Fancy a Great British tradition? Well today is your day, we’re going Bowling but this is Crown Green bowling and a photo taken mid afternoon to create a lovely, active photo for something that’s quite a calming activity. We have so many whites to preserve here but you have to keep some colours in here too to show our reflected greens and our blue top lady. This is a great painting if you’re at an intermediate level but is good for all to try, keep your lines sharp and your backgrounds soft. Enjoy…

After our advanced tutorial last time I thought we’d do something a little easy going this week, so I’ve chosen a subject I like to paint and is easy to repeat. ‘Casting’ is a great beginner/intermediate piece for our core skills, making sure our lights are preserved well and using a vibrant yellow to bring our main subject forward. The sky and foreground are great practice for blending colours to achieve some variation in the colours. Give this one a go a few times if you have some time. Enjoy…

125! Yes it's our 125th tutorial this week, so I saved a real favourite of mine for this one. This is "Bubbles" and it’s a photo of my nephews daughter taken a few years ago now. Perfect as a really interesting and advanced subject for you all to try, this is all about that cheeky face and the white, crisp bubble outlines that make this truly shine as a painting. Happy 125th tutorial everyone...

This week's tutorial is a reminder that summer is here (even though the UK isn't really seeing it) and this is a great reminder of those lazy days just walking down the beach with the sea lapping at your feet. This is an intermediate level piece and relies on a loose touch to create some lovely movement and texture in our sea and sand with some nice sharp lines to define our figure. Enjoy...

Something a little different this week! We’re painting a seascape, from San Francisco. It’s not the Golden Gate but we are further along the coast and painting the equally beautiful and often overlooked ‘Oakland Bay Bridge’. We have plenty of opportunity for expressive brushstrokes here in both our water, backgrounds and sky with some lovely details in the sails of our boat and the bridge itself, especially those cables, so take care on those. You’ll love this change of pace and it’s a great intermediate level piece for everyone to enjoy…

This is perfect for our new members and established members alike. We are using just three colours to show what amazing work can be done with a simple palette, we have a single figure with a lovely blurred background and we use Quinn Gold and Cobalt Blue to create our base greens, then focus on our figure with all three colours mixing them to create depth of tone. It’s also a great way to really hone your eye into looking for the colours and where to place them to create that bright white t-shirt. Be careful and use the white of the paper to its best effect. Enjoy…

This week we’ve chosen a beginner tutorial for our newer members, this is “The little boat and reflection” and it’s essentially a light wash and a main wash followed by a few tweaks to tighten up a couple of areas. This means we’re looking to create our highlights in our second wash using the paper itself and adding our “halo” effect to really highlight the outline of our boat. We can practice this piece again and again as its only 30 minutes start to finish, so do it several times and watch your own progress too. Enjoy…

After our marathon painting last week this one will be a nice easy one. It’s a simple painting broken down into simple stages. The photo is of three women sat looking out to sea on a crisp spring morning, Just the thing to remind us this heat won’t last forever, there’s plenty to enjoy here and its under an hour so you can really practice and hone those skills multiple times. I hope you really enjoy this one.

Well, this one is slightly different to usual, we don’t have any people in this scene, but a lovely warm bright boat, sadly sat upon the sands. This is great for everyone to paint along with, nearly an hour long, it’s great for intermediate levels and its important to keep this one nice and loose.

I nearly called this one jaws because of his t-shirt but decided ‘Man and shadow’ was more what the painting is about.  We’ve done two long ones recently so this week is a great starter tutorial using only 3 colours and only 30 minutes long. Do it several times and try to improve each one. I’ve simplified this down, we’re putting one layer of wash to create a faint background for a little pigment as the pavement. Then we spend 20 minutes to do a single pass over our subject. That’s it. Simple…

This is a quickie! It’s perfect for you to try several times. At just over 30 minutes it gives you a great opportunity to try and refine it each time you do it, it is also great as a beginners piece too. Happy painting.

We've painted a version of this scene a long time ago but I think its worth revisiting, this time we have a great dark background, using all six colours blending together and a foreground with a lighter sandy tone for the pavement. Its one to do a few times and perfect for beginners.

Todays tutorial Is “The Beach Boy” and has been requested by lots of my students that wanted a piece they can practice again and again to help master some of the techniques before moving on to more intermediate and advanced pieces. So give this a go, its a nice fast piece only 40 minutes and if you’re not happy with it you’ve enough time to give it a few goes. Enjoy…

Today we’re in Venice, “The Floating City”. And we're looking out over the water (so get those blues ready) towards the Il Redentore, one of the iconic buildings of this lovely city. This is a nice beginner/intermediate piece with lots of soft backgrounds and our focus is on what is a regular site, a Gondolieri crossing the water. Enjoy…

I don’t normally do a lot of animals but I took this photo nearby and I loved the fact you could switch in your own background. There’s a nice wet into wet wash with our three colours to start and we move onto some fantastic details and bright tones in the horses themselves whilst preserving the all important whites of the paper. I can’t wait to see what backgrounds you all use. Happy painting.

Today we’re painting “lost in thought” a single figure, sat alone on a quayside contemplating life (we think). This is a great painting to dip into when you have a spare hour to paint. It’s a brilliant piece to try several times to improve your techniques and lays the foundation for the larger paintings we do. Theres use of highlights, shadows, wet into wet and dry brush techniques. You’ll enjoy seeing the improvements each time you do this one. Enjoy.

We've got three brand new, great tutorials this month. This “fisherman from the quayside” gives us opportunity to really use light and dark tones to create dramatic shadows and light areas to show the angle of the sun. There’s also some detail, but not too much, in the fisherman himself in order to make sure he looks grounded to the quayside and enjoying his days fishing. It’s great to be back and I hope you enjoy.

This week we're in South Carolina and painting a fantastic photo by Lorri Wilson. It's a great look at using wet into wet technique for creating interesting backgrounds and has some finer detail in the figure and items she's carrying, It's going to be a fantastic one to paint and perfect for those long Autumn nights. Enjoy.

This weeks tutorial is a lovely image of a woman walking her two dogs on a sandy beach. Its's a great tutorial for beginners as it uses simple lines and shapes to create the effect of the sea and horizon. There is a lot of wet into wet and using the brush lightly to create the wash over the sky and water. We can get stuck in and really enjoy this one !

This tutorial is a lovely image of two kids playing with a bucket and spade on the beach. A great painting for those of you who like to paint people but don't enjoy painting faces as there is very little detail. This is a tutorial we can all have a go at with confidence.

Hi all, this short painting uses a slightly different technique; working wet onto dry for the first wash, and then working wet onto wet in some of the shadow areas. It is a lovely little painting to do and I hope you are going to enjoy painting along with me.

This tutorial is a lovely image of a rower on the River Thames. Some great early morning light creates some fantastic reflections on the water surface. This is a relatively simple painting but the reflections and capturing movement create some interesting challenges.

This is a short study of a man sleeping in a chair that I would like you to paint again and again to practice your different techniques - brush control, pigment control, wet into wet, dry brush and mark making. This is the type of study you can do when you have a spare half hour, so come on pick up your brush and let's get painting! This is a great subject so come on and let's get started.

This week we have a wonderful study of a lighthouse. Using a simple palette of three colours I show you how to get that lovely big sky, nice looking water, waves crashing against the rocks and a simple study of the lighthouse. You will really enjoy this one!

Here’s a familiar sight for anyone mainly in Australia and the USA. A lovely loose piece with the challenge of painting rushing water. Let’s get stuck in!

Today were doing a study page on an iconic building in Lytham St Annes in the UK. This building is just a few miles from me and is a landmark that signifies the start of the beachfront in Lytham. We’re painting some detail in the foreground here in the sails and building itself and have a nice colourful background to create using wet in wet techniques. Grab your one inch brush and let's get painting.

A painting of a young baseball player running for home plate, this is a fun little study in getting the colours onto the paper quickly for the background and then using some slower techniques to add detail to the body and face. It’s also really fun to add the shadows and highlights, especially in the dusty sand to show where the dirt has been kicked up. We mix the colours together fairly loosely in this painting and blend them together on the palette as we go along. We use a nice green to “pull” the baseball player forwards off the page to give it a really strong feel that there’s depth in the image.

This is about being careful, taking time to do an overall wash and then looking carefully for the ripples in the water. The shadows are really important here as were dealing with a man stood in water. We’re going to add a hat to the fisherman (its not in the photo) to give it a more traditional feel. We’ll use the 1 inch and size 16 brush for most of this painting and start with a nice blue wash underneath, moving onto yellows for the underpainting section. We will make sure the pigment goes into the reflection as well as the fisherman, so it gives a realistic feel. We’ll mix some Quinacridone gold, cobalt blue and crimson to create the darker areas lift out some of the highlights to create shadows and light within the fisherman and the reflections. We will also mix paint directly on the paper as well as on the pallet.

This is a lovely study page of a young boy in the middle of catching a baseball. It’s great as an example of how to paint an action photo you may have. We only use three colours so it’s easy to practice again and again. We’ll use wet in wet techniques with a controlled wash to ensure we don’t lose those highlights in the white trousers. We’ve got some great vibrant colours to use and it will create a stunning finished painting. You’ll learn how to create both soft washes for the soft focus backdrop and also nice crisp edges for areas like the catchers mitt and shoes, then we will really focus on the creases within the clothes using the tip of the brush. It’s a great place to start with learning the techniques we use throughout our other lessons.

This is all about understanding the methods I’ll use throughout my tutorials and is a great place to start! It’s a great way to learn my techniques, and will give you a good understanding of mixing the colours, both on the paper and on the palettes. We will focus just on the two women themselves. Choosing to blend colours directly on the paper allows you to add and adjust different strengths of pigment to meet your preferred colours. This is all about understanding the methods I’ll be using throughout my tutorials and is a great starting point! Give this a go at least a few times and you’ll be off to a great start. Get your brushes ready and get practising.

This is a challenge; there are lots of shades of white in the t-shirt and white crashing waves behind him. We will use all of our colours here: We will mix the colours both on the palette and directly on the paper. This gives us the ability to create a really dynamic feel to the focus of the painting. Painting legs that are in shadow is fun too - it uses far more colours than legs in direct sunlight. Finally we will add a hint of the ocean, BUT we're not finishing this one - I want to see how you interpret the remaining parts of the image to see what you come up with! I’ll give you feedback and I’m sure it’ll be great to see the variety we get. So. get your brushes out, and get painting!

This is a great photo of cyclist in Portugal with some lovely highlights from the sun and nice deep shadows casting onto the pavement. To recreate this, we’re going to be doing lots of wet in wet using just three colours, whose pigments will mix to create some of the deeper colours for the detail work. We’ll start with a complete under wash on the block, then we’ll create a mottled effect using some of the colours and a tissue to remove areas of colour and maintain those highlights. Finally, we will use the colours in a more intense form for the detail work using the number 16 brush for some dry work - so be ready to move quickly when it’s time.

This is a really fun one to try. Half the painting is ocean, with a ripple effect throughout. It’s certainly challenging to create that realistic feel of rippling water, but with practice you’ll create something that makes you just want to dive straight in! You’ve got lots of freedom here and no two versions will look the same, I’m really looking forward to seeing your versions of this one in the gallery.

A bedraggled boat with loads of interesting things to paint. A vibrant buoy, netting, and worn wooden areas will really challenge our use of paints to create texture and form. There’s also a reflection of the boat in the surface water, which grounds the boat and gives it something to sit on. We’ve got highlights, darks, shadows and detail work using a pretty dry brush. Using six colours we will map in the under wash before moving on to the detail with our size 16 brush. Don't get too hung up on the correct colours in the correct places; it’s about using shades to indicate where shadows are ,and lifting off to create light. This is a really interesting subject; it’s only a 30 minute project but take your time, pause and replay any bits you’d like to see again. Enjoy!.