Justine Formentelli Art classes

22/09/2026

21/09/2026

NEW — Monthly Creative Evenings in Balham 🎨✨
A new series of relaxed, hands-on art workshops for adults — a chance to switch off, make something with your hands and try a different creative technique each month.
I keep the groups very small — maximum 6 people — so there’s plenty of individual attention, space to experiment and a friendly atmosphere around the table.
No experience needed. Come on your own or with a friend, and join for one evening or come back each month

⏰2 hours | 7–9pm
🎨 All materials included
🥂 Drink & nibbles included
👥 Maximum 6 people
💷 £40 per workshop
📍 Balham

October — Relief Printing
November — Sgraffito
December — Mixed Media Christmas Cards

DM me to book — only 6 spaces for each evening.

15/09/2026

COLOUR 🎨

One of the things I introduce early on in my art classes is basic colour theory — primary, secondary and complementary colours, and how they fit together on the colour wheel.

But colour is much more than learning where each colour sits.
I love exploring what happens when we mix colours, soften them, brighten them or place them next to their opposites. A colour can completely change depending on what surrounds it.
Which is why, when I’m asked what my favourite colour is, I can never choose one.
The essence of a colour depends on its entourage.
And perhaps that’s what makes colour so endlessly fascinating. 🌈
ColourWheel ArtEducation KidsArt SouthLondonKids

05/09/2026

One subject, many ways of seeing 🌸🌺🌻
When we explore a subject at Balham Art Classes, we rarely approach it in just one way.
With flowers, we might begin by looking closely — drawing from observation and noticing shape, structure and proportion. From there, we experiment with watercolour, ink, oil pastels and combine different mediums.
And then we let the imagination take over.
Flowers become characters, vases become faces and observation gives way to something much more expressive and personal. Some of these wonderfully strange face-vases were inspired by the work of artist Lucy Spanyol but we also looked at Georgia O’Keefe and Odile Redon.
I want students to develop skills, but also to discover that there is never just one way to interpret what they see.

Look closely. Experiment. Then make it your own.

03/09/2026

14 years ago, I had no idea I was starting my art classes.

I was living in Switzerland and had gone to the local pool with my boys and a friend. Her two little girls, around the same age as my boys, spotted me sketching and asked if I could show them how to draw animals.
Pandas and rabbits were the requests. 🐼🐰
We drew all afternoon. When it was time to leave, they wanted to carry on.
So I invited them to my house the following week. Each girl brought a friend…
And that was it. My art classes had begun.
No plan. No business idea. Just a few children who wanted to draw, and me happy to show them how.

14 years later, I’m still teaching art, at home, in community centres, in schools and recently in a hospital.

It all started very organically, feet in the water… 🌊💦💦

27/08/2026

Paying homage to the wonderful Yayoi Kusama 🍄🎃🌸

One of our favourite projects at Balham Art Classes was creating our own little Kusama worlds inside boxes, inspired by the diorama boxes of Joseph Cornell, with whom Kusama shared a long and extraordinary friendship in the 1960s.

Over the years, we’ve dived into Kusama’s magical universe in so many ways — from covering our work with stickers, painted and printed dots, to creating infinite mushrooms, pumpkins, flowers and tentacles.

Her world has given the children so much freedom to play with repetition, pattern, colour and imagination.

23/08/2026

Balham Art Classes are back this September 🎨 - https://mailchi.mp/7079288ba883/balham-art-classes-are-back-this-september

12/08/2026

A little marbling magic ✨
Watching colours float, swirl and transform into completely unexpected patterns is one of those processes children never seem to tire of.
We experimented with paper marbling as part of our Artist Book: Imaginary Worlds sessions — creating papers that could then be cut, layered and transformed into something completely new.
Small, artist-led art classes for children in Balham, London.
Follow along for more creative processes, projects and upcoming classes 🎨

11/08/2026

Gorgeous collages with painted scraps of paper (with left over paint from the morning summer camp session)

The first half hour, students were guided through a series of drawing exercises (with dominant hand and non dominant hand, contour drawing, blind contour drawing and gesture drawing) to familiarise themselves with the still life objects. They then to proceeded to create a collage featuring one of these objects. We looked at Matisse’s still life’s and his amazing paper cut-outs.

02/08/2026

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August Exhibitions and limited prints