There are fourteen lessons from fourteen artists (including mine) in the summit, read on to see more information about each of them + feedback from students. If this tempts you to join us click the button below. Don’t miss out, registration is only open until 31 May.

All the info

🌼 Janet Skates

@janetskatesart | Pretty in Pink | Monday 18 May

The first of our fourteen lessons is from Janet Skates titled Pretty in Pink.

An artwork by Janet is featured on the current cover of Flow magazine and in this lesson you will learn how to create a similar piece using mostly gouache and watercolour with details added in dip pen and ink.

🌼 Dar James

@indarsworld | Petals and Pieces | Tuesday 19 May

Dar James created two artworks using the colour palette to create cool and warm artworks in her lesson on the second day of Colori Flori. In her lesson you will learn how to use a simple grid structure and a spontaneous approach to create botanical compositions that shift between recognisable florals and more abstracted forms. Techniques incorporated include drawing, painting, and collaging to build in layers.

🌼 Julie Sydenham

@julie.sydenham.art | Flowers & a Finch | Wednesday 20 May

If you like to paint in watercolour, you’ll find so much value in this class!

Jules creates her own magic combining a vase of poppies with an Australian Zebra Finch in this lesson using pen, watercolour and watercolour pencil to create a layered artwork.

🌼 Carrie Smith

@carriesmithart | Mounted Floral Medallion | Thursday 21 May

In Carrie's Colori Flori lesson she demonstrates how to paint a bold medallion with layered patterns and intricate details. In her class you will discover how colour, repetition, and simple mark-making tools can transform a design and bring each of those aspects to life.

🌼 Katie O’Shea

@katie_oshea_design | Paint to Pattern | Friday 22 May

In Paint to Pattern you’ll learn how to create a pattern composition using just paper, pencil and acrylic markers and working with squares to build a repeating design.

Once the layout is set, you’ll explore options to complete the design with acrylic markers. Katie will also show you some easy ways to explore and test the repeat pattern.

🌼 April Howlett

@monkeymintaka | Plants as People | Saturday 23 May

This sketchbook demo from April aka @Monkeymintaka is so much fan to watch. April combines her love of quirky characters with florals by creating anthropomorphic characters in her lesson called Plants as People.

🌼 Clare Youngs

@clareyoungs | Make Your Mark | Sunday 24 May

Clare Youngs is an designer maker with an iconic style, she is known for her beautiful stylised collages of animals.

Clare recorded an informative lesson covering some of her favourite techniques including wax resist and creating texture with tools to create beautiful collage papers. Claire will show you how to ideas for cutting and arranging them before gathering the finished pieces and presenting them in a handmade sketchbook.

🌼 Betsy Walton

@betsywalton | Finding Range within a Limited Palette | Monday 25 May

Week two of Colori Flori started with a very informative lesson by Betsy. She produces something quite remarkable whilst also showing us how to mix a beautiful range of colours including warm neutrals by using a limited palette. She demonstrates how shifts in saturation, value, and hue can create depth by using just the colour palette of four colours. Watching the techniques used to create a floral posy is a real treat.

🌼 Miriam Bos

@_miriambos | Strokes of Sunflower |Tuesday 26 May

Miriam’s lesson is about observing the shape of a sunflower before sketching and playing with their shapes. She shares how to make a composition and work in layers to create fun textures to paint these beautiful flowers. Miriam shares helpful tips and technical details about painting in gouache.

🌼 Rowan Sivyer

@littlerowanredhead | Faux Chine Collé Poppies | Wednesday 27 May

In Faux Chine Collé Poppies Rowan demonstrates expertly how to combine block printing and gel printing to achieve eye-catching floras.

Rowan demonstrates a number of interesting printing techniques and layering processes beginning with designing and carving of a floral rubber stamp! It’s used for gel printing before using she uses a reverse collage method to ‘colour in’ the poppies with textured papers. A fascinating mono printing process to explore.

🌼 Claire Desjardins

@claire_desjardins_art | Color Notes from Sicily | Thursday 28 May

If you’re familiar with Claire’s work, you’ll know she normally works in a very large scale. This lesson was recorded on location and it’s interesting to see how she adapts and works to a much smaller scale from a kitchen table in Sicily.

This lesson reflects a more intuitive way of working - responding to surroundings, simplifying materials, and letting each mark guide the next.

🌼 Estee Zales

@estee.zales | Imagined Flowers | Friday 29 May

In Estee’s lesson you will learn how to create interesting textures and marks with landscapes as inspiration that’ll then become elements of a stylised floral collage artwork.

Rather than aiming for realistic botanical illustration, she encourages you to explore imagined floral forms through playful mark-making, material experimentation, and intuitive composition

🌼 Tansy Hargan

@palimpsestparade | Freesia Facets | Saturday 30 May

Tansy explains: “I’m a colour synesthete, which means that everything I encounter, consider, or undertake is spontaneously experienced as a colour.

In my Freesia Facets lesson, I use a limited colour palette and, starting with a single square lozenge of colour, I progress into an exploration of the way colours merge when dropped in to one another.

🌼 Esté MacLeod

@estemacleod | Doodle Bloom | Sunday 31 May

To end the summit on 31 May we revisit ideas from the two B is for Bloom warm up sketchbook projects shared over the weekend before Colori Flori started. Here’s the first one:

And here’s the second one:

In my Doodle Bloom lesson you will create imaginary botanicals in mixed media. Explore ways to create stylised florals and plants using printouts of shapes that have been part of the weekly Coloricombo prompts this year. The various cut out shapes are the starting points for sketchbook drawings and bigger layered floral paintings on watercolour paper.

Remember, registration for the Colori Flori Summit 2026 closes this weekend. You can join us until 31 May. The summit comes with lifetime access to all the lessons so you can work at your own pace and revisit projects later.

All the info about Colori Flori 2026

This week’s colours come from a layered watercolour artwork I’ve created for this years Colori Flori Summit. I love painting in aquatic colours with a warm yellow and brown for contrast. You can get a glimpse of the artwork in progress below.

Week Two of the summit has started after the first seven lessons were shared last week together with two bonus projects that have been added right here on Substack.

You can still join Colori Flori which includes lifetime access, registration closes this weekend (midnight PST on 31 May).

All the Colori Flori details

“Doodle Bloom” watercolour and gouache on paper, Esté MacLeod, 2026

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Peacock Blue, Turquoise, Pastel Green, Mustard & Sepia. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W21 Shapes

560KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The Colori Flori Summit 2026 kicked off on Monday with fourteen artists teaching lessons inspired by florals and botanicals. All lessons are prerecorded, edited and packaged up, to be shared daily from 18-31 May. Each lesson incorporates a limited colour palette chosen from the #coloricombo archive - can you believe that I’ve been sharing these weekly prompts since the start of 2022?

On Tuesday 26 May will present Strokes of Sunflower using the palette below. Miriam chose this palette from Week 8 of 2023 which was way before I moved to Substack so I am sharing it again today.

“Stroke of Sunflower” studies, pencil and gouache in sketchbook, Miriam Bos, 2026

Each lesson in the summit is shared with a link to the original Coloricombo prompt where you can revisit the source of the colour palette, normally chosen from an artwork by an artist from the past. You can read Miriam’s post about the lesson here.

PS Join us, it’s not too late to sign up to the Colori Flori Summit that runs until 31 May.

All the prerecorded lessons come with lifetime access so you can watch everything at a pace that suits you, do the projects in your own time and revisit lessons again at a later date. Find out more here.

Join Colori Flori

Originally posted on 20 February, 2023

We were out for a long walk today, a crisp sunny blue sky day. Spring is definitely in the air. Snowdrops and daffodils could be seen along the route we walked, signalling the new season to come. I grew up in South Africa and always thought that daffodils were exotic flowers, very rarely seen in sub-tropical gardens. Here in England, they grow next to the road.

The painting I’ve chosen for this week’s #coloricombo is from the renowned British painter Winfred Nicholson.

Rosa Winifred Roberts (1893-1981) was born in Oxford, England to a wealthy, political family. She spent her youth painting as she lived between countryside properties in Cumberland and Yorkshire, as well as London. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, finishing there after World War One.

After marrying her painter husband, Ben Nicholson, in 1920, they travelled together through Europe, capturing local views from residences in France and Italy.

They had three children: Jake, Kate and Andrew who often feature in her paintings. There were tensions in the marriage and the couple eventually split, with Ben Nicholson going on to marry the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

Despite being overshadowed by her husband during her lifetime, Winifred Nicholson is recognised as a major figure in British modernism. Her work is highly sought after and can be found in many collections across the world.

Her landscapes and still life paintings were characterised by soft colours and delicate brushwork, often depicting the landscapes and seascapes of Cornwall where she visited frequently.

One of her favourite compositions was to combine domestic objects together with a landscape, often placing flower arrangements on a windowsill in front of a the landscape beyond.

You can learn more about Nicolson here and here.

“Kate’s Flowers”, Oil on plywood, Winifred Nicolson, 1936

Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Primrose, Sunshine, Pumpkin, Baby Blue and Mouse Grey.

Tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod when posting on Instagram and you are welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

Here’s the post for Week 20 if you missed it:

Colori Flori news

The first of the summit’s fourteen lessons features Janet Skates and is titled Pretty in Pink.

Have a look at the joyful magazine cover below, it is an artwork by Janet that is featured on the current cover of Flow, and in her lesson she demonstrates the processes used to create a similar piece.

The Colori Flori Early Bird discount offer has ended. If you would like to to jump in quick use the code COLORIFLORI20 for a special 20% discount for Substack readers valid until midnight PST tonight.

See link for Colori Flori information and registration

Signup for Colori Flori

In this video I demonstrate how to use B shapes to create two different floral artworks using aquarelle pencils. You’ll learn how to use the pencils to create texture, blend and layer colours.

There are two projects in this lesson. The first project is about repeating a floral design in a structured way, building on the sketchbook drawings from the first B is for Bloom lesson shared on Saturday. In the second project you will learn how to use the B shapes of the paper stencil in an artwork of a single flower, inspired by a peony.

You can find the palette and the stencil I used here:

The Colori Flori Summit runs from 18-31 May and kicks off on Monday at 9am London time when the first of our fourteen exclusive, prerecorded lessons is released.

Early Bird pricing is valid until the first lesson starts, signup now to take advantage of it.

You can register and get all the information you need here.

Join us!

Early Bird pricing ends at the same time, don’t miss out. You can register and get all the information you need here.

Join us!

To get us in the mood for this floral and colour themed event, I created two bonus projects that are released this weekend, one today and one on Sunday.

B is for Bloom is the topic and you see the palette and the shapes I’ll be using in both projects here.

Way back in the early days of Coloricombo (Week 26 of 2022), I featured a painting by André Brasilier. A few days ago I attended the Original Print Fair at Somerset house in London where this striking lithograph of his caught my eye, so I chose it for the #coloricombo palette that’s also used for two weekend bonus projects.

You might have noticed you’re receiving this colour prompt early! Here’s why:

The Colori Flori Summit starts on Monday and runs until the end of May and to get us in the mood for this floral and colour themed event, I created two bonus projects to be shared over the weekend. B is for Bloom is the topic of these projects and the shapes that are used in the sketchbook projects can be seen below.

Join Colori Flori

Brasilier was born in 1929 in the Loire Valley and is remarkably still making art at the age of ninety six. His paintings’ vivid colours and sense of movement, often featuring themes and motifs of horses, nature, music, flowers and women, have been compared to those of Matisse.

The way he uses the white of the paper to indicate the shape of the female figure is so effective in this lithograph where florals and foliage are dominant.

“La Dame Blanche”, lithograph, André Brasilier, 1973

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Lemon Yellow, Saffron, Olive and Charcoal. Use them along with contrasting dark and neutral light colours to create an artwork in any medium or style.

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including two downloadable sheets of letter shapes, this weeks’ shapes are mainly distorted versions of the letter B and the words B is for Bloom. You are invited to print out the PDF’s and use them in the bonus lesson coming up in my next post today

W20 Shapes

1.39MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Not long to go now… The Colori Flori Summit kicks off with some BONUS content this coming weekend to get us in the mood a fortnight of colourful creativity. This is free for everyone to view and will be available here on Substack. I hope you will join us.

The Summit itself runs from 18—31 May with the Early Bird pricing until the first lesson is released at 9am on Monday 18 May.

Register for Colori flori

Have a look below to find out more about all the wonderful artists participating and what they will be teaching in their lessons.

It would have Frank Stella’s birthday this week so the Coloricombo colours and shapes are chosen from this America painter, sculptor and printmaker’s works.

Stella (1936-2024) was born in Malden, Massachusetts and moved to New York in the late 1950s after studying history at Princeton.

When he arrived, the art scene was very much awash with Abstract Expressionism - think Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning & Franz Kline. The ‘gesture-and-emotion’ approach to painting, where canvas was treated as a site for action instead of just a surface, dominated the conversation.

Stella arrived in a New York that had taken over from Paris as the centre of the Western art world and the energy at the time was intense. Stella however wasn’t interested in pouring his feelings into a painting and instead was drawn to to the work of Jasper Johns, who’s Flag and Target series of paintings used repetition and geometric precision, solid lines depicting recognisable shapes and forms.

At aged twenty two, Stella bought some commercial enamel paint and a housepainters brush, drew guidelines with a pencil and ruler, then and started painting black stripes of the same width, evenly spaced on raw canvas. These became the Black Paintings, and when four of them were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959, people paid attention.

He continued working in this style, albeit with colour added, in the 1960s when he took up printmaking. Stella never considered himself a Minimalist, although his work influence the movement greatly, and in the 1970s he started working with more gentle, coloured mixed media reliefs that featured curves and organic shapes, such as the Exotic Bird series.

In the late 70s and early 80s His work became increasingly 3D and began to incorporate architectural forms and materials such as aluminium and fibreglass and from the mid 80s to mid 90s he created an enormous body of work, corresponding to chapters in the novel Moby Dick. These were a definite departure from his earliest works with geometric forms curving and swirling, layered in collage form in incredibly vibrant colours.

Stella’s achievement include being the youngest artist ever to be granted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and being honoured with the National Medal of Arts in 2009. His evolution showed that Minimalism didn’t have to be cold, that geometry could have emotion and that architecture could be incorporated into art.

This is impressive for someone who once said that every painting is "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more".

You can watch this video of his work and read more about Stella here and here. Take a look at the progression from the Exotic Bird series to Moby Dick here and here.

I’ve chosen colours this week from a simple swatch of Stella’s and shapes from an Exotic Bird painting.

“Untitled”, acrylic and pencil on paper, Frank Stella, 1968

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Raspberry, Apple Green, Melon & Terracotta. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Please share this post with them.

Shapes

“Stella’s Albatross”, offset lithograph and screen print, Frank Stella, 1977

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by a Stella’s Albatross painting which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W19 Shapes

493KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Each of them has prepared and recorded a video lesson exclusive to this event, using a specific #coloricombo colour palette of their choice. In each lesson they’ll demonstrate techniques and processes in water based media to produce an outcome in response to the summit’s floral and botanical theme.

Let me introduce all of them properly in alphabetical order and tell you a bit about this amazing and dynamic group of creatives and what they will do in their lessons. What a lineup!

Tell me more

🇳🇱 Miriam Bos

@_miriambos | Strokes of Sunflower

Miriam hails from the Netherlands and enjoys bringing ideas to life through art and design. She works from her studio, creating illustrations for a diverse range of projects, including books, puzzles, games, fabric collections, stationery and home décor. Preferred mediums are gouache, crayons, acrylics, watercolour, pencils, and ink, often combined with digital techniques and collage.

“I have a passion for bright colors, crazy textures, and art that feels handmade. I guess it’s safe to say that I love making things.”

Miriam’s current focus is on creating picture books for the young ones and she’s the author and illustrator of the hugely successful series about the characters August the Fox and Suzy Squirrel.

In Miriam’s lesson you will learn how to explore ways to paint sunflowers with gouache using a more muted colour palette.

🇨🇦 Claire Desjardins

@claire_desjardins_art | Colour Notes from Sicily

Claire Desjardins is an award-winning abstract painter based in Gore, Quebec, who exhibits her paintings in galleries across North America. Her paintings, although abstract, take their visual cues from forms, colours, textures and patterns in nature: the feathers of a bird, the shades of turquoise in the water, how the light through the trees dapples on the ground below.

Beyond the canvas, her art transforms commercial and residential interiors, urban exteriors, housewares, furniture, package design and women’s apparel. Her work has appeared in major motion pictures and popular television shows. Claire’s long-standing corporate collaborations shape and define the customer experience – most notably for North American retail giant Anthropologie.

In her lesson Claire will show you how she adapts to work in a much smaller scale than her normal sized paintings, Claire recorded her lesson whilst on location in Sicily.

🇬🇧 Tansy Hargan

@palimpsestparade | Freesia Facets

Meditative and relaxing is how you can describe Tansy’s specific way of creating in the moment. Originally trained in both architecture and landscape architecture, Tansy is a colour synesthete*, artist and educator who uses colour and mindfulness to activate and regulate herself and her creative output.

Tansy took part in Colori Flori 2025 and her wonderful meditative way of creating was so enjoyable to watch, I cannot wait to share with you what Tansy does using Freesias as topic, and vibrant reds and yellow as her palette.

🇬🇧 April Howlett

@monkeymintaka | Plants as People

April is a mixed media illustrator and storyteller based in the Lake District of England where she loves to be out in nature and find inspiration in the beautiful landscapes, forests, and lakes of the area.

“I am obsessed with experimenting with traditional materials and quirky colour combinations and always aim to create art that tells rich and memorable stories.”

Better known as @monkeymintaka online, April loves to share her on livestreams and videos over on YouTube and Patreon.

In April’s lesson she will take you on a fantastic journey in her sketchbook, exploring ways to anthropomorphise plants, she turns plants into people in such a fun way, and you will get to learn a whole lot about combining water based mixed media!

🇺🇸 Dar James

@indarsworld | Petals and Pieces

Dar is a full-time mixed media artist, writer, and illustrator of six children’s picture books. A lifelong teacher and workshop leader, she trained with Golden Acrylics and is a Silver Brush Educator.

Based in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, she exhibits regionally, leads annual art retreats, and runs an online artists membership focused on developing artistic style, deepening colour understanding and building a strong foundation in acrylic through experimentation and play.

Dar is back this year after being part of the first Colori Flori summit, her lesson is a testament to her love of colour, botanical forms and use of patterns, a joy to watch.

🇬🇧 Esté MacLeod

@estemacleod | Doodle Bloom

Hello! I’m a professional artist and designer with a background in textile and surface pattern design. Alongside teaching online courses and running art retreats I create still life, landscape and floral paintings in acrylics and mixed media with galleries in the UK and internationally representing me. Artworks are often turned into designs that are licensed for use on all kinds of products, from wallpaper and textiles to homeware, ceramics, puzzles and stationery.

In my lesson for this summit you will explore different ways to incorporate shapes and doodles to become layered floral artworks.

🇺🇸 Katie O’Shea

@katie_oshea_design | Paint to Pattern

Katie O’Shea is a Bay Area-based artist whose vibrant work celebrates the beauty and complexity of the natural world. With a background in graphic design she seamlessly blends traditional and digital mediums, working in paint, pencil, and digital illustration to create detailed images of botanicals. Her keen eye for detail and colour brings each botanical subject to life, capturing both their delicate intricacies and bold forms.

Her art has found a global audience through licensing partnerships with designs appearing on a wide range of products, from home décor and textiles to stationery and packaging, allowing her unique vision to brighten everyday life in countless ways.

As she continues to explore new techniques and collaborations, Katie remains committed to creating art that inspires connection, wonder, and joy.

Katie will show you in her lesson a simple but very effective way to create an analog repeat pattern. You will learn how to use four pieces of paper and acrylic markers to develop your own design in repeat.

🇦🇺 Rowan Sivyer

@littlerowanredhead | Faux Chine Collé Poppies

Rowan Sivyer, AKA Little Rowan Redhead, is a Sydney-based printmaker, painter and self-confessed obsessed maker. She is also the author of the book, Modern Block Printing.

Driven by a lifelong passion for making, Rowan specialises in relief printing, carving and printing daily in her home studio. Her lino prints frequently feature Australian flora and she is known for not shying away from her bold use of colour.

In Rowan’s lesson you will discover how she creates a layered poppy themed artwork using two printmaking techniques. If you are tempted to try gel plate printing, or dive deeper into alternative printmaking techniques this lesson will be sure to spark brand new ideas.

🇺🇸 Janet Skates

@janetskatesart | Pretty in Pink

Janet is an artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She creates using acrylic paints, paint pens, markers, oil pastels, acrylic inks and watercolours and her gardens, nature walks, plants and music are her primary inspiration.

“I believe that our homes and our workspaces are sacred. My mission is to create artwork that enhances space and lends energy and love wherever it is.”

Janet will show you how she constructs a stylised still life painting using wet-on-wet watercolour techniques, colour mixing and pen-and-ink detailing in a beautiful colour palette. You are sure to discover some new techniques and ways of creating in this fun class.

🇺🇸 Carrie Smith

@carriesmithart | Mounted Floral Medallion

Carrie is a mixed media collage artist whose work is rooted in vibrant colour, layered pattern, and global inspiration gathered through her travels.

Known for her signature use of dot motifs and hand-painted patterns, she creates detail-rich, funky floral collage work that brings happiness and colour into the world.

In Carrie’s lesson she will demonstrate how she use pink and purple floral patterns along with fine details in a meditative creative process.

🇦🇺 Julie Sydenham

@julie.sydenham.art | Flowers & a Finch

Based on the beautiful South Coast of NSW Australia, Jules has operated her busy studio for over 26 years. As a gentle and creative guide, she believes in the power of finding meaning through making and works intuitively across sketchbooks and larger works, typically layering pen, paint and pattern to create art that feels both playful and deeply considered.

Through her classes, workshops, retreats and online content, Jules inspires others to reconnect with their creativity, quiet the inner critic and build confidence with their art.

Love working in watercolour? You are in for a treat, In Julie’s finch and floral themed lesson she will show you how she combines watercolour and aquarelle pencils to create interesting layers with patterns and many details added in delightful way.

🇺🇸 Betsy Walton

@betsywalton | Finding Range within a Limited Palette

Betsy is a Portland, Oregon based artist whose work centres on colour, pattern, and imagined environments. Drawing from nature and memory, she creates layered paintings that balance structure with intuition.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in the Pacific Northwest, and she shares her approach to painting through workshops and special projects.

Interested in colour mixing? In Betsy’s class you will learn how to mix a beautiful range of colours from bright pinks to mustard and soft sage. She will demonstrate how she plans a stylised still life painting and create a richly layered artwork in acrylic gouache with delightful details.

🇬🇧 Clare Youngs

@clareyoungs | Make Your Mark

Clare Youngs is a collage artist who makes colourful and playful artworks from cut paper. Each piece of paper used is hand painted or printed with textures and pattern work and then cut and pieced together to make the finished piece. Her work has a strong graphic feel about it, which directly stems from her background in design and training as a graphic designer.

Pattern is an important feature of her artworks and she uses pen and ink, paint and printing methods to produce an endless variety of patterns to use, often printing a texture over a pattern to add another layer and depth to the finished piece. Clare’s work has a retro feel to it and her love of mid century design, especially textiles and children’s book illustration has been an influence when developing her own style.

People have often said that her artworks make them smile. This is something that is very important to Clare and in turn makes her smile!

I am so excited to introduce Clare as part of Colori Flori 2026. Clare is a master collage artist and in her jam packed lesson you will learn how to create interesting printed and painted papers for collaging.

🇪🇸 Estee Zales

@estee.zales | Imagined Flowers

Esther González, known online as Estee Zales, is a Spanish mixed-media artist and writer specialising in collage. Self-taught and endlessly curious, she is drawn to the small, the unusual, and the often overlooked.

Her practice spans visual diaries, picture books, editorial projects, fabric design, and floral work, blending personal exploration with creative experimentation.

She also runs a Substack workshop called Journal Rash, offering monthly prompts and drawing exercises. The workshop provides a private space to share work and explore creative experimentation without the pressure of performance.

It is not often that I encounter another person who shares my name, let alone one that is also an artist. I share Estee’s enthusiasm for details that can easily be overlooked. In Estee’s lesson you will learn how to create interesting textures and marks with landscapes as inspiration, to then become elements of a stylised floral collage artwork.

Early Bird registration

Early Bird registration for Colori Flori opened earlier this month, make use of the 20% discount currently on offer for this two week long event packed with carefully curated content linked to flowers, botanical forms and specific colour palettes.

The fourteen artists participating this year have recorded lessons for this summit. We’ve edited these into easily digested daily portions and packaged it up neatly with subtitles (English and Spanish).

Once released, you’ll have lifetime access to all the lessons so you can revisit them in your own time and make art at a pace that suits you.

Click below for Early Bird registration at only £60.00 or $78.40 valid until 18 May when the first lesson is released.

Dip your toes... a BONUS weekend of warm ups

Before we kick off on Monday 18 May there’s a weekend of warm up lessons in that’ll be shared free for all on Substack

I’ve put together two fun demo videos where you will get some ideas for playing with no-pressure, sketchbook focussed creative processes. These lessons are linked to shapes chosen from this years weekly #coloricombo prompts.

The weekend bonus lessons are pre-recorded and will also become part of the summit’s content.

All the information

The Colori Flori Summit 2026 is now open for registration with a 20% Early Bird discount available until the first lesson is released. Dates are 18-31 May, find out all the details here.

Colori Flori information

If, like me, you avoided world affairs last week, there were a number of other interesting articles in the news including two irregular occurances.

The first was that the month of May has two full moons, the Flower Moon on the 1st and a rare Blue Moon on the 31st. Both of them were also micromoons (the opposite of a supermoon) where the moon appears smaller to us as it’s at it’s furthest point from Earth. This phenomenon happens only once every two and a half to three years, the next Blue Moon is in December 2028.

Also in recent news was the announcement from Kew Gardens in London that their titan arum was officially in bloom, one of the rarest moments in the plant world.

The titan arum is also unkindly known as the corpse flower or scientifically Amorphophallus titanum, which roughly translates as “giant misshapen phallus”.

Hailing from Sumatra, it’s the world’s largest unbranched inflorescence (where multiple flowers act as one) and can grow up to eight feet tall. It stores energy in a huge underground stem called a “corm” and can go for multiple years before blooming for only a few days.

When it does, it emits a smell likened to that of rotting meat in order to attract it’s pollinators like carrion beetles and flies. It also produces heat allowing the stench to travel further. Apparently it’s a sight and a smell that needs to be experienced!

The titan arum flowered for the first time outside of it’s native Sumatra at Kew Gardens in 1889, and when it did it was illustrated by today’s featured artist, Matilda Smith.

Smith (1854-1927) was born to an English family in India. Her second cousin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, was the director of Kew Gardens who employed her there to train as an illustrator when she was twenty three.

Interestingly, she had no artistic training and no experience in botany whatsoever but showed herself to be very skilled!

In 1878, shortly after her first drawing was published in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, a dispute over outstanding monies between between Hooker and the magazine’s lead illustrator Walter Hood Fitch caused Fitch to leave the magazine. Smith took over responsibilities and by 1898 was appointed the first official botanical artist of Kew Gardens.

Between 1878 and 1923, Smith drew more than 2,300 plates for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. She was especially admired for her ability to create credible illustrations from dried, flattened, and sometimes imperfect specimens and was the first artist to depict New Zealand’s flora in depth, creating 1,500 plates for the monumental Icones Plantarum.

In 1921, the year she retired, she was named an associate of the Linnean Society - only the second woman to have achieved this honour. She was also recognised by the Royal Horticultural Society and had two plant genera named in her honour. At the end of the Victorian era, Smith had changed what was possible for women in botanical science and art.

Read more about the titan arum from Kew Gardens here and follow them on Instagram here. You can read more about Smith here and here.

“Amorphophallus titanum”, watercolour and ink on paper, Matilda Smith, 1889

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Brown Red, Banana Yellow, Pistachio & Deep Peach. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W18 Shapes

186KB ∙ PDF file

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I’m thrilled to tell you that the Colori Flori Summit is returning this month and registration is now open.

From 18 to 31 May, thirteen hand-picked artists + myself will be sharing our favourite creative tips and techniques. A comprehensive selection of processes are covered in the lessons including painting in watercolour, gouache, acrylics, painted paper collage, acrylic markers and pencils and printing in mixed media. See how professional artists, illustrators and designers explore florals and botanicals using limited colour palettes chosen from past #coloricombo prompts.

All the info

I can’t wait to share the projects with you, this event will once again be a lot of fun. You’ll be enthused and inspired by this wonderfully diverse range of lessons all in water-based media.

How it works

One lesson releases each day at 9am London time. They’re pre-recorded, so no paint-drying moments, no waiting around. Most run about 30–35 minutes and are subtitled.

You’ll get lifetime access, which means you can watch at your own pace, come back to lessons whenever you want and create without pressure or deadlines. One signup. One payment. That’s it.

There isn’t a ‘free’ option for the summit and you won’t drown in content without adequate time to actually make anything. Everyone who’s contributed their time to the summit is a professional artist and is paid - their work matters and so does yours.

The details

The summit runs from 1-18 May. Early Bird pricing is open now, until the first lessons starts. That means £60.00 or $78.40 for everything (full price £75 or $98).

What you get: Fourteen exclusive lessons + bonus content. Lifetime access. A community space to share your work and connect with other artists. A full money-back guarantee if it’s not for you.

The artists in alphabetical order: Miriam Bos, Claire Desjardins, Tansy Hargan, April Howlett (Monkey Mintaka), Dar James, Katie O’Shea, Rowan Sivyer (Little Rowan Redhead), Janet Skates, Carrie Smith, Julie Sydenham, Betsy Walton, Clare Youngs, Estee Zales, and me.

You can see them all together with their lesson titles and Instagram links here.

All the artists

The artists taking part are all artists I admire for their own unique way of making and teaching. They’re people who who inspire me and who I wanted to share with you in this two week long event.

Early Bird registration now open. We’d love you to join us.

Our stay was made very comfortable by our hosts Tim and Madeline and their staff at Hotel Leone. The food was delicious, and our setting in the hill top town of Montelparo was rather spectacular.

My first art retreat for 2027 have just been announced, it will happen next February in magical Marrakech in Morocco. Read on to find out more.

Magical Marrakech

Whilst in Italy I was gifted a beautiful set of handmade watercolours made by A. Gallo. This particular set contains colours picked for the region of Le Marche. The pans are handmade with a high pigment concentration using a honey-base with gum Arabic and are works of art themselves.

A. Gallo watercolours

This week’s colours are picked from a watercolour painting on a postcard where I used combinations of browns and blues to mix my favourite hues for shading.

Contributing subscribers can scroll down to the end of this post to see the 35 minute long video I recorded of the mixing process.

Colour sample on a postcard, watercolours, Esté MacLeod, 2026

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Cerulean Blue, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber & Ultramarine Blue. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. If you enjoy this weekly dollop of colour and creativity please share this post with others who might like them as well.

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W17 Shapes

448KB ∙ PDF file

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Marvellous Morocco

Join us for a week of colour, culture and creativity in Morocco. I’m very please to announce that my first retreat of 2027 will be in Marrakech from 27 February to 6 March.

Once again I’ll be working with the wonderful hosts Harrison and Katel of Perigord Retreats where I taught last summer. We’re swapping the medieval villages and lush green hills of the Dordogne for a beautiful villa set in an olive grove just outside Marrakech, with views stretching toward the Atlas Mountains and the Agafay Desert.

More about Marrakech

For Contributing Subscribers

Here’s a 35 minute video of the mixing process using the A. Gallo watercolours to create this week’s artwork.

Read more

Before I tell you about Leopardi, I need to share that the lineup for the second Colori Flori Summit, which takes place from 18-31 May, has been announced. The focus once again is botanicals and florals and each of the fourteen participating artists uses a limited palette chosen from Coloricombo. Find out more here.

All the details

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) was an Italian poet, writer and thinker who was born and raised in the small provincial town of Recanati. He was a gifted child, a prodigy who was tutored privately and spent most of his time in his father’s extensive library. Immersed in classical and philological knowledge, by age sixteen he had mastered Greek and Latin, translated Homer and had written enough to impress actual scholars. His physical health was poor though: a spinal condition caused chronic pain and his eyesight deteriorated, eventually causing blindness in one eye.

In 1816 something changed and Leopardi stopped doing scholarly work completely and started writing poetry - he phrased it as the passage from erudition to the beautiful. He started with poetry deeply influenced by classical forms before developing the style he’d become known for: lyrical poetry exploring nature, memory, childhood and unrequited love. L’infinito written in 1819 describes his yearning to travel beyond the confines of Recanati and to experience more of the world which he had studied.

He published his first collection of poetry, the Canzoni, in 1824, followed by a the Canti in 1831. While both were well received, they weren’t particularly successful and Leopardi struggled financially. He had left Recanati only to drift around Rome and Florence looking for opportunities that never quite worked. He died in Naples in 1837 during a cholerea outbreak, still with a modest reputation.

After his death that changed. His works were ‘rediscovered’ and and ranked alongside those of Keats and Wordsworth. Leopardi is now considered the greatest Italian poets of the 19th century and one of the major figures of European Romanticism.

It’s fantastic what you can learn from a street sign! If you’d like to read more about Leopardi’s life and legacy click here or here.

“Leopardi: Poems & Prose”, book cover, 1966.

Colour Combination

Colours this week were taken from a book cover and are Grass Green, Parchment, Signal Red and Warm Grey. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by Leopardi’s original handwriting of L'infinito.

W16 Shapes

205KB ∙ PDF file

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Amidst all the rather heavy news of the last months, something positive: Hungary held elections this weekend, there was a record turnout of voters and the result was the ruling party of the last sixteen years conceding power.

I decided to feature a Hungarian artist for this week’s Colori Combo, one that has a strong political link. This week’s artist is in fact recognised as the founder of political poster art, Mihály Biró.

Biró (1886-1948) was born in Budapest to a Jewish family who had recently changed their surname from Weinberger. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Budapest and between 1908 and 1910 travelled to Munich, Berlin, and England, where he was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. After returning to Budapest, he became the leading graphic artist for the Hungarian Social Democratic Party’s newspaper, Népszava (The Voice of the People) where he soon began producing dramatic images that spoke directly to the working classes.

One of his early works there was the Red Man, a dramatic depiction of a muscular male figure (based on his lifelong friend, Tibor Fischer, who was a Hungarian wrestling champion) wielding an enormous sledgehammer. It became inextricably linked to the 1919 Hungarian Revolution and was widely adopted by leftist movements in Vienna, Berlin, Britain, Italy and China through the 1920s.

Cover of “Pathos in Red”, book published by MAK Design

At the end of the First World War, and after the fall of the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, Miklós Horthy’s fascist regime came to power and Biró fled to Austria.

Alongside his continued political work, he took on commercial commissions creating posters for business and the booming Austrian film industry. With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, he relocated to Czechoslovakia and then to Paris, returning to Budapest one year before his death in 1948. His work influenced generations of designers across Europe and America and his legacy can been seen in many protest posters since.

Read more about Biró from the Budapest Poster Gallery here, find out about the Red Man at the MOMA here, take a look other posters here and in the Pathos in Red book here

Colours are taken from an early 1920s poster encouraging voters to back the Social Democrats. It depicts a male figure (most probably still modelled on Tibor Fischer) constructing a bridge with the wording Magyarország (Hungary).

“No Construction without Labour”, poster for the Social Democrats, Mihaly Biró, early 1920s

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Pale Orange, Denim Blue, Buff & Cadet Blue. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W15 Shapes

368KB ∙ PDF file

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This week starts with Easter Monday, I hope you’ve all got some Easter eggs.

It’s also the final days of free access to Sketchbook Revival. If you haven’t already, take a look below. There are over thirty lessons created by artists from across the world, myself included. I’d suggest signing up now and choosing one or two lessons, then if you’re finding them valuable, consider paying for continued access.

All the details

For this week’s prompt I chose a painting I find particularly charming with the pastel coloured eggs linking it to an Easter theme. The painting is called The Eggs by the artist and gardener Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris.

Morris (1889–1982) was born in Sketty, Wales where his father was an industrialist, an iron founder and a Welsh rugby international. He had quite an adventure growing up: after a formal education he failed the entrance exam for an army commission then worked on a farm in Canada and as a dishwasher in America before enrolling at the Royal College of Music to study singing. He quickly changed to art and studied at the Academie Delécluse in Paris before returning to England at the start of the First World War. Now medically boarded from military service, he spent the war years training horses for the army.

Shortly after the war, Morris met his life partner Arthur Lett-Haines and in 1920 the two moved to France where they soon became immersed in the Parisian art circles of the time, associating with the likes of Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein and Peggy Guggenheim. Morris established himself as a serious artist with numerous exhibitions and by 1930 when they returned to England he had become well recognised, although a newspaper interviewer remarked that he would rather discuss horses and dogs than talk about his art.

Moving to Suffolk, Morris was drawn to the colours of the iris and began hybridising them. Over several decades, he created dozens of new varieties such as Benton Cordelia, Cascade of Gold and Raspberry Rimmed. The horticultural world took his work seriously and his varieties are still grown today.

In 1937 Morris and Lett-Haines founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing which operated from their home and garden. It became a creative hub during the war years and a multitude of students (including Lucien Freud) learned from someone whose artistic practice extended into the garden.

Morris continued gardening and teaching there, and at the Royal College of Art until the mid-1970s. He died in 1982 and the Tate Gallery’s retrospective of his work two years later confirmed him as an artist of real significance who had expressed himself through canvas, teaching and gardening.

Read more about Morris here and (with available paintings) here. There’s more about his irises in a profile here and information specifically about The Eggs from the Tate Gallery here.

“The Eggs”, oil paint on canvas, Cedric Morris, 1944

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Plum, Soft Purple, Peach & Milk Chocolate. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W14 Shapes

429KB ∙ PDF file

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We’re coming up to Easter with its traditions of eggs and rabbits. I also wanted to mention that registration is open for this year’s Sketchbook Revival Challenge happening next month. You are invited to join, I’m taking part once again and have recorded a fun pattern focussed lesson and bonus project for this event. Sketchbooks are wonderful tools to develop as an artist, and Coloricombo focusses this week on sketchbooks created by an instantly recognisable writer and illustrator.

If you’re in need of a creative spark join us and discover fresh ideas for creative projects in your sketchbook. From 11 to 21 April thirty five artists will be sharing some their favourite techniques and processes in brand new lessons that will inspire you to play and explore further.

There’s a wonderful freedom in letting marks, shapes and repetition guide us to create rhythm and patterns. In my lesson you’ll discover how patterns can become a language all their own.

Find out more and register here, there’s a free option with both extended access and a VIP bundle available as a costed option.

All the details

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) is well known for her children’s books featuring animals such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit which she wrote and illustrated. Way before Peter Rabbit hopped onto the page, Potter had been filling sketchbooks with meticulous drawings of plants, fungi and animals. She was a keen observer of the natural world and this careful attention shaped everything she created.

Mainly home schooled by her governesses, she studied at the National Art Training School in Kensington but her real education came from watching and drawing her pets. Potter didn’t just imagine Peter, she studied real rabbits and watched how they moved, their anatomies and personalities. She drew them constantly which is why all her illustrations feel so real, even when they’re rabbits dressed in miniature waistcoats.

What I love about her approach is that she didn’t separate her art from the story itself. These weren’t just quick sketches to support the words, they were made with real care and skill. Her remarkable sketchbooks give an insight into how her work evolved from observational drawings to imaginary characters.

Over her lifetime, she wrote and illustrated twenty-eight books, including twenty-three of her Tales. Altogether they’ve sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. In later life she moved to the Lake District and became a passionate farmer and sheep breeder. Thousands of acres were left to the National Trust to protect the landscape she loved and you can still visit her farmhouse today. We were there in 2003 and I remember it well.

There’s a full documentary on Potter available here and you can see some of her sketchbooks held by the V&A Museum, including one when she was only eight, here and here.

This week’s colours come from her sketchbook when she was ten years old and shapes are taken from a selection of her drawings.

“Sketchbook”, watercolour on paper. Beatrix Potter, 1876

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Baby Blue, Mint Green, Dusty Rose & Egg Yolk. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. If you can think of someone who’d enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity please share this post with them.

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W13 Shapes

424KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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Something that’s struck me over the last four years of putting together these #coloricombo posts, is how so many talented female artists studied at the same progressive institutions in the early 20th century. Again and again, I see the numerous Academiés in Paris such as the Julien and Moderne mentioned in biographies with artists often travelling from Australia, New Zealand, the USA and other countries there.

This week’s featured artist is one who studied at a few of them, the American painter, printer and designer Blanche Lazzell (1878–1956).

Born on a West Virginia farm, she enrolled at West Virginia University then moved to New York in 1907 to study at the Art Students League under Kenyon Cox and William Merritt Chase, at the same time that Georgia O’Keeffe was there.

Lazzell’s transformation came in Paris in 1912 where she studied at the Académie Moderne under post-impressionist painters Charles Guérin and David Rosen. She returned to America in 1915, to the artist’s colony of Provincetown which was then a hub of activity for both American and European artists escaping the First World War.

At Provincetown she studied briefly with the printmaker Oliver Chaffee, asking that he teach her the recently developed technique of white-line woodcutting, known as the Provincetown Method. This was based on Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints but instead of multiple blocks, only a single block was used with incised lines separating sections on the block. These would appear white when printed, as visible in this post’s artwork.

As an aside, the Provincetown Method is credited to B.J.O. Nordfeldt. However there were five ‘other artists’ involved who aren’t usually named. They were Juliette Nichols, Ethel Mars, Maude Squire, Ada Gilmore (who married Oliver Chaffee) and Mildred McMillen. They knew each other through their love of woodblock printing and had all met in Paris! The technique had been perfected by them around 1915-16 so whilst Nordfeldt is credited with the invention, the women artists really did all the work.

Lazzell took to white-line woodcuts instantly, seeing them as the perfect medium to transfer everything she had learnt in Paris about colour and composition onto paper. She soon became a central figure in the Provincetown Printers, working out of a converted fish shack on the wharf.

Whilst many of her contemporaries achieved fame, she quietly honed her craft. She lived modestly, hosting teas and working in her incredible garden on the wharf all whilst exhibiting and earning the respect of her fellow artists. Even in her late fifties, she continued learning, studying with Hans Hofmann to explore abstraction.

These days museums and collectors are recognising Lazzell’s talent and her status as an important artist who helped establish Modernism as an American art form.

Read more information about Lazzell here and here. You can watch a lecture about her Lost Studio Garden which includes great photographs of the Provincetown art scene here.

“Star Phlox”, white line colour woodcut, Blanche Lazzell, 1930

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Mauve, Deep Purple, Olive & Peach. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

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Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W12 Shapes

376KB ∙ PDF file

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Which movie received eight nominations at the 12th Academy Awards in 1940 and won in the Cinematography (Black & White) category? Here’s a hint: it was the same year as Gone with the Wind and there’s a new remake of the same movie on track for a number of 2027 nominations. Any guesses?

The answer is Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Emily Brontë and self published in 1847.

Wuthering Heights is also the link between cinema and this week’s featured artist, Edna Clarke Hall (1879-1979) who was born in Kent, England, She was the tenth of twelve children of Benjamin Waugh, known as the founder of the British children’s charity the NSPCC.

In 1893, aged only fourteen, she was enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she won numerous prizes and a prestigious scholarship. When her work was first accepted at the New English Art Club in 1899, it appeared alongside that of Augustus John, considered for a time the most important artist in Britain!

The artist photographed by Lizzie Caswall Smith in 1895

That same year she married William Clarke Hall, a barrister with traditional views of marriage and little interest in art. They moved from London to rural Essex where they rented a manor house which reminded Clarke Hall of the house described in Wuthering Heights. She saw parallels between her own life and that of Catherine, the protagonist in the book and began working in a makeshift studio, retreating into a fantasy world. She collected vintage clothing from London’s East End and overcame a lack of models by drawing herself or sometimes her sister Rosa, as both the ill-fated lovers, Catherine and Heathcliff. These works, all 247 of them, are among the most psychologically searching works in British art and sit at the juncture of self-portrait, illustration and performance.

After a nervous breakdown in 1919 she persuaded her husband to rent her a proper studio in Grey’s Inn and was able to reassert herself as an artist, taking printmaking classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and exhibiting regularly at the Redfern Gallery from 1924 onwards where her “Poem Paintings” were shown. Her husband was knighted in 1932 and died that same year, leaving her financially precarious but creatively liberated.

Her works began to enter public collections and a retrospective of her drawings was held in Manchester in 1939. Unfortunately her studio was destroyed in 1941 during the Blitz, a devastating blow which meant she started painting less and less, ceasing altogether in the early 1950s.

The largest collection of her work is now held by the Victoria & Albert Museum and you can read more about her and Brontë’s influence here. There’s a good profile from the Tate here and an article in the World of Interiors here that reminds us that Brontëmania isn’t new!

The watercolour I’ve taken colours from is from Clarke Hall’s later “Poem Paintings” that you can read about here.

“I would forget my lovings need”, ink, watercolour and gouache, Edna Clarke Hall, ~1920s

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Warm Brown, Tan, Indigo & Buff. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by sketchbook drawings by Clarke Hall which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W11 Shapes

256KB ∙ PDF file

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We have a couple of days left on our break in the Western Cape of South Africa and are spending time in the wine regions around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. We visited the Spier estate yesterday and this week’s #coloricombo inspiration comes from an artwork depicting one of the buildings on the estate, designed with the iconic gables of the Cape Dutch architectural style.

William Mitcheson Timlin (1892-1943) was born in Northumberland, England, the son of a colliery fireman which isn’t the most obvious background for one of South Africa’s most imaginative and multifaceted artists.

Timlin won a scholarship to the Armstrong College of Art in Newcastle, England and in 1912 travelled with his parents to Kimberley, South Africa, at that point described the Diamond Capital of the World which was then transitioning away from it’s rough and lawless reputation with the closing of the Big Hole open cast mine in 1914 and the consolidation of deep level mines under the De Beers Corporation.

Timlin completed his studies in art and architecture and never left, making Kimberley his permanent home and the place where he would build one of the most extraordinary creative careers of the early twentieth century.

As an architect, Timlin’s influences are all over South Africa’s cultural fabric. He designed several major buildings in Kimberley including the hospital, high schools and war memorial and went on to contribute interior designs to some of the country’s most celebrated theatres including the Alhambra in Cape Town and the Colosseum in Johannesburg, both considered architectural landmarks of their day. He also founded the Art Section of Kimberley’s Athenaeum Club in 1914 and designed the first cover of the Outspan magazine, illustrating many of its stories.

Alongside his architectural practice he produced a remarkable body of watercolours, oils, pastels, etchings and fantastical illustrations - dreamlike, intricate worlds of fairies, goblins, celestial landscapes and otherworldly architecture. In 1921 he began work on a fantasy book, primarily as a diversion for his son. Over two years it expanded into forty eight pages of handwritten text, each one with a colour plate that showcased his extraordinary imagination and skill as a watercolourist.

The book titled The Ship that Sailed to Mars was published in 1923 and has become a fantasy classic, with the publisher so captivated by the illustrations and calligraphic text that they printed it without any further typesetting.

Timlin died in Kimberley in 1943 leaving behind an incomplete second book The Building of a Fairy City. A collection of his works were acquired by the De Beers Company and donated to the William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley, the gallery that took over from Timlin’s own Athenaeum Club.

Read more about Timlin’s book here or watch a brief video showing it’s illustrations here, about the Athenaeum Collection here and available works here.

“Cape Dutch Building (Spier, Stellenbosch)”, watercolour on silk laid on board, William Mitcheson Timlin, date unknown

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Mid Blue, Pale Olive, Biscuit & Clay Ground. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some building shapes inspired by the designs seen on the packaging of our wine purchase yesterday, you can download these as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.

W10 Shapes

334KB ∙ PDF file

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For a late winter break we travelled to the Western Cape region of South Africa and are basing ourselves in False Bay, the Indian Ocean side of the Cape Peninsula. For me, this is an ideal place to recharge, take time to think up ideas and get inspired.

For this week’s post I wanted to feature a South African female artist and discovered one that is completely new to me - I really like her work as a multifaceted artist. Eleanor Esmonde-White (1914-2007) was born in Dundee in the British Colony of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa. Her studies began in 1932 at the University of Natal, followed by a scholarship from the renowned colonial architect Sir Herbert Baker to the Royal College of Art in London and then the British School in Rome where she studied murals.

In 1938 she was commissioned, together with fellow student Le Roux Smith Le Roux, to create a mural in the new South Africa House building on Trafalgar Square, designed by Baker. The resulting artwork, People of Heaven, took four years to complete! It extended around all four walls of the room and depicted the customs, rites and ceremonies of the AmaZulu people.

Returning to South Africa, Esmonde-White joined the New Group, a progressive collective of South African artists founded by Gregoire Boonzaier, and began exhibiting work that challenged the conservative tastes of the day. In 1949 she took up a lecturing position at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where she established the Department of Design and taught for over a decade. She was also carrying out major public commissions throughout this period: a mosaic for the Cape Province Library, a tapestry for the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and murals for the Artscape Theatre among them.

Her work centred almost entirely on women - painting them at leisure, at work, in peasant communities and on beaches - with a warm palette of reds, oranges and pinks. Her heavily stylised figures have a quiet, humanist quality to them: timeless rather than dramatic. Primarily an oil painter, she also produced woodcuts and works on paper that are particularly sought after.

Esmonde-White went on to exhibit at the São Paulo Biennale twice — in 1957 and 1961 — and at the Venice Biennale in 1964, bringing South African art onto the international stage at a difficult time in history. Her work is held in the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town and in numerous important collections.

See current Esmonde-White works available at auction here, read about her Festival of Britain mural here and take a look at her published biography here.

“Two Figures in a Wooded Landscape”, oil on canvas, Eleanor Esmonde-White, date unknown

Colour Combination

The colours this week are Iron Oxide, Purple Grey, Yellow Ochre & Heather. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Why not share this post with them?

Shapes

Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by the artwork which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish

W09 Shapes

437KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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