Explore beautiful Tuscany with California artist Brenda Swenson, artist, author and instructor. Whether you want to improve your skills, create travel journals or take that next step as an artist, you will come away from this workshop excited and inspired about your artwork. You'll benefit from demonstrations, friendly critiques and lots of one-on-one help and guidance from Brenda. This is a structured experience with many opportunities to enrich your painting style or learn a whole new way of seeing and painting.

Brenda has served on the board of directors for the National Watercolor Society (2002-04 and 2007-09) and Watercolor West (2001-04). Her paintings and sketches have been featured in Watercolor Magazine 2000 and 2004, Watercolor Highlights 2006, Quarterly Magazine, Wheels of Time and numerous other publications. She is the artist-author of Keeping a Watercolor Sketchbook, an Award of Excellence Finalist, and Steps to Success in Watercolor. She has received numerous awards for her painting and is in demand to demonstrate and teach her watercolor techniques to groups nationwide and abroad.

Plein Air Painting in Tuscany – an Artist’s Dream

Join Brenda in this workshop where you'll enjoy the charming, free-flowing and colorful nature of watercolor at its best . . . in the outdoors! She'll help you sharpen your observation skills, color awareness and learn simple design principles. Each day you'll explore various sketching tools, techniques and papers. Brenda will show you how a sketch can be complete in itself or a road map to larger studio paintings.

In addition to the incomparable painting opportunities, you will enjoy wine tours and tastings, cooking courses, visits to Renaissance and Baroque gardens, excursions to markets, the jewel town of Lucca, a Puccini concert, watching the shepherdess make pecorino cheese and ricotta and more. After a beautiful day of painting, we think you should be rewarded with an opportunity to enjoy a glass of wine while relaxing in a lawn chair contemplating the majesty of a cypress tree or choose a book to read from our library.

Most days will include a critique session with Brenda and your companion artists. The week ends with an informal "show and share" of sketches and paintings created during your time together, just before enjoying the final night’s pizza from the wood-fired oven.

Your days will be a mixture of at home, painting around the farmhouse and the estate, and away days, on excursions to hilltowns, gardens, the architectural wonder of Lucca and special trips to the stunning Cinque Terre coastal region and the beautiful hilltown San Gimignano..

“At Home”

Your home for ten days, the farmhouse Selva, is situated among olive groves, vineyards and forests, with buildings that go back hundreds of years in various phases of refurbishing. The rose garden, wildflowers, lemon trees in terra cotta pots, bits of mortar crumbling away in a nook, majestic cypress trees . . . all offer more inspiration. On your walks, you’ll meet Edo the shepherd and his sheep, perhaps startle a wild pheasant or watch the doves playing in the valley.

“Away”

We’ve chosen for your excursions stunning landscapes, quiet corners and places where you can discover your own muse. A few highlights: