Ann Blockley – författare

Artist Ann Blockley is renowned for her innovative approach to traditional subjects. Following the huge success of her previous book, Experimental Flowers in Watercolour, she now explores ways to interpret landscape. Packed with stunning examples of her colourful, expressive work, this book encourages you to experiment with the same techniques in your own watercolour painting to develop a personal style. Techniques covered include combining water-based paint and ink with other media such as gesso and collage to create dramatic effects; manipulating paint with materials such as plastic wrap (clingfilm); tearing, layering and reassembling paintings into watercolour collages; and developing textures and marks made using fabrics and other found objects. Throughout the book Ann offers her personal commentary on how her paintings were created, giving us a unique insight into the mind of the artist.Both practical and inspirational, this glorious book is the ideal companion for watercolour painters who want to take their work a step further.

Watercolour Textures is for all those artists who already have some experience of watercolour painting but who wish to explore this versatile medium by experimenting with unusual techniques for portraying texture.Key features of the book include:Explore Further exercises - quick, simple suggestions to tryStudio Tips - useful hints for the readerPractical Projects - more considered exercises to help develop personal styleStep-by-step demonstrations - detailed development of paintingsPaintings by other guest artists - watercolours by John Blockley, Moira Huntly and Shirley TrevenaWritten by well-known professional artist Ann Blockley and beautifully illustrated with her original watercolours, this inspirational book provides the much needed next step that so many practised beginners have been looking for.

An inspirational and practical art manual, packed with step-by-step projects.Artist Ann Blockley is renowned for her innovative approach to watercolour painting. Her highly anticipated new book provides a series of workshops demonstrating how to push the boundaries of watercolour, using key techniques to develop your own work and take your paintings to the next level. Ann's easy-to-follow, step-by-step projects demonstrate how some of her most dramatic paintings are created. She describes in detail some of the key techniques used and how you can experiment with alternative methods to create your own interpretations. Finally, her beautiful and inspirational artworks demonstrate how different interpretations of a subject might take an unexpected or unusual direction, and how to make the most of these opportunities.The book moves, with progressively challenging projects, from loose wildflower meadows, textured woodland and rustic rambling walls to atmospheric or semi-abstract landscape corners, all rendered in Ann’s adventurous signature style. Loose, expressive mark-making and unusual techniques include combining water-based paint and ink with granulation medium for dramatic texture, drawing with twigs, using gesso and collage to create unique effects; manipulating paint with materials such as plastic wrap (clingfilm); developing printed marks made using found materials.Following the huge demand for more practical guidance in experimental painting, the book provides plenty of techniques and instruction. Ann’s personal commentary also gives a unique insight into the mind of the artist – ways of looking at your subject, how to explore and experiment – to unlock the potential of your watercolour painting.

A passionate and purposeful book on finding real creativity through nature.An essential book for our times and all artists at whatever level. In her most passionate and personal book to date, acclaimed watercolour artist Ann Blockley takes both budding and more experienced artists through a series of ideas for working with nature – in its widest sense – to nurture our creativity, inspire us, make us more sustainable artists, and replenish energy and flow when our artistic streams run dry.In ‘Go Outside and Play’, the author exhorts artists to recapture a fun, no-pressure way of being outside and use that feeling when creating. In ’Connecting Materials to Place’ she creates her own paint from the local pond. In ‘The Slow Movement’, the artist reveals her year of working on a specific local hedgerow and painting a series of different interpretation in its every-changing detail. She created regular creative rituals, using her weekly playing card as a starting point for a new painting to reflect the season each week. She reuses old paintings, and tissue and paper – wabi-sabi style – to create new textures and even new paintings. Including work from other artists as well as her own, she shows the ideas and work from textile and mixed-media artists. From allotment inspiration to reusing old painting and from nature prints to the alchemy of found materials, this is a journey to find new creativity through our connection with our natural world.

Innovative techniques in painting woodlands from renowned artist Ann Blockley.Watercolourist Ann Blockley is known for her striking and intriguing paintings of natural landscapes. In this beautiful guide she explores woodlands in a variety of interpretations, from tangled groves and ancient trees to fiery leaves and springtime orchards.With simple instructions and easy-to-follow demonstrations throughout, the book draws inspiration from forest poetry, birdsong and folklore. There’s practical advice on working outside, experimenting with mixing colours (especially greens), playing with water effects, using salt and granulation, mark-making and spattering with found objects such as leaves and twigs, creating texture with gesso and working with collage. Other techniques include working with oak gall ink and charcoal, and how to incorporate words, text and photo transfer.The book is illustrated throughout with stunning examples of Blockley’s colourful, expressive work, including a case study of her own woodland garden. Also showcased are works by fellow artists from The Arborealist group, the Royal Institute, and the Pastel Society to inspire you further.Pushing the boundaries of watercolour and other mixed media, this delightful wander through the woods is the ideal companion for both beginners and the more experienced landscape painter who wishes to take their painting to the next level.

Ann Blockley is well-known for her attractive paintings of flowers and here she explains all the basic techniques for painting country flowers in watercolour. This practical yet inspirational ebook is part of the renowned Collins Learn to Paint series.Country flowers are an accessible and endlessly fascinating subject. In this book, Ann Blockley shows you how to capture them in watercolours, teaching the methods and techniques that are needed to paint a variety of flowers.There are many practical and step-by-step demonstrations throughout, with sections on how to create texture and effective backgrounds, making this an essential guide on the subject.

A magical nature journal describing the country life of a well-known artist who lives in a beautiful, isolated nature reserve.In 2020, renowned watercolour artist Ann Blockley and her husband shook up their comfortable life in a pretty part of Middle England and moved somewhere far wilder: a house in a remote part of the Devon countryside with a large, untamed garden complete with its own lake. In this captivating book Ann Blockley charts a year of her life in her new environment, and how the nature she is surrounded by finds its place in her ethereally beautiful paintings.In dated entries throughout the year it describes how she lives within her natural environment, constantly inspired by the comings and goings of birds and animals, the beauty of trees and flowers, and the turn of the seasons. The book is a fusion of nature observations and artistic inspiration, with an air of folklore and magic – is that patch of primroses a portal to a fairy realm? Alongside Ann's evocative text is a rich selection of her paintings that distil the essence of her surroundings into art.Ann says: 'My own corner of the world is a six-and-a-half-acre wild garden near the South Devon coast. There is meadow, wood, ponds, stream and swamp. There are owls, bats, woodpeckers, robins, fox, deer, squirrels, snakes, newts, bees and many trees and flowers, both wild and garden varieties. There may be water and tree spirits here too, although they are very secretive. The wild garden has lured me into writing about it, not just about nature but the happenings and stories that weave around it.'

John Blockley was one of Britain’s most outstanding watercolour and pastel painters of the late 20th century, and has exhibited at the Royal Academy. Self-taught, he produced work that has always been experimental and progressive. His highly textured style was well ahead of his time and still hugely influential now.The quality of his work is even more staggering given that he never trained at any art college, and spent most of his working life as an engineer. He only started painting full time at the age of 52. His obsession for drawing and painting, even while a successful engineer, was driven by his search for the essence of his subjects. The power of his paintings reveal that passion.This beautiful retrospective of his work, including drawings, watercolours, pastels and also acrylics, brings together the best of his work. The illuminating commentary on his work is from his daughter, Ann Blockley, who is also an acclaimed painter in her own right. She understands completely where John Blockley was coming from in his artistic vision and also explains the techniques he used. Breaking with so many traditions in watercolour painting in the 1960s, John was and is an influential figure in the art world.John said, ‘In order to paint the terrain as I see it – blotched, mottled, grainy – I must experiment’. These experimentations are still of huge value to painters today. This book is perfect for any painter who enjoys John’s work but also for all the many, many fans of his work.