Clare Shepherd
Artist and Teacher
Artist led Art Classes

In this workshop we'll make use of magazine images to explore and match both the colours and the tones we find. Lighter colours will be created by using more water to pigment, thereby allowing the white of our watercolour paper to dictate the lightness of the colour. You’ll need watercolours & watercolour brushes, good watercolour paper and a landscape/garden/art magazine (although I’ll have lots of these). You’ll also need a good glue stick (Pritt Stick or similar) and some

Today we were working through the process of watercolour from loose wet-into-wet initial layers through to the crisper edged shapes of later layers, pulling together the focus from the subject....so challenging and yet such lovely results from the spring flower subject. As ever, students are always welcome to bring project from home which some do, also with fabulous results.

In this workshop the intention is to use watercolour loosely and minimally. We will still be looking for precision in our looking so that what we put down on the paper is as a result of close  looking. The looseness comes from allowing the paint to run amok in water – not to over control the paint in water, especially in the early stages. ·         Place your daffs or tulips in a lovely clean label-free jam jar, half -filled with water. (Cut the stems so that your subject is

We were looking at layering and weaving colour with good colour pencils. Shoes were our subject as they are expressive by their nature - we know so much about the wearer without needing to meet them! We had a lovely day. As ever, students are free to bring projects from home on which they'd like to work - we had some great pieces created today.

We have another workshop coming up soon in which we'll be working with colour pencil - creating wonderful colour mixes with good colour pencils! You'll need colour pencils, cartridge paper, interesting footwear and coloured, patterned cloth. We’re going to work with colour pencils in this workshop but it’s less about working with the ‘right’ colour and much much  more about a weave of colours creating the right tones. I’ve chosen ‘footwear’ as our subject because footwear exp

Wonderful work produced on this workshop where students gained real insight into the way well-known artists have created portraits. Colours and compositions are often surprising in well-known artists' work and so a chance to study them closely reveals a kind of freedom that can be brought across to students' own work.

...and after nice lunch on the airport island (Lantau), Jack took me on the cable car up to the Lantau giant Buddha. The flight had been re-routed from it's normal path (over Taiwan) to go across China mainland and down to Hong Kong - airforce manoeuvers over Taiwan - I had wondered what route we'd take after hearing the news, I'd feared delays!

I've arrived with a stinking cold but thankfully after a few days here It's beginning to subside...but as it's impolite to blow your nose in public here I've had to be creative about how and where! Day one, George and Namiki were at work and Isaac at school which left me to my own devises, and walking quietly around for much of the day with my camera (and a face mask) was definitely for the best. Since then, we've eaten out at few places, I've joined one of George's English c

A quick note to say I've been locked out of my emails while away (a joined email account with Simon - and I think BT are confused that the account holders are in different parts of the world) so I won't be able to email further details about this workshop until (probably) Jan. 12th as that's when Simon returns to UK. Most of what you need to know is here in this post. Looking forward to being back in Blighty and seeing you all then. Happy New Year!! In this workshop my studen

My students created wonderful work today, beginning with the Planet and the boiled egg exercises, the task being to create a seamless edge around both but with changing relationships between the subject and its background (ie. light against dark - dark against light). They moved onto drawing the scrunched paper, bringing the notions learned from the exercises to the scrunched paper drawing. As ever, some of my students brough their own projects from home and were able to work