Autumn Splendour Art Workshop

Last month I was lucky enough to enrol on an Autumn art workshop with artists Ohn Mar Win and Clare Therese Gray at the lovely Lower Norton Flower Farm, near Winchester. A beautiful venue and we had the perfect weather to go along with it.

The morning session was with Ohn Mar, sitting under a small gazebo in the flower garden. Ohn Mar Win is a watercolour and ink artist, creating loose illustrations and paintings. Following a demonstration our first exercise was to produce quick flower studies, timed from 1 minute down to 10 seconds. For anyone scared of white paper it was pretty daunting just getting stuck in like that but definitely something to keep practicing. 

Following the warm up we went into the garden to paint in situ, a flower or flowers of our choosing, keeping it loose.

Ohn Mar Win giving an in situ demonstration.

I chose a single hydrangea and although to started off ok, my colours were weak and I didn't wait long enough for the layering. Following the watercolour we went back to the gazebo to start adding the ink.

Group photo

It's a shame everything was slightly rushed due to the time constraints for lunch and the next session with Clare Therese Gray, but it was really enjoyable and I've taken a lot away to help me loosen up in future.

After a delicious lunch we swapped artist. Clare is a gouache artist, who paints the most beautiful flower illustrations. We started by laying a flat weak gouache wash to paper before heading back out into the garden to choose three flowers each to paint.

Hunting for flowers

Even though to was the end of September there were still some lovely flowers to choose from but we were told to steer clear from the stunning Dahlias as they would be too hard to paint.

Back inside the studio we chose a layout with our three stems, lightly drew it out in pencil and were advised by Clare to start with mixing our greens and painting the leaves. 

Sadly again time was limited and I think most people didn't end up finishing, I certainly didn't but I wasn't unhappy with what I achieved and at least we were able to bring our paint pallet home to continue at a later date.

Final painting

Group paintings

This was the first time Ohn Mar and Clare had put together one of these courses and I would highly recommend it to anyone wishing to paint flowers, either loosely in watercolour and ink or in a more controlled way in gouache. If I could do it again though I would prefer a full day with each artist, as everything felt quite rushed, rather than relaxed. I thoroughly enjoyed it though and have already booked on to another watercolour and ink painting day with another artist in November.