Abbondanza Toscana - Italian cooking courses and wine tours in Tuscany, Italy

Brenda Swenson (center)
with students at a favorite venue,
The Cinque Terre The Cinque Terre
by Brenda Swenson Brenda sharing her sketchbook
with a young Italian admirer Selva Flowers
by Brenda Swenson The famous towers
of San Gimignano Simple items become
a still life by Brenda Brenda giving some
hands-on guidance

Tuscany En Plein Air
Watercolor Sketching with Brenda Swenson
Date: September 3 - 13, 2011

Explore beautiful Tuscany with Brenda Swenson, California 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 is the artist-author of Keeping a Watercolor Sketchbook, an Award of Excellence Finalist, and Steps to Success in Watercolor. Her paintings and sketches have been featured in Splash 11, Artistic Touch 4, Watercolor Magazine, Watercolor Highlights and many other publications. Brenda has received numerous awards for her paintings and is in demand to demonstrate and teach her watercolor techniques nationwide and abroad. She has been awarded signature membership in WW and NWWS, is an active participant in the arts community and has served on the board of directors for the National Watercolor Society and Watercolor West.

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:

A guided tour of the romantic city of Lucca, a medieval center surrounded by intact Renaissance walls, filled with Romanesque churches and small alleys and home to the very best cappuccino in the world! This year Brenda’s workshop coincides with Lucca’s Murabilia, a flower show on the city's famous walls. You’ll end your day with a Puccini concert held in a thousand year old church containing excavations of Roman ruins.

Enchanting San Gimignano with its famous towers, colorful markets, medieval piazzas and expansive views of vineyards and olive groves.

The Cinque Terre, site of five small villages perched over the cliffs of the Mediterranean, with almost vertical vineyards, olive groves, orchards and vegetable gardens. Colorful fishing boats dot the harbors below pastel-colored homes clinging to the rocky cliffs.

A charming country villa with its sweet, traditional garden, crumbling walls and antique wine cellar. Lunch is outdoors under the vine-covered dining area.

Other Activities

Your meals "at home" are prepared in the Tuscan style, and you will enjoy a cooking class with our own Italian chef who will introduce you to some of the specialities of Tuscan cuisine. Other nights you’ll enjoy dinner at an old mill and also at our "kitchen away from the kitchen," our neighborhood restaurant. Our pizza maker will guide you through the process of designing your own pizza and cooking it in the wood-fired bread oven. You’ll tour the estate winery and taste both its wine and olive oil. The antique wine press dates back to 1759 and was only recently replaced with modern equipment.

Brenda’s Web Site

To view more of Brenda’s work and read about her approach to art and teaching, visit her web site at www.swensonsart.net.