The gallery edition · Look further
Good paintings, useful advice and a healthy disrespect for the idea that one more brush will sort it.
Start with Turner’s light →
Paintings with a past, ideas with a future. Look closely, argue kindly, then take something back to the table.
Berthe Morisot · About 1885
A woman absorbed in work, a bright window and the spaces Morisot leaves alone. A small watercolour with a serious place in the history of looking.
France
Watercolour and graphite on paper
Unidentified Ethiopian artist · c. 1440–80
An Ethiopian Gospel portrait makes a seated figure vivid through patterned cloth, decisive outlines and a carefully organised page.
Tigray region, Empire of Ethiopia
Ink and tempera on vellum; manuscript illumination
José María Velasco · 1875
An expansive Mexican landscape asks us to look beyond the pretty distance: what makes a view belong to a particular place?
Valley of Mexico, painted by a Mexican artist
Oil on canvas — a wider influence for watercolour composition
William Blake · Songs of Innocence: Title Page, [1789] printed ca. 1825
A poem can occupy a page like a landscape. Blake’s illuminated books offer a lively lesson in lettering, colour and making the margins earn their keep.
Vincent van Gogh · Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889
Dreams makes an encounter with art wonderfully literal. Its painterly spaces also offer a practical question: how will someone travel through your next watercolour?
Katsushika Hokusai · Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1830–32
A documented connection between a Japanese print and French music opens a useful studio conversation about repetition, intervals and the shapes we leave quiet.
Winter Stream · Mark C Grant
Negative painting: a useful skill with an unnecessarily gloomy name.
Treeline at Dusk · Mark C Grant
Cloud studies that remember the weather, rather than producing another row of decorative cauliflowers.
Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Paint the relationships in the water before reaching for forty-seven horizontal lines.
Joseph Mallord William Turner · The Lake of Zug, 1843
A lake, a little haze and a very useful reminder that the sky needn't explain itself. What Turner's atmosphere can teach your next small study.
Rain on Water Street, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Before another window, decide what the whole scene is doing. A practical way into atmosphere, tonal structure and a calmer relationship with street furniture.
John Singer Sargent · Abriès, ca. 1912
The pleasure of a decisive mark starts before it touches the paper. Look at Abriès for a lesson in cropping, connected shapes and knowing where to spend your attention.
Winslow Homer · Fishing Boats, Key West, 1903
Fishing Boats, Key West is a marvellous excuse to leave something alone. Plan your light, connect your darks and stop explaining every ripple.
Paul Cézanne · Still-Life with a Watermelon and Pomegranates, 1900–1906
A fruit bowl becomes a small architectural problem. Learn to see colour relationships, leave breathing space and stop polishing every brushmark into submission.
John Sell Cotman · Farm Building by a Pond, 1808–11(?)
A modest farm building, a stormy sea and the same useful question: what holds this picture together before the small brush gets involved?
Long Shadows, Southport · Mark C Grant
Choosing an outdoor subject by what the picture needs, rather than what has the biggest visitor sign.
Waterstones, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
A small working habit for days when becoming a great artist has to fit around the washing.
Outside the Golden Lion, Ormskirk · Mark C Grant
How to diagnose an awkward passage before your rescue operation becomes the main event.
A painting you can’t quite resolve. A small discovery. That one grey that keeps turning into pond water. Bring it to the table.
24 curated YouTube lessons, a clear learning path and something to paint after every film.
An introduction to supplies and basic strokes from Emma’s Watercolour Week. A sensible place to begin with the kit already on your table.
A focused practice lesson on pigment-to-water ratios. Jenna credits Brienne M. Brown for the Tea–Butter exercise discussed in the video.
A colour-mixing lesson and painting demonstration using just three paints. Small palette, plenty to investigate.
Street corners, bookshops, weather and the places we walk past. A few paintings made by the person behind the zine.
Look through Mark’s paintings →
