent impasto; a technique not available to the Old Masters, but very much favoured by Turner for areas of dazzling brightness (now sadly blackened by age, or flattened by re-lining his canvases).

I tried a little Neo Megilp and I have to say it was a revelation, and much longer than the excellent traditional mastic based gels from Robersons or the gel from Spectrum both of which tend to drag and create tears and rings on the paint film. The length of the gamblin product is down to their use of Alkyds rather than resins, a decision that makes it much easier to work, but does increase the drying time a little. If you would like to try some Neo Megilp for free, drop by the studio or send me an e-mail and we can sell you a bottle and post it out.

Materials counter now open

We recieved our first consignment of specialist oil painting materials this week from Gamblin (www.gamblincolors.com) and are now their first supplier in the UK.

I chose Gamblin because Robert Gamblin aproaches paint making from the point of view of a picture restorer and has a great deal of knowledge about making modern equivalents of authentic pigments and mediums; he was chosen by Tate Britain to analyse and recreate Turner's 'megilp' (gelled medium) using original samples from Turner's studio for example.

We are stocking just what we use in the School, that is to say good quality paint, specialist mediums, a few oil additives, smocks and good quality hog brushes. I've set the prices to cover our costs and make a modest profit; a set of three professional quality hog filbert brushes (sizes 4, 8, 12) are just £12 for example; my aim is to get everybody at the School to leave with the right equipment to carry on at home.

Gamblin Artist Sketching Oils are the heart of our paint range, as they sit between the supreme quality (and high cost) of Michael Harding/Old Holland and the poorer quality and low cost of Winton/Georgian/Shin Han etc etc. The ASO range is pretty broad, but I've also included a couple of must haves from the Artist quality range as they particularly suit what we do here; Naples Yellow hue, Zinc White, Transparent Orange and Indanthrone Blue.

Naples Yellow hue is a nice weighty tube, with a primrose yellow colour; similar to Turner's patent yellow and rather less orange than the W&N one. Ideal for mixing down for sunlit clouds and impasto for spotlit bits of beach/fields etc.

Zinc is an essential for your paintbox for glazing but is NEVER in mid price ranges (fume!!!) so you'll have to use the Artist quality stuff I'm afraid. This one is nice though good bluish undertone for crespucular rays and high pigment loading.

Transparent Orange is one of those amazing modern pigments, just not available to the Old Masters, used over white as a glaze it's almost flourescent, and is beautiful in a unifying glaze to create the illusion of fading light.

Indanthrone Blue is the same pigment as Delft Blue (PB60) a soft faded blue with an indigo undertone that's ideal for English skies. It's a much better alternative to Prussian Blue, which is why we use it at the School.

The other colours in the ASO range cover all of the usual earth shades, plus a couple of blues, greens, violet and a nice 'bricky' Venetian Red.

We've also got a FEW samples of the brand new Chromatic Black a modern version of Payne's Grey designed to be a universal de-saturator for subtractive mixing. Robert realises that painters need to find complimentaries to desaturate colours, but that traditional Payne's was a little aggressive and over deadened mixes. Chromatic Black is made from two perfect complimentaries so it's really a very dark grey, and because the two are modern pigments with very small pigment particles the resulting 'black' desaturates while keeping the character of the mix.

This kind of thinking about how painters use colour exemplifies why I've chosen Gamblin to be our colourman, and I'll be introducing other new ideasfrom his range as we go forward. If you'd like a go with this new black just drop into the School and you can experiment at my easel.

Show now on

As we're closing the teaching part of the Norfolk Painting School for the year now, I'll be hanging the rest of my 2008 work in the gallery in preperation to start my 2009 collection over winter.

The show will run Wed-Sunday 10am - 5pm, and feature everything from finished canvases to sketches, plein air oils and studies; all at very advantageous prices (compared to retail galleries with high commissions).

I'll also be painting over winter and will be happy to welcome anybody dropping into the studio for coffee.

Studio Painting ; new for 2009

Studio painting is one of our new courses for 2009, written for those of you who prefer to work indoors, and particularly from photographic references.

If you've ever taken reference snaps of a fantastic view and been disapointed by the results, you'll know that cameras just don't capture the quality of light, and particularly shadows, as well as the naked eye. The heart of studio painting then is the skill of creating a painting from photographs by editing the colours, composition and tonal balance to create a painting of a scene rather than a painting of a photo.

To do this we look at the 'trinity' of composition, colour planning and tonal balance, as well as the School step by step system for oil painting. In this respect the course is similar to Landscape (2007/8), but includes that all important section on adjusting from the camera to the eye, and supplimentary parts on recreating the effect of the eye in terms of focus and detail; both of which vary significantly with a camera image, compared to a view.

In addition to this the studio course covers the practicalities of professional studio working including lighting, cleaning, safety, materials and so forth.

What is Essential Oils?

Essential oils is our oil painting foundation course; that is to say an introduction to the key concepts of 'classical' oil painting, rather than an absolute beginner's course. The course runs over two consecutive days as we cover wet over dry painting (indirect or layered painting) on day 2.

The course is written and delivered at an low to intermediate level, that is to say a limited degree of experience in basics such as brush handling, sketching and colour in mediums other than oil is assumed; most of our students are watercolourists, or acrylic painters looking to move 'up' to oil. However, because we keep the class sizes small we can provide extra help to students with no expeience of painting whatsoever.

Essential Oils will give you the foundation skills you need to progress in oils, specifically:

• A proven working process for alla-prima and staged oil painting


• The use of glazing and scumbling


• The use of oil painting mediums and solvents


• Basic colour mixing


• A list of recommended colours for a landscape palette


• How to create effective preparatory sketches and tonal studies


• A framework for assessing your current work and a plan for future study


• A set of notes to use in your studio

Over the course you will produce a number of sketches, a 9x11 inch oil tonal study and a challenging but rewarding 30x40 inch canvas.

Students who have taken this course include everybody from atelier trained professionals, lifelong watercolourists to absolute beginners.

Gallery visit; or how to learn painting

I'm just away on one of my regular gallery study breaks; this time to Dublin for the National gallery of Ireland and of course the Hugh Lane.

The reason I'm posting this is to encourage you to do the same; looking at master works, looking how they were done and working through the artist's decision making processes (composition, tone, colour, paint handling, size etc) is an incredibly effective way to learn.

I normally hit the galleries with a specific canvas in mind, but as this trip is leisure and work, I'm just going with an open mind (and my notebook) looking for the unexpected and unusual. Even small galleries can broaden your mind - a recet stop over in Halifax introduced me to oil and coal dust paintings which were absolutely staggering in how the resionous dust created luminous effects and have certainly inspired me to be more creative with home made mediums.

I don't know what I'll find in Dublin - the last time I went to see the magnificent 'Taking of Christ' by Carravaggio - so as long as I see that again anything else will be a bonus:-)

Visit a traditional oil atelier

With our new School came a new much larger Open Studio space, so I have the opportunity at last to open a real artisan 'gallery', where visitors can see a real working studio, see pictures being made and smell the oil paint rather than tip toe around some stuck up rarified 'gallery' run by people who've never picked up a brush.

I've always loathed gallery elitism, and they way that galleries feel art has to be packaged, marketed and elevated; you either like my stuff or you don't and no amount of marketing is going to change either of us! So I'm going to try a simple experiment, real art from a real studio at artist prices and see where we go.

SAA Articles

A couple of months ago the SAA (Society for All Artists) asked us to write a few articles on oil painting for their Paint newsletter.

If you subscribe to Paint you'll see that they were just the very basics, a foundation if you will in hgow to use oil paints and create simple effects such as rain with glazes. It's always staggered me how many of my students have tried Art college (to degree level and beyond) and not been able to learn these key principles.

When you consider an effect such as rain your starting point needs to be good old fashioned observation ; rain is essentially a transluscent veil, so it follows that you simply need to use your materials in the same manner to paint it.

If you don't subscribe to Paint, here's a simple walk through:

1. Paint a background sky colour, add a few clouds of you wish for fun.
2. Let it dry
3. mix up a basic painting medium
4. Select a trasluscent colour for the rain (most oils ar labelled transparent, semi transparent or opaque - so anything but the latter)
5. Using the medium gently brush the transluscent paint over the appropriate bit of sky creating a transluscent veil of rain, add bits of slight opacity here and there if required.

If you'd like a full foundation course in traditional oil techniques sign up for our Essential Oils course, or if you'd simply like an opinion of your work and some free pointers post me a digital image at makinnear@btinternet.com

Painting the storm

I sit down to write this fresh from a day on the coast with students on our current (and last for 2008) holiday course. Through the Spring, high Summer and now into early Autumn we've been working up and down the coast both on dry media (pencil, charcoal, sharpie markers etc) and oil sketches.

While some days have been hot, bucolic and a little tame, today really brought the thrill of working outdoors back to my mind. We set up a french easel on the very top of Barrow Common, overlooking the saltmarshes and north sea beyond. As I pitched the easel the wind started to take up, and we literally watched and experienced a fully fledged storm blow inshore over the marshes, as we worked the horizon, marshes and Scolt head were first cloaked, then revealed by curtains of mist and rain, as the clouds scudded overhead.

My easel was blown over twice, but standing in the elements I recorded two extremely fresh, atmospheric scenes on the School 9x12 panels. Over the next three days we'll be turning these sketches into full 40 inch studio oils and I'm absolutely certain that because I painted into the teeth of the weather mine will have some of the passion and energy of the storm, that a quick digital snap could never convey.

While I knew that Constable and Turner felt compelled to experience the outdoors before producing their sublime studio work; I know today exactly how they must have felt after returning exhilarated from a day in the worst of painting weather. In fact the trial of taking stidents en plein air has been so succesful that we'll now be running On Location courses through 2009 featuring a morning out and a day and a half of studio to give you a taste of traditional location to studio oils.

Buy specialist materials at the School at last!

Thanks to your feedback and encouragement the long delayed materials shop is now up and running; well almost!

The first deliveries of good quality, sensibly priced oil painting brushes arrived this week; those of you who know me will remember that I HATE painters paying through the nose for 'branded' brushes so you'll understand that it took a while to source these at the right price and quality.

We're offering a set of Filberts in size 12, 8 and 4, plus a large and small flat area brush in sets for £20, (net of postage) - all the brushes you need for professional oil painting at a student price.

The brushes are excellent quality, and are the ones I use myself in the studio and the ones you can try at the School. If you maintain them they ought to see you through a few years painting; and last me a year or so being used every day!

We're also getting our first delivery of new professional smocks in soon, with good large pockets for rags and pencils in the front, sturdy heavy cotton fabric (that you can wipe brushes on without immediatelygetting soaked in paint), and wide collars to make them easy to pull on over sweaters (most of our studios are cold!).

The smocks are made especially for us by The Norfolk Carrier Company, and are available in the School dark blue, embroidered with our new logo; the Ox of St Luke (the Patron St of Painters), will cost about £30 (TBC), and will last you a lifetime. The Guild of St Luke incidentally, was the organisation that many great painters belonged to, including Rembrandt, so it's nice to reinstate that tradition.

In the New year we'll be receiving our first stocks of Gamblin Sketching Oils; very good value paint that I reckon is almost as good as 'artist' quality at a fraction of the cost, plus a selection of specialist mediums that we'll use at the School.

Robert Gamblin, the maker of the paints is a picture restorer by trade and formulates modern equivalents of Old Master colours for other specialists. I'm very excited about using his products as they should give you a new insight into old techniques; for example his 'neo megilp' was formulated based on a sample of Turner's original megilp from a sealed bottle donated to him by the Tate Britain.

We'll be offering a good selection of Gamblin Sketching Oils (and some Artist quality ones), plus mediums from next Spring; all of which you'll be able to try on courses here.

The Norfolk Painting School Award 2008

2008 is the first year that we have been able to support the Patchings Art Festival, and in particular their efforts to encourage new artists through their association with Leisure Painter magazine. The Norfolk Painting School offered two bursaries for weekend courses, which were won by two very promising landscape painters, so if you fancy a free course then get your brushes out for next year. This years winners, selected by The Leisure Painter, were:David Kimmins, for his work entitled The Woods in Autumn and Al Reed, for his work entitled Our Shed. Both painters will be attending the School this year so I hope to show you more work soon.

New Courses for 2009

Our 2009 courses both build and improve on 2007 and 2008.

Our popular Essential Oils is staying, but has been rewritten to become more of a foundation course in classical oil painting, than specifically for beginners; the idea is to give existing painters the key skills they need to change to oils, and novices the basics they need to progress.

Landscape Painting has split into two seperate courses; On Location a plein air to studio weekend; that answers the question of how to work on location before working indoors, and Studio Painting, which looks specificlly at developing paintings from reference photgraphs; a task that is far trickier than most painters imagine.

Light & Atmosphere stays on the curriculum, but has been rewitten to include more challenging techniques, and will not now be open to painters of any ability to allow me to teach it as a masterclass. Students will be invited to submit work and discuss their techniques before joining this course now, to facilitate this more challenging approach. Indeed we hope to deliver our whole selection of courses in a more structured manner, helping you to get the best out of each one by helping with your course selection.

The holiday course will carry on next year, based on the overwhelming popularity of it in 2008; the five day schedule really gives me the chance to guide students through my whole painting approach, and throw in a bit of all round knowledge, such as Art History and paint making. However because of the need to supply various galleries, we will be running a strictly limited number of holiday dates in 2009 (rather than adding more and more which eats into my own studio time!).

Finally I have put on a number of Refresher courses, for ex students, which will have rather less theory, more painting, and will require you to bring ongoing work from your studio.

To learn more about any of the courses just requst a PDF version of our 2009 brochure from Jane on jane@norfolkpaintingschool.com or call her on 01485 576172

Welcome to the New Norfolk Painting School Forum

So this is it, new School, new studio, new courses and a new forum! The Norfolk Painting School has now moved from my cramped studio in Syderstone to an amazing Victorian Primary School in North Creake, about two miles closer to the coast.

Everything in the new building is better, so it seemed appropriate to set up a new forum that was easier to use, so here it is.

If you want to simply read along just subscribe to the blog and you should recieve notification of new posts, on the other hand if you want to add to and edit the blog, then you'll need me to authorise you as an administrator; a simple process which starts with you sending your details to makinnear@btinternet.com

Just to whet your appetite for the new building, here's a photo of our very first class