If you want to explore contemporary acrylic techniques using lots of different acrylic media to include oil pastels, this is the course for you!

We will venturing outdoors (weather permitting) to one of the many inspirational painting locations in the National Park which I have come to know well. Being amongst the the Lakeland landscape is of course exciting and rewarding in terms of creative experience and true comnnection with your surroundings. These first hand experiences help our more focused studio course be enriched in response to these painting experiences.

On the course we will be using other reference material (YOUR OWN sketches, photographs, drawings and so on) with a semi abstract and exploritory direction throughout the week. The exciting techniques you will learn and put into practice yourself provide the perfect creative techniques for your own personal creative development - not only on this course, but for your future as well.

This short break art holiday gives artists the ideal opportunity to explore the versatile Derwent's water-soluble Inktense blocks and pencils on watercolour paper (provided) using a bold approach with the media using glazing and layering together with an expressive use of colour. The emphasis of the course is a semi abstract approach to landscape subjects of your own choice (not necessarily Lake District views) to bring with you as photographs, sketches and so on to work from.

This exciting 4 day pastel course Higham Hall is ideal for artists who want to take the next step along their creative journey and discover the true versatility of soft pastels and use them in a really expressive way.

For experienced artists wanting to become more expressive and also semi abstract when using soft and hard pastels (with fixative) on different surfaces. Weather permitting, Higham's grounds will provide direct inspiration for an outdoor pastel morning working directly from nature but the main emphasis is on studio based pastel direction creating pastel paintings of YOUR OWN landscape subjects with a semi abstract direction.  Some of the taught techniques on this workshop are not for complete art beginners but artists with lots of previous experience with other media who may be new to pastel will gain the best from this art course.

NEW FOR 2025, this short semi abstract mixed media seascape course at Higham Hall gives you the opportunity to explore lots of creative and expressive art techniques in a really exciting and contemporary way with SEASCAPES!

I will be teaching you how to engage with your subject with greater depth, meaning and feeling with a semi abstract approach both in the studio and on site with a visit to the Cumbrian Coast (weather permitting). Thuis is for art students who REALL ARE WILLING to let go of their painting inhibitions and are preparaed to really 'let go' and feel their way through a painting with more emotional content and expression rather than to simply 'paint a copy' or rendition of whats there in front of them.

The emphasis on this course is on deeper understanding of composition values, colour relationships, mood and tone when drawing and painting in a liberated, free and yet balanced and controled way. On this course you will learn how the marks you instinctively make lead the way to the paintings developmemnt...or not! c

You will also learn how to create seascape paintings with real depth in a layering process interchanging between acrylic inks, watercolour/gouache, soft pastels and dreawing media so you will develop paintings with expression with mixed media, not mixed mess!

Working from YOUR OWN sketches and photographic references on studio days and sketching and painting by the coast, I will demonstrate for you and teach you how to extract the eseential visual information arounds you and within your reference and help you to develop your own ideas about the painting subject in new and eciting semi abstract directions.

Students who attend this course MUST BE WILLING to push their own creative boundaries and want to be able to see and think differently about ALL painting subjects. 

Therefore, I'm sorry, but this course really is not suitable for beginners as the techniques taught will be to advanced.
More than the basic level of drawing, colour understanding is needed to maximise your own personall creative value out of this course. 
Suitable for students with a good deal of painting practice who really want to loosen up, be more expressive and move on to the next stage in their own painting development.