Cheshire Art Classes

Fantastic session last weekend on Traditional Drawing, where we focused on portraiture! ✏️🎨

Portraiture is certainly not the easiest subject matter, but it’s an amazing way to learn the subtleties of graphite — from choosing the correct pencil for different tonal values to learning how to hold your pencil with the lightest possible pressure.

We also explored how direction, pressure, angle and mark-making all affect the quality of a drawing, particularly when building subtle transitions in value and creating realistic form.

Excellent work from everyone! 👏 Developing this understanding and control of graphite will benefit all of your future drawing, whatever the subject matter. ✏️🖼️

Well done to all my Knutsford students for getting stuck into their Hockney-inspired landscapes this week! 🎨🖌️

It takes some confidence to just go for it with the bold, vibrant colours that feature so strongly in Hockney’s palette, and I love how these paintings have progressed in only the second session!

Next week, we’ll spend more time refining our palettes and continuing the blocking-in process. A lot of a painting’s development comes through time, decision-making and continually referring back to our landscape references.

For me, this stage becomes much easier once we have more information down on the canvas. We can start to understand which colours are important, how they interact, and how they can be pushed to describe the landscape more effectively.

Fantastic progress so far — really looking forward to seeing these develop next week! 👏🎨

Great week at our Farndon oil painting classes! 🎨🖌️

A super busy week teaching 21 students across our morning and evening sessions!

There’s such a huge range of oil paintings being worked on at the moment — some just getting started, others developing beautifully, and a few now receiving those all-important finishing touches. 🖼️

It’s brilliant for newer students to see what others are achieving, learn from one another and enjoy the supportive atmosphere within the group.

Excellent work from everyone this week — looking forward to continuing with the paintings next week! 👏🎨

What a fantastic session today! Who knew adding colour through glazes over our traditional grisaille could be this much fun! 🎨

I’m super proud of everyone for exploring how glazing can gradually introduce colour into our portraits while still allowing the carefully established tonal values of the grisaille underpainting to show through.

It was also brilliant to see everyone really taking control of their values — adjusting hard and soft edges, refining subtle transitions and being very specific with each change. These techniques really help to improve observational skills and reduce the tendency to overpaint with colour.

Excellent work today! 👏 Looking forward to the final phase next week and seeing these portraits come together! 🖌️🖼

A huge well done to Caroline on this stunning landscape painting 🎨👏

What a fantastic sense of light and atmosphere! Starting with a Cobalt Violet underpainting really helped establish that warm glow, which continued to influence the colour throughout the entire painting process.

I love the transition from those intense yellows and oranges in the sky into the cooler, softer distant mountains. Excellent control of colour and tonal values to create depth, with stronger textures and richer greens bringing the foreground towards the viewer.

A beautiful painting with such a wonderful glow. You should be extremely proud of this one, Caroline! 🖌️🖼️

Fantastic first session at our Modern Landscape Painting Course in Knutsford, inspired by David Hockney! 🎨🌳

We spent the first session exploring a huge range of Yorkshire landscapes, simplifying them into a series of values before experimenting with watercolours and developing our own Hockney-inspired colour palettes.

Super impressed with everyone’s mark-making already and the bold use of colour! 🌈🖌️

Looking forward to getting started on our oil paintings this week!

🌲 FINAL MOLLINGTON COURSE OF 2026! 🎨
Our final course of the year at Mollington, Chester is now available — and we only have 3 places left!

🌿 Woodland & Forest Landscapes in Oils

Throughout the course, we’ll explore how to create atmospheric woodland scenes, focusing on depth, light, colour and texture. We’ll look at building a painting from background to foreground, creating convincing trees and foliage, mixing natural greens and using expressive brushwork to bring the landscape to life.

Perfect for anyone wanting to develop their landscape painting skills and gain more confidence with oils. 🎨🖌️

With only 3 places remaining, I’d recommend booking soon if you’d like to join us!
https://www.cheshireartclasses.uk/service-page/woodland-forest-landscapes-chester?referral=service_list_widget

🎨 NEW KNUTSFORD OIL PAINTING COURSE 🎨Interested in portraiture and want to improve your ability to create realistic form?

Our new Monochromatic Portraiture course explores the traditional grisaille method, using classical oil painting techniques and a limited monochromatic palette to focus entirely on tonal value, light, shadow and form.

🖌️ Learn traditional grisaille techniques
🎨 Develop stronger control of tonal values
👁️ Understand how light creates realistic form
🖼️ Build confidence painting realistic portraits
📍 The Hall At Marthall, Knutsford

An excellent course for anyone wanting to strengthen their portrait painting skills while exploring a traditional approach used by artists for centuries.

Spaces are limited – book your place below! 👇
https://www.cheshireartclasses.uk/service-page/monochromatic-portraiture-knutsford?referral=service_list_widget

🎨 Landscape Mixed-Media is BACK! 🌿🖌️

Do you want to loosen up your painting style and become more expressive with your mark-making?

Join us for this creative 2-day Landscape Mixed-Media Workshop, exploring how acrylics and oils can work together to create exciting, textured landscape paintings.

✨ Experiment with acrylics, oils & oil pastels
🎨 Explore layering, texture and expressive brushwork
🖌️ Learn how to loosen up and move away from over-detailing
🌿 Develop a landscape painting across two creative days
🙌 Suitable for beginners and those wanting to experiment with their style

If you feel like your paintings have become a little too tight or controlled, this is the course for you!

📅 This weekend! Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd August 10am - 2pm
📍 Cheshire Art Classes, Farndon Community Club

Spaces are still available 👇
https://www.cheshireartclasses.uk/service-page/mixed-media-landscape-oil-painting-1?referral=service_list_widget

Tag someone who needs a creative weekend! 🎨🌿

I have enjoyed teaching this process so much! 🎨 There’s something about working through a traditional grisaille that really gets you looking closely at hard and soft edges (Goat hair brushes have helped a lot!) 🖌️ while focusing purely on value to capture shape and form! ⚫️⚪️

The group did a fantastic job in just 4 hours! 👏 So much progress made and a brilliant effort working to fill the rest of the canvas! 🖼️✨

Next week, we’ll continue to push the values further, introducing more Titanium White and Raw Umber 🎨 refining our edges and adjusting the highlights and brightness to create even more depth and form! ✨🖌️