SUNDAY WORKSHOP June 28th 2026, Watercolour, pen and landscape with a foreground reference.

Inspired by the latest National Trust Magazine cover, I've amalgamated two ideas, one of which we've worked with in our previous weekly classes.

Some of you will remember that we brought into class lots of long stems and drew them individually on one page with black gel pen, slowly gathering what looked like a field’s worth of lovely stems all on one pen drawing. Then some of you added a bit of watercolour for added depth. We’re going to do it slightly differently. I want you to find a landscape (and above are a couple of photos that I took the other day of the garden), quite a simple understated landscape which may have a road, path or track but may also just be a simple garden or landscape.

You’ll need to bring in lots of long stems, grasses, tall flowers etc. pencils, eraser, black gel pen and watercolours.

·         On a large sheet of good quality cartridge paper or watercolour paper (portrait format), make a pencil sketch of your landscape, marking out the main structures and shapes. You could even give some very pale colour to some of the main shapes (trees etc.).

·         Now, take one of your long stem and, working to one side and from the bottom of the page, with your black gel pen, follow the shape of your stem (with any leaves etc.) up the page in a flowing line. Work your way around and into the flower’s details.

·         Work your way across the page with a variety of stems, one by one, filling your page right across your landscape drawing.

·         Keep squeezing more stems into the available space so it becomes like ana abundant wildflower meadow.

Finally, choose some areas and shapes from your original landscape drawing to enhance with pen and/or watercolour and in sympathy with the flowers and stems which you’ve put in as your foreground reference (i.e. don’t overdo the landscape!).

Recap: Notice that I used the two photos of my garden to create the very simple landscape. I then added the stems as line drawings, filling in the spaces as I worked across the page. Finally I worked a little more on the landscape image after I'd finished the stems.