TUSCAN PAINTING RETREAT 1 – 8 October 2025
Join me for a fantastic painting retreat in the heart of Tuscany
Click here for information and booking details
https://uptrek.com/retreat/medieval-architecture-landscape-painting-retreat-artist-john-lovett-italy
Click here to watch a video of the painting
https://youtu.be/yccGmWwlyTQ
A quick watercolor demonstration, painting an African elephant with just 3 colors, some charcoal and gesso.
Join me for a fantastic painting workshop in Africa, May 2005 – Still some places left
https://www.paintingworkshops.net/lovett-africa-may-2025.php
Two workshops, back to back, in the beautiful South Island of New Zealand. What a treat, the weather was surprisingly kind to us and the scenery spectacular.
Queenstown was our starting point. This old steam powered launch, The Earnslaw, cruises up and down the lake
Painting on the shore of Lake Wakatipu.
Glenorchy Mountains
Lake Wakatipu along the road to Glenorchy
Petrol bowser recycled – Cardrona
Old timber shed and wagon out the back of Cardrona Pub
Winter wood supply – Cardrona Pub
NZ Woodhen
Tui Tui
Historic remains of old Cromwell
Arrowtown was a great place to paint – Interesting Cafes and bars, and coffee never too far away
Larnach Castle – Dunedin – A fascinating history explained with enthusiasm by our knowledgable guide
Iron gate behind the castle – keeps the ghosts in and the bad guys out.
Boat sheds on Dunedin Harbour were fun to paint – sitting by the water on a sunny afternoon.
Down the road from Chateau de la Fleunie, where we spent the last week of our workshop in France, were two pigs penned up and being fattened by the local farmer. They were like a pair of friendly dogs – running around and getting into as much trouble as possible in their small wire enclosure.
I’ve been looking forward to painting them since we arrived home. They look so pink and meaty – just like bacon running around. They have no idea of hygiene, make amazing grunting sounds and seem really happy locked up in a tiny wire pen. I’m sure they’d make better pets than breakfast.
Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Quinacridone Gold, Ultramarine Blue and, in the background, Phthalo Blue. Opaque washes of tinted White Gouache were used to loose the back end and some scratchy white charcoal pencil marks break up the surface.
Santa Claus was good to me and left a box of shiny new paint from Japan. These trays of watercolor are handmade by the Ueba company in Kyoto. They were established in 1751 and still operate out of the same premises, so they must be doing something right. The main ingredient of the paint is finely ground scallop shells. The process they use to create these paints can be seen on their website (click on Factory Tour)
To experiment with these new paints I painted this Barramundi.
Starting with a loose charcoal line drawing, I then washed in some shadows with a mixture of the rich purple color and the yellow ochre. The pigments are very intense and more transparent than I expected, considering the high ground shell content.
After the first washes dried, more detail was built up with Indigo and the pale Turquoise. Scale shapes were painted on and some fine detail marks were applied with a rigger brush. A patchy wash of the orange/red was worked through the upper half of the fish before some spots of the white pigment were applied. I expected the white to be similar to white gouache, but it is more transparent and dries to a beautiful, pearl like sheen. When the white is used to tint other colors the resulting mixture also dries with this unusual sheen.
Finally, because the Barramundi is an elusive, almost mythical fish, I decided he shouldn’t be presented so blatantly. A big rough brush full of gesso and some scribbly white charcoal marks pushed him back into murky water. A green/grey wash around the head suggests the milky green of a tropical waterhole.
I love these new paints and look forward to playing with them some more. My only fear is that I’ll become hooked on them and then they will run out!
During the last workshop we experimented with a technique that produces interesting results if it doesn’t drive you mad first. The idea is to start with a background wash, draw the shapes of stones, leaves and twigs onto it, then, with a slightly darker tone fill in all the negative spaces. More leaves, twigs etc are then drawn into the darker negative areas and the negative spaces around the new shapes is made slightly darker. This incremental darkening is done 3-4 times then the shapes are modeled, ink and pastel lines are added, colors splashed on and gesso washes are used to simplify areas.
The process is a lot of fun and often triggers interesting ideas. The example below was done as a demo on aluminium composite panel primed with watercolor gesso. The heavy vertical marks were masked up and painted over the top with more watercolor gesso then the tones were adjusted.
These next images give an idea of the build up using negative shapes.
Once you get the hang of it this can be great fun. The subject can be any reasonably defined object – tools, utensils, paint brushes, pencils – anything that can layer one over the other.
For the last two weeks I have been busy conducting a workshop looking at selecting, manipulating and extracting the most from a painting subject. It was a lot of fun, but we worked hard – doing a couple of paintings each day and squeezing in a few critique sessions, where we examined everybodys work and discussed various problems and solutions.
It is always a pleasure meeting new students and catching up with students from previous workshops. One of our new students for the second week was Carol and her assistant, Kim. What an inspiring lady – taking up watercolor a couple of years ago after a severe car accident ended her career as a lawyer and left her a quadriplegic. Forgetting about her disability, the standard of her paintings is excellent, but to see how she has overcome so many physical hurdles to produce the work she does is just amazing. On top of this, she is determined to keep on improving and works hard to that end.
Thumbnail sketches and simple monochrome collages were used to simplify and rearrange our subjects.
The demonstration paintings below illustrate some of the techniques we explored.
Manipulating a large foreground to lead up to a focal point while not causing a distraction.
Creating depth with hard and soft edges
Flat Ultramarine gouache used to squeeze more vibrancy from the warm, transparent watercolor.
Confining detail and using empty space as an element in the painting.
Practicing the random placement of suggestive abstract marks
Sometimes an unusual subject will free you up to try new techniques.
Making a strong focal point in what was a flat uniform facade.
Starting loosly with a big brush and no preliminary drawing, then adding detail as the painting progresses.
Experimenting with techniques to break up a symetrical subject.
Splashing Paint 