We have our annual Chettle Summer School coming up from Monday to Friday inclusive.

We're looking at stitching together the different distances of a landscape - with a foreground reference, a middle distance and a far distance.

We'll work outdoors if the weather's clement but as we're likely to have some wet days I have plans for indoors and outdoors.

There are many ways to tackle landscape painting, you can paint ‘en plein air’ (outside and directly on to your canvas), you might aim for a literal and figurative representation or, thinking of the impressionists, you might experiment with something softer and more expressive. You might decide to try something altogether more abstract. Abstract painting can appear to be easier than a photographic style – but its difficulties emerge when you realise that if you work in an abstract way you’ll need to think about how and why you’re changing, or evolving, that which you find and see in the landscape. You can try any or all of these styles this week, but you'll begin by making the working sketches which help you to organise your composition with the three distances you'll be stitching together.

If you decide to work indoors we're going to look at the way artists have stitched together three following distances, still-life (1) in front of a window (2) with a view outside(3). You’re going to make drawings to help you understand how you might stitch together these three elements. You need a drawing of a window (plenty in the hall!) You need a foreground, drawings of a still-life of some sort (plenty of things in the kitchen, plenty of plants and wildflowers to cut from outside) and you need a view outside your eventual window (lots of views around the hall and environs and lots of images which I have for you to work from).

Above is a collection of various paintings using some of the ideas I've been talking about.