West Dean College

I have just returned from a fabulous week (yes, a whole week) at West Dean College near Chichester. Never been there before, but I can see that this will be the first of many trips there. The whole college is dedicated to the arts - so everyone there is on an arts-based course and it has been great to be with so many creative people.

This is a view, looking from the side, of the front facade - looks awful, doesn't it! Don't know how I managed to survive 7 days there!!! The gardens are immense - and the walled garden is amazing and an artist's dream in terms of sketching and painting. Only trouble is that the course was fairly full on, so I didn't manage to wander as much as I would have liked.


I was on a watercolour course: "Painting Beyond the Surface - Water-based Media". Although lots of the studios were in the main building, we were based in the Orangery. This was a single studio, so the whole building was ours.

This room had wonderful light, so ideal for a painting class. It was at the back of the main house, in the middle of the garden, so we could just pop outside to paint and sketch.





It was a residential course and I had opted to stay in the Vicarage, which was further back behind the Orangery.

This building was built in 1833, whereas the main building is much older. That was originally built in 1622, although remodelled in 1805.






My course was run by a tutor called Christine Forbes. Her style is very much influenced by the Orient and loose, but vibrant colour. She doesn't appear to have a website, but here is the link to a profile page on West Dean's site: Christine Forbes .  Christine is great fun and a bubbly, vibrant personality. Combining that with a great group of people, we had a really fun week with lots of laughter mixed in with the serious side of learning.

During the course, we did lots of experimentation, trying different techniques and mediums. I won't upload these, but will show the sketches that I did whilst around the garden and when Christine brought in some flowers from the cutting garden in the Walled Garden on the estate.

I took advantage of all the wonderful flowers that were around. It was great to have some to study close hand that one wouldn't normally get in a local florist shop.

This is a sketch of a flox head. All the black and white sketches have been done with my Rotring Art Pen with a wash using my water brush. This is my normal kit when out and about sketching, as it is so compact.

There were loads of agapanthas around the flower beds. They aren't actually very easy to draw, as there are so many flower heads clustered together, so this is just an impression of it.

The Japanese Anemone was one of the ones brought into the studio, so I was able to really study it and see how the leaves and buds grew. This is something that I think I should continue. It is all very well doing loose washes in painting, but these studies mean that I really know how the plant is formed and therefore is great research.

Another study of the Japanese Anemone - including more this time, as I grew in confidence. One thing that Christine is really keen on is repeating a subject over and over again, until one really knows and understands the subject. Again I think this is good practice and something that I will hope to continue in my sketchbooks. I believe this is a very Oriental approach to art - really studying a subject and perfecting it before moving on to something else.

OK - I admit I haven't the faintest what this plant is called. It has a really dark purple series of flowers - with the top of the stem near the flower more purple, moving into a green as it goes down the stem towards the leaves.

This was one of the orange lilies that I came across in the Walled Garden. Just did a small section of the plant, but interesting to draw the partly blown heads, as these were definitely past their best and fading fast.

Some of the daisy-type flowers are quite fun to sketch. This is a yellow rudbekia, which again I found in the Walled Garden.

Found some Sea Holly - I am used to the purple ones in flower arrangements and have painted them before. These were white ones and looked really dramatic in amongst the other foliage.

This Cosmos was a really deep red, but what I loved here was the great shapes.

The last of the pen drawings was a Sweetpea. The tutor had a little jug full of them, so we could take one and really study them closely.

After the pen drawing, I decided to paint them. The first ones were OK, but not brilliant. I then proceeded to draw with the Rotring pen and then added watercolour afterwards in a very loose style. Instead of trying to do one stem on the page, as I would normally do, I did a few studies, trying to improve as I went.

I then went back to the Cosmos, with its vibrant red. Again using the pen and then watercolour.

Lastly I attacked the purple flower in the arrangement on the table. I don't know what the flower is called (and neither did anyone else). However, it had an interesting flower formation and, armed with the information that my tutor had given me, I approached in a confident manner. She tends to use just one round brush (around a 7 or 8) and a rigger. The only rigger I had was a 0, so I went off to the shop in the college (a most wonderful place, full of great equipment at good prices) and bought a number 3 rigger. This was really good at making the stems and more detailed work.

The other equipment my tutor pointed out to me was a really stubby graphite pencil. I had a graphite pencil, but it was very narrow. This was really chunky and made much better marks when doing rough sketches - so I bought one of those as well, to use when doing basic drawings as preparation for other work.

The only other thing I really treated myself to was some beautiful paper in sketchbooks - really rough with deckled edges. Can't wait to try experimenting with it...

One of the exercises we had to do was look at an artist we admired and try to emulate their style. I firstly copied the painting I had in front of me, realising that the artist had done lots of mark-making - resist, splattering, dry brush etc. I then proceeded to look out of the window at the scene in front of me and then painted that in his style. This is the result. Not used to doing landscape, so it worked out OK. This was the view looking out from the front of the main building, up to the hills beyond the lawn and fields with sheep.

The last entry here will be about my swap-over session. Half-way through the week we were offered a swap-over with another class. I chose the stained-glass class.

We only had 1 1/2 hours to do the other class, so obviously what we could do was very limited. Our teacher - Helen Robinson - decided that we should do some etching on a small piece of glass. This is what I manged to do - a small fushia, copied from one of my paintings in acrylic ink. Helen does some really beautiful work (I bought some of her cards at the tutors' exhibition) and her work can be viewed on her website: Helen Robinson 

I had a couple of attempts, as my first etching was more of a line drawing and Helen told me that I was to think more in terms of a stencil or linocut - blocking in. If I attempted this again, I would prepare something in advance, but obviously time was of the essence, so I had to rush it a bit. Quite pleased with the result though.

I have to say that I was extremely impressed with the end results made by the stained glass students. Most were complete novices and it was astounding what they produced. On the last day all the classes set up an exhibition of their work and we went around after lunch. I also loved the silver jewellry section - again impressed by the people who had never worked in that medium before. I had a great time walking around the printing section too - would have loved to do the printing in the swap-over, but, as I can do this at home, decided not to do it here. In the sculpture department, one of the first-time students did a brilliant figure. Most of the students did exact copies of the figure in front of them. This particular student adapted it, making the figure evolve out of a tree - the head not formed yet, so still part of the natural form - absolutely brilliant.

I am going to West Dean again - had already booked the course before this one, but am now even more fired up. Nearly all the people on my course are repeat students - I can see that this will be me. I am definitely going to find more classes. The place is really well set up and there is a wealth of courses to go on, really diverse. Only problem is that I want to go on loads of them. What to do - go on a course that would be really fun, but doesn't lead to improving my normal pathway, or only chosing courses that will further my present work - difficult..... but rather a nice problem to have!