Taking a Little Bit of Cornwall Home

We first met at Mawgan Porth in Cornwall, and although this lovely 10-year-old is now back home, we can still share the experience of painting beautiful Cornwall together through one-to-one Zoom art lessons.

There is something rather lovely about that. A visit to Cornwall may end, but the colours, coastline and memories can travel home with you… and become the inspiration for your own artwork.

Before the Painting Comes the Understanding

In an earlier lesson, we spent an hour exploring some of the science and geology behind the Cornish landscape.

Why is the sky blue? Why are the rocks around Cornwall the colours they are? Why can the ocean appear blue, green, turquoise or grey?

These aren't simply interesting questions. Understanding what you're actually looking at can make an enormous difference when you begin to draw and paint it.

Rather than learning where somebody else puts a particular colour or brushstroke, you begin to understand why something looks the way it does. That gives you the freedom to make your own artistic decisions.

Then It Was Time to Paint

During our next two-hour Zoom lesson, we began putting some of that understanding into practice.

The result was very painty hands, a lovely Cornish seascape taking shape… and quite possibly the biggest smile in the universe!

And she is only 10.

For me, one of the greatest pleasures of teaching art is seeing that moment when curiosity, understanding, experimenting and having fun suddenly come together… and someone begins to realise, “I can do this.”

Whether we're together in Cornwall or working hundreds of miles apart via Zoom, art has a rather wonderful way of bringing us back to a place we love.

In this case, it's a little bit of the magic of Mawgan Porth and Cornwall finding its way home through paint.

Her mum was there in the background throughout, and all photographs are shared with her permission.