Set in the inspiring Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, Artist in Italy is offering painting holidays and art workshops for people who love art, Italy, good food and wine. We are now in our second year and our week-long (and new 10 day) courses cover a range from painting and drawing, egg tempera, photography, art workshops (including some basic printmaking) to botanical illustration.
To give you a flavour of our painting holidays, have a look at this short video.
The courses have been carefully designed for both beginners and intermediate artists who would like to improve their skills and techniques.
We are a family-run business. I am Julian, and do all the teaching, as well as running the painting workshops. My wife is called Mandy; she does everything else. We have two small children, a dog, and a couple of cats.
If you would like to find out more about us, please read the recent article published in The Observer
My studio is always friendly and relaxed and I have over 16 years experience teaching students of all ages and abilities
My aim is to inspire you and to build your confidence in a range of methods, both traditional and modern, and to ensure that you leave here having had a wonderful experience.
Ex Voto Surely the best day out you can have at this time of year has to be the Arezzo antique market. I know I have raved about it before, but it never fails to thrill me. It's the mix of clear...
The pirate cat Hunters are a part of life here inthe country, especially if you choose to live in an area which, for part of the year, is a registered and monitored hunting estate. I would hate to be so presumptuous as to...
Last one standing There’s this old building. It has been here since we arrived and for a long time before. It sits, hidden in the middle of a light industrial estate, in a small drive-through town a few miles from here and, despite...
better dead than alive The sunflowers have pretty much come to an end round here. A few of the smaller ones are hanging on, but the vast majority have hung their heads, shed their yellow petals, and are silently waiting for the 'chop'. I...
white speedos? It's August, which in Italy means that 90% of Italians head for the sea and, with 7,600km of coastline, there's a lot of room for all those millions of pairs of white speedos which never seem to have gone out...
tempera A little while ago we decided to run a course in Tempera painting. This is a traditional technique used extensively in Italy during the Renaissance and, in it's classical form, is called Egg tempera as the powdered pigments are bound...
Mad dogs and Englishmen I’ve been so reluctant to write about the finishing of the building project, the start of the art courses and the beginning of the next part – settling in to a very different routine. Perhaps I have metaphorically been holding...
La Foce For anyone struggling to make some kind of garden out of the baked clay soil of this area, the gardens at La Foce are an inspiration. But it's not just the gardens that appeal to me, it's the spirit of...
Long time no blog Goodness me, it’s been a month. I have no excuse except that real life seems to have stepped up a pace since the art courses started. Life at the moment seems like one big learning curve as each of the...
Quite a blow The last week or two have been a bit hectic around here as our first group of artists arrived. The last minute panic to get things ready gave way to a steady rhythm of activity as the workshop got underway....
