NEW CHARLES REID DVD TRAILER

Here's the trailer for Charles' new DVD - Charles Reid's English Watercolour Sketchbook - due out on Sept 9th. You can pre order now on our website.

New Release Featuring The Brilliant Charles Reid

Charles is my all time painting here and I was delighted to film with him this summer in the Cotswolds. The New DVD will be out on September 9th but you can pre-order now.
Here are some images from the video.

Cecil Rice Paints on BBC TV

Brighton-based artist Cecil Rice who we recently worked with on our recent DVD release Painting The Light In Watercolour is to star in an upcoming episode of the popular BBC One programme Countryfile. Cecil was approached to paint a scene at a country fair in the Cotswolds. Here's his story:

"I was asked to paint a view of the country fair and I set up under a gazebo for the day.  The challenge for me, as you will appreciate very well, was making the painting last for six hours. My usual approach would be to paint for a two hour stretch, fairly instinctively and quickly establishing essentials of light, tone, movement and form, possibly without much embellishment.  Because the light is completely different beyond this it is really dangerous to keep working on a plain-air painting in case you are tempted to re-state everything on top of your original impression.  I hit a compromise whereby I started very slowly, only establishing pockets of shadow and detail that wouldn't really change much. I also did a small but useful quick impression on a separate sheet of paper so that I could refer to this later on.

The final painting was OK but might have been a little livelier if I had not had to stretch it out for so many sweltering hours. But the result was quite respectable and I may be able to produce a more spirited interpretation in the studio.

The filming started in a very encouraging way. Matt Baker spent some minutes asking questions and I was able to give my name and to answer that my concern was with capturing the light and other qualities.  I was filmed for five or ten minutes getting started. Initially it seemed that Matt would return to do a conclusion with me but as the day went on it became clear that the crew had a great deal of other work to do. Camera-men visited every so often, filming the gradual progress of the painting. At the end I gave Matt Hill a copy of my book and DVD and I know that he was very pleased about this.

It's absolutely impossible to know how much or how little of all this they will use but I did receive an e-mail thanking me for my efforts and encouraging me to watch the relevant episode, which is due for broadcast on 28th July. "

Plein Air Competition Win For Adebanji Alade

London based painter Adebanji Alade AROI has scored a super successes in this year's London plein air painting competition Pintar Rapido (roughly translated as  paint fast!). The London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea hosted 400 artists who had just a day to capture a scene within that part of London.

The rules were simple -  choose a spot in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and paint it in a day! The Artists registered at 9.00am at the Chelsea Town Hall and got the painting surfaces stamped, then they all went to their favourite chosen spots around Chelsea to work on their pieces. We were all to come back by 8pm with the finished works ready for hanging. all the works were to be on display the next day at the Chelsea Town Hall, where all the paintings would be for sale and the winning painting would receive £1,000!

Adebanji was telephoned by Professor Ken Howard RA to tell him that he had won!!!

 

Adebanji used acrylic paint for this picture. You can see him in action on the DVD we made with him - Coastal Adventures in Acrylic.

 

Read the full details and see stage by stage pictures on Adebanji's brilliant blog:

New Video Download Released

We have just released out latest video download - Capturing Light in Watercolour with Cecil Rice. It features a 21 minute demonstration not on his DVD and sells for just £3.99.

Here's the trailer:

Laest Release Featuring Chris Forsey R.I.

After much public demand I  am delighted to tell you that our new DVD featuring the popular artist  Chris Forsey is due for release on Monday June 10 but is available for pre-order now.

 

And here's the trailer

 

 

Excellent Cecil Rice Book

Cecil Rice, who features in our next DVD release Painting Light In Watercolour,  has produced an excellent book on his work. It is available directly from him via this link: Cecil Rice Book