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.