How to paint clouds and sunsets in watercolour

How to paint clouds and sunsets in watercolour

I am teaching how to paint clouds in watercolour by splitting the lesson into two parts. This week we looked taking out clouds with tissue paper and working into them. Also we looked at sunsets which are notoriously difficult by simplifying them and using a layering technique. 

Lecture given by Lady Sheila Hale about Titian at Swansea University

Went to a fascinating lecture given by the delightful Lady Sheila Hale about Titian at Swansea University tonight. Beautiful paintings by an enigmatic artist. It was wonderful to see his work chronologically and how he developed as an artist. Also the lecture was peppered with delightful little stories such as the Titian which is now slightly damaged due to it being kept in the owners bathroom for 20 years!!

 The Venetians were certainly a spicy lot, I think there must have been something in the water due to the many nudes Titian was commissioned to paint alongside his portraits and religious work. 
One of my favourites is The Venus of Urbino which strongly influenced one of my favourite paintings of all time, The Rockeby Venus by Velasquez. I love the flowing lines of the pose. 

Quite interesting that Titian was not know to be a master draughtsman, in fact Michelangelo berated him for not drawing enough! I think you'll agree he seemed to get by ;)

Klimt and The Beauty of Line

A lovely short documentary about the drawings of Gustav Klimt. Some of his paintings can be seen in The National Gallery in London in the exhibition Facing The Modern until Jan 12th 2014.
Well worth the visit, click the link below for more details.

Facing The Modern Exhibition, National Gallery

Facing the Modern: The Portrait In Vienna

Facing the Modern: The Portrait In Vienna
1900 at The National Gallery, London Oct 9-Jan 12th.
A major exhibition for the National Gallery including paintings from Klimt and Schiele. I cannot wait. The last time I saw an exhibition of these artists all togeter was when I was on a school trip. It was to see an Impressionist exhibition. It was so busy you couldn't get near the paitings to see them. Also with impressionist paitnings your really need to stand back. Not possible at all at this time. My friend and I got so fed up we went to explore the rest of the gallery and found a Klimt and schiele exhibition on with no many people in it!! I was in love. AMAZING pictures. Some surprisingly large and quite overwhelming. Two different styles but superb technicians and a belief in their unique visions. I have been a fan ever since and an't wait to go and see this. Don't miss it if you can.
Description
During the great flourishing of modern art in fin-de-siecle Vienna, artists of that city focused on images of individuals. Their portraits depict artists, patrons, families, friends, intellectual allies, and society
celebrities from the upwardly mobile middle classes. Viewed as a whole, the images allow us to reconstruct the subjects' shifting identities as the Austro-Hungarian Empire underwent dramatic political changes, from the 1867 Ausgleich (Compromise) to the end of World War I. This is viewed as a time when
the avant-garde overthrew the academy, yet Facing the Modern tells a more
complex story, through thought-provoking texts by leading art historians. The exhibition examine paintings by innovative artists such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele alongside most of their predecessors, blurring the conventionally-held distinctions between 19th-century and early-20th-century
art, and revealing surprising continuities in the production and consumption of
portraits.