New! Live Botanical Art Tutorials and Botanical Illustration Course

This week I'm really excited to launch the next phase in my online courses as Live Video Demonstrations and Tutorials. The first session, titled ' Red Hot Chili Peppers: Using the Washes and Dry Brush Techniques in Practice' is taking place this Sunday 6th April at 1300 hrs UK time. During the session, which will be delivered via Skype, I will be painting different types and colours of chili peppers. They make brilliant subjects.... perfect for demonstrating light and shade in creating a 3D form and employ a range of watercolour techniques. 

Chili peppers are pretty much always available and can be purchased at low cost at the local grocery store, their small size means I stand a good chance of getting something finished in a relatively short time scale! The session lasts for three hours, so hopefully I'll get one of each colour finished . If you want to join me and paint along, ask questions or just watch. 

 Click here to find out more.

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An example of chili peppers as work in progress

The chili  pepper  makes a perfect  little subject! The rich colours and shiny form requires a number of techniques to create the 3D effect with the right finish. 

The live tutorials should be fun and can actually have some advantages over the classroom, each session is intended for small groups of up to a maximum 6 students. Participants will be shown how to set up the subject and can paint along or just watch and or ask me questions from the comfort of their home! Details will be mailed out regarding the session in advance.

I've timed the sessions to start at 1300 hrs UK time which means it covers a fairly wide geographic area and may offer different times at a later date too if there is demand. 

A variety of chili peppers are available at most supermarkets.

I know that some people will say that you can't learn in the same way online but the technology keeps moving on and we're now much closer to the real classroom experience. The videos may be made available online at a later date on my YouTube Channel.

Over the past three years or so I've been teaching students online with a selection of courses and short videos clips. This was always something that I wanted to do because I know how difficult it can be to access classes or courses where travel, time and substantial amounts of money is involved. 

Personally I lived miles away from anywhere, had children at school and ill health in the family, so it was pretty much impossible at some points in my life.....so I appreciate how frustrating it can be when you want to learn but just can't access education for whatever reason. I always try to listen to what students want and accommodate their interests and adapt to suit. 

I'm offering more courses over the summer ( taking advantage of the longer daylight hours!) which reflect my own areas of interest and experience. Most important point at the heart of my teaching method is this statement: 

I don't want you to paint like me or copy what I do but instead want to provide the building blocks that underpin botanical art and illustration to enable you to become an artist in your own right.

The live sessions cover a range of subject areas.  The second session takes place on Tuesday 15th April 1300 hrs UK time- An Introduction to Illustrating Dissections in Botanical Illustration.

An introduction to illustrating dissections will guide students through the basics when it comes to identifying and illustrating the reproductive parts of a flower. 

There are also further sessions planned on the following:

 painting on vellum, painting leaves and composition. 

Also if anybody has suggestions for a session,  please feel free to get in touch with me and I will aim to accommodate any suggestion if I feel it's something I can teach.

And finally, I have also just launched a new more comprehensive course on Botanical Illustration, which starts May 7th. It's for just 6 students and so gives a fairly in depth 'start to finish'  approach, including graphite and watercolour techniques and studies, dissection and identifying the important plant parts for illustration, to creating a study page and colour studies. It finishes off with a full botanical illustration. 

So that's all of the new courses, they've been keeping me busy, so I just need to find a little time to finish off my current paintings on vellum.... more about those in the next blog post. Here's a peek at a detail. 

New Website for Online Botanical Courses!

Finally managed to build a new dedicated website for Botanical Art Online, my online courses! I  decided last week that it was high time I got to grips with this job and made some decisions, so I've been neglecting the painting this week and focused my concentration on the website. It's still in infancy and no doubt in need of a bit of editing here and there.... but I've started! Most important though is the fact that this means I can now deliver materials, videos and and documents to my students via a password protected area for each course rather than by email. Hopefully this will make life so much easier for all and the real beauty of it is that you can just keep adding and changing materials so that it doesn't become 'stagnant'! Passwords will be sent out this week and I'll just have to wait to see what the students make of it.

Home page for Botanical Art Online, courses in watercolour, vellum and graphite, click on the image to access the website.

 I've wanted to do this for several years and feel that technology just isn't taken full advantage of in education, surprisingly even in distance learning programmes it's still under used. Over the years I've tried just about every method of learning and teaching possible and have to admit to being a bit of a course addict at one time! After leaving University I worked for a while in a large education authority developing ways of using technology to deliver education materials and information over a large geographic area. Of course that geographic area wasn't global but today pretty much anything is possible anywhere and it really is a small world! Technology is increasingly user friendly it's a great asset to take advantage of if you like a learning curve.  

The three courses currently on offer, details and the teaching programme can now be downloaded directly from the site.

 There is of course an argument that online learning can never match up to learning in a class environment where you can see a real demonstration. I don't disagree with that at all but in my opinion online learning isn't intended to be a substitute for a class, it's just another method of learning and teaching, and, for all sorts of reasons it's not always possible for indivduals to attend classes. The Open University have been delivering online courses very successfully for a number of years. I've done a few in the past myself and always found the more tech savvy tutors and interactive courses are the better ones- but then I prefer electronic documents over paper anytime, not just because it's a bit greener but also because I lose everything and have a small house!

Examples shown here from the  Watercolour course

I wanted to be mindful of my own experience of distance learning in that it can be very isolating, this is something that I want to avoid because it's not a good feeling when you're studying. I believe learning has to be brought up to date rather than using the more 'old school' correspondence course approach, otherwise people feel too alone and this is a reason for drop out. Social media provides another great opportunity for sharing and I also use it with my group of students, it's easy to be critical of it but it's a brilliant way to deliver, discuss and share and it's a bit of fun too.


These days it seems many artists do some teaching and being an artist generally means lots of diversification....with websites, blogs and social media all becoming part of the daily tasks for the jobbing artist.... it's a wonder we have any time at all for painting! To highlight the diversity I have switch jobs again tomorrow and it's back to illustration with a commission for 30 fish to complete before the end of year! .....never seems to be two days the same!