Famous Paintings in Miniature: Flowers in a Vase by Rachel Ruysch, circa 1685

In an attempt to help my fellow miniaturists through this incomprehensible time of Covid-19 social distancing and self isolation, I'm picking up my free tutorial series. 

I do hope this helps pass the time until we can all go about our daily business again.

Stay indoors, stay safe, and stay in touch!

Famous Paintings in Miniature: Flowers in a Vase by Rachel Ruysch, c 1685

Follow the links below to see other tutorials in this series:

I. Van Gogh's Sunflowers

II. Turner's Fighting Temeraire

III. Hilma af Klint “The Ten Biggest No. 2, Childhood”, 1907

IV. Van Gogh's A Wheatfield with Cypresses

V Kandinsky's Swinging Schaukeln 1925 

VI Monet's Waterlilies

VII. Norbert Goenuette's The Boulevard de Clichy under Snow, 1875/6

VIII Hans Holbein the Younger's A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, around 1526-8

IX August Macke: Frau mit Sonnenschirm vor Hutladen, 1914

X Arthur Rackham's A Night Before Christmas

XI Hans Holbein the Younger's Jane Seymour

A little bit of history

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) was born in the Netherlands. Her father was a well respected scientist and professor of anatomy and botany, and he allowed her to draw and paint from his extensive private museum collection. 

Famous Paintings in Miniature Tutorial: Jane Seymour by Hans Holbein the Younger

In this tutorial I show you how to recreate this famous painting of Jane Seymour 1536/1537 by Hans Holbein the Younger, in miniature for your dolls house of miniature collection.

Learning to linocut

Did you make any New Year's resolutions? I did - just one - to acquire new skills. So, armed with £30 of Cass Art gift vouchers (lucky me) I set off into Liverpool and bought myself the Essdee linocut set and some system 3 acrylic block printing medium.

Woohoo!

I seriously expected that cutting the lino would be the hard part, but no - with lovely sharp tools and special soft cut lino, that part was easy. Keeping a steady hand and a shallow angle, and going slowly is the key here.

Sketch Journal Tenerife November 2018

I'm back from a super restful time hiking and (of course) sketching in Tenerife. I always take a travel journal with me together with pens and paints. This time I took my sailor fude pen (the green one), a grey Pitt pen, my mini Cass Art watercolour quarter pans, my home made W&N gouache pan set , glue, kitchen paper. I had prepped a few pages of my extremely cheap journal with Daniel Smith watercolour ground, and also brought along a few ACEO sized pieces of tinted watercolour paper. Lots to play with, and it all fits inside a pencil case 😁 Two waterbrushes and bottle lid for extra water complete the set.

First up, in the airport waiting for our gate to open, and layla, on the 4 hour flight.

These were sketched with my water soluble sailor fude pen (hehe it's obviously the ink that's water soluble, not the pen - that would be tricksy to use in the extreme). If you haven't seen one of these pens in action, search for the White Rabbit on YouTube, she does some amazingly inspirational work with one.

This next one was the view from our hotel balcony in Los Cristianos. The surface I used is kitchen paper glued down with PVA. It's very absorbent so the paint moves around super quick, which makes for a lovely loose sketch.

Water soluble pen and Gouache.

Watercolour Painting for Children: A Summer Meadow

How's your summer going? Here in the UK it has been HOT HOT HOT! I't's been fabulous fun for us, but the poor meadows have not been happy - however now we have some rain and they're starting to recover. Maybe we can help them to feel better again by painting a lovely colourful one? Worth a try, yes?

Yes, let's begin.

Tutorial: Arthur Rackham's A Night Before Christmas in Miniature

Christmas in July is a thing, right?  That's lucky, because this tutorial is all about Arthur Rackham's A Night Before Christmas.

Tutorial: Paul Gauguin's 'Harvest: Le Pouldu' in miniature

In this tutorial I show you how to recreate this famous painting in miniature for your dolls house of miniature collection.

Watercolour painting for children: The Magical Unicorn

Who would like a pet unicorn? 

Me too! I have never seen one, have you? I'm not sure they'd like to be kept as pets, but maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to have one come for tea.

Meanwhile, we can paint one.

So let's begin.

Watercolour painting for Children and Parents: Let's paint a Snowman!

Do you have snow where you live? It's January in the UK and there's no snow here, again. I live quite close to the coast, so even when it has snowed inland, it we rarely get any near me - isn't that sad?

But I can pretend it's snowed and paint the snowman that I might have made, right?

So let's begin.

Watercolour Painting for Children: Materials

Watercolour Painting for Children - who is it for?

My new  series of tutorials is designed so that parents and carers with no experience of painting and drawing can follow simple steps and learn alongside their children.

My target child is ten years of age or over, always under the close supervision of a responsible adult.

If you have a younger child, do try some of the tutorials with them, but always tidy away the paints and brushes yourself and again, closely supervise the whole activity.

What do you need?

Watercolour paints (also known as Aquarelle)

Go to a proper art shop (either in real life or online) and buy the best watercolours that you can afford. It may seem like a large outlay, but a small student grade set of Winsor and Newton, Sennelier, or Schmincke paints will make your child's paintings so much easier to create than if you went to somewhere like The Works or WHSmiths and bought their own brand paints which are chalky and full of fillers. Expect to pay around £20 for a Winsor and Newton Cotman compact set, and around twice that for Sennelier's La Petite Aquarelle or Schminke's Akademie sets.

Tutorial in Miniature: Frau mit Sonnenschirm vor Hutladen, 1914

In this tutorial I show you how to recreate this famous painting in miniature for your dolls house of miniature collection.

Sketch Diary: Tilly the Guide Dog Puppy

Here are weeks 21 to 30 of Tilly's sketch diary.

Tilly's first weeks with me are documented here

And weeks 13 to 19 are here

Rather than overload you with with months worth of sketches I'm going easy on you and uploading them a few at a time (but if you can't wait and want to catch them all now you can head over to my facebook album here).

Tutorial in Miniature: Hans Holbein the Younger's A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, around 1526-8.

In this tutorial I show you how to recreate this famous painting in miniature for your dolls house of miniature collection.

Sketch Diary: Tilly the Guide Dog Puppy

Goodness it's been a long time since I posted on my blog! My time has been taken up with a few commissions and teaching my class, but mostly with this gorgeous bundle of fluff. She brings me such joy, as well as incredible frustration and the odd expletive...it's a good job I have an almost limitless supply of patience.

Tilly's first weeks with me are documented here

Rather than overload you with with months worth of sketches I'll go easy on you and upload them a few at a time (but if you can't wait and want to catch them all now you can head over to my facebook album here).

Here are weeks 13 to 19...

Tutorial: Norbert Goenuette's The Boulevard de Clichy under Snow, 1875/6

Famous Paintings in Miniature number 7: Norbert Goenuette's The Boulevard de Clichy under Snow, 1875/6

In this tutorial I show you how to recreate this famous painting in miniature for your dolls house or miniature collection.

Tutorial: Monet's Waterlilies 1916-1926

Famous Paintings in Miniature Number 6: Monet's Waterlilies

In this, the sixth in my famous paintings in miniature series, I will be showing you how to recreate Monet's Waterlilies, 1916-1926

Tilly the Guide Dog Puppy

On the 15th of November I became a Guide Dog Puppy Walker - which means that I get the pleasure of caring for a small black labrador puppy until she becomes a large black labrador adolescent of around 12 to 14 months. I have to teach Tilly the ways of the world, make her as bomb proof as I can, and cover off her basic training before she goes on to Guide Dog School. I tell you, it's a steep learning curve for the both of us!

Along the way I shall be recording our journey in a little sketchbook. Here are the first few pages...

Tutorial: Kandinsky's Swinging Schaukeln 1925 in Miniature

Famous Paintings in Miniature Number 5: Kandinsky's Swinging Schaukeln 1925  

In this, the fifth in my famous paintings in miniature series, I will be showing you how to recreate  Kandinsky's "Swinging" or "Schaukeln" 1925. 

Sketch diary: Holiday in Konstanz

My daughter Kit needs to decide whether to spend her 3rd year of her university life in Konstanz or Berlin. She's already been to Berlin so we thought it would be a good idea to go and check out Konstanz. And of course it was a great excuse for a holiday! 


It is so unbelievably beautiful at Bodensee (the German/Swiss/Austrian name for Lake Constance).Here are some sketches from our holiday with shockingly bad text by an enthusiastic German learner (ME!). I hope you like them...

Holiday in Konstanz 2016

Tuesday
The Journey 30.08.16
by taxi from Aughton to Manchester
by plane from Manchester to Stuttgart
by train
     from Stuttgart to Rohr
     from Rohr to Böblingen
     from Böblingen to Singen
     from Singen to Konstanz

               Ten hours later we arrive!

Melting White Nights Watercolour - a story of Cerulean Blue

I wasn't intending to write a review of St Petersburg White Night paints as I only have one, but I'm so dismayed by it that I simply had to tell you guys about it.

Picture the scene: it was a gorgeous summer's day, I had an errand or two to run and then I was free for a couple of hours. Great! I packed my watercolours, paper, waterpots and my new favourite sketching brush (a 5mm flat springy one stroke brush that seems to be able to do everything) and a lovely picnic of cheese, an amazing apple and ginger pickle sauce from my local church and some homemade slaw mmmmm. I stopped in town for less than an hour to do my chores, leaving everything in the car. The sun was shining but this is England right, the cheese will be fine.

After walking up and down the canal for a while I found a perfect spot at Burscough Wharf and set myself up by some empty moorings.

I often start a new sketch by establishing my lines with a yellow sharpie. YIKES I nearly lost half of them in the canal - it's a good job that they float!

Now to open those fabulous watercolours.

Hang on, what's happened, the lid is stuck!

Gently prise it open to find this...