Expressive Watercolour Landscapes
Online booking will be available on Monday 2 March.
Learn the expressive potential of watercolours to create landscape paintings which convey atmosphere, mood and ideas.
Each week we will explore a particular aspect of watercolour paints and use their qualities to express different ideas and atmosphere.
Tutor Peter Clayton will explain and demonstrate:
- Approaches to paint application
- Mixing colour and the use of tone to express different moods
- Incorporating other media – including pens, pencils
- Transparency and working from light to dark
- Using white gouache to create highlights and increased opacity
- Creating a sense of space
- Editing visual information
All materials will be provided but advice will be given to students who wish to buy their own to develop their work outside the course.
The tutor will provide visual resources in the form of photographs but you’re encouraged to bring your own source material to make your work more personal.
The source material may be photos, sketches, previous paintings or memories and imagination.
Here are a few artists, past and present, for you to explore who make extensive use of watercolour:
Eric Ravilious, John Singer Sargent, Ann Blockley, Miranda Brookes, Sesshu Toyo, J.M.W Turner, Hannah Woodman, Paul Klee and Gwen John.
This course is aimed at watercolour beginners and those with some experience who want to develop skills and ideas.
About the tutor:
Tutor Peter Clayton holds a Fine Art degree and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education. Over 40+ year career he has shown in over 160 solo and group exhibitions in commercial and public galleries.
He has collaborated widely with artists of various disciplines, undertaken residences, painted murals and worked with local authorities, museums, interior designers and publishers. His personal work has encompassed a wide variety of painting and printmaking media. Subject matter has been inspired by the landscape (particularly woodland), architecture and family history. Pete is a member of Leicester Society of Artists and Leicester Print Workshop and has taught courses in Adult and Further Education at numerous venues, including Attenborough Arts Centre, for many years.
Further information:
All materials will be provided.
This 10-week course will run on Wednesday afternoons, 2pm – 4:30pm, starting on 15 April with the final session on 8 July 2026.
Participants must be aged 18+.
If the course/workshop you’d like to book is sold out, we do operate a waiting list – simply contact our box office team on 0116 252 2455 / arts-centre@le.ac.uk and ask to be added to the waiting list. We’ll then contact you if a place becomes available, with absolutely no obligation to accept it if you’ve made other plans!
Please ensure that you agree to our updated Terms & Conditions before booking as courses/workshops are non-refundable if cancelled within 21 days of the start date for any reason.
We aim to make all our sessions as accessible as possible and carers/PAs are very welcome – just remember to book their free place when you book your session. If you’d like to talk to us in advance of booking or attending your sessions to discuss your access needs, our Box Office team is here to help! Email arts-centre@le.ac.uk, pop in or call 0116 252 2455, open 7 days a week.
We have four blue badge parking spaces outside Attenborough Arts Centre, plus double yellow line roadside parking very close to the building for blue badge holders for up to three hours if our parking spaces are occupied.
Free parking for all customers is available after 5pm on weekdays and all day at weekends in the University of Leicester car park next door to Attenborough Arts Centre on Lancaster Road. The closest public car park for parking at all other times is Victoria Park, 5-10 minutes walk from us (near De Montfort Hall).
