My Venice book is out. Published by SEARCH PRESS.

Edited by Katie Sparkes. Photographers - Roddy Paine, Gavin Sawyer and Debbie Patterson. Detailed step projects of Venetian scenes.
I have presented two TV projects from the book. Now out on DVD from Teaching Art and later in the year on TV - The Painting and Drawing Channel.

NEXT BOOK STARTING.
Commencing Tuesday 29th 2011. New work, new methods. First Joe Dowden Seach Press book was "Water in Watercolour", published 2001 and still in print. The new one will be a detailed study of techniques for painting water.

NEW ARTICLE COMING OUT IN ARTISTS & ILLUSTRATORS MAGAZINE
Artists and Illustrators Magazine often features great watercolour painters, such as Rob Dudley, whose brilliant brightly lit paintings feature South Devon tidal waters. Forthcoming article is a step by step project painted in Derwent Inktense watercolour inks.

NEW ARTICLE COMING OUT IN PAINT MAGAZINE
The nightmare of perspective - a trouble shooting piece to sort a few problems brought in by a reader, and enlarging on sublte angles and changes in level.

THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE - GATWICK will not be affected, say British Airways bosses.
Welcome to my 2011 Croatia course to all who have booked on.
This trip was fully booked months ago, but there are still places for May 2012 – (five booked so far – contact me on joedowen.com website contact page).

The planning is done and everything is ready. This is my annual trip. I have run the course many times before. The main party flies BA from Gatwick to Dubrovnik. Others are coming from Spain and Poland. We stay in the port of Mlini in the Shrebreno district. Its a beautiful place and I am looking forward to getting everyone painting very early on. As usual I will be teaching and demonstrating during some evenings, but during the day the emphasis is on the students.

You paint - I teach. I will be sticking close to the party at all times. New destinations this year include the Island of Lokrum off Dubrovnik, and we may explore Kupari and some new places in Cavtat. A new venture this year will involve a kind of "private studio session. I like to do some on site painting for myself away somewhere quiet during an evening when not demonstrating, but I invite the party to come and watch. Its different from the normal demonstrating because I am not directly teaching, just passing comments. Watchers are free to ask questions. I started to develop these "private sessions" last year and they have been successful. The sessions usually become a friendly informal gathering of fellow painters. These started because at the end of a days teaching, I sometimes went back to the studio to carry on with my normal output. You can really learn something by watching a painter working occupationally rather than to a teaching agenda .

Royal Watercolour Society 2011 Open Exhibition.

The Royal Watercolour Society.

My RWS open exhibition paintings, (not shown on this site), have sold. They were on exhibition at Bankside Gallery, next to the Tate Modern, London. The show closed March 10th 2011.

My demonstation painting done during an afternoon with fellow painters in East Sussex.
See image title "Derbyn's Brook"
The society, based at St Leonards near Hastings, is a hundred years old, and boasts some very good painters. They had six of their own paintings on display, any one of which would not have looked out of place in a prestigious London gallery. They tell me they have a recent policy of inviting a newer generation of artists, so I strongly suggested they get Hashim Akib down there.

The New Bosham Group is so new it hasn't even got a name yet.

It has just run its first event. These are among the quickest and most competent painters I have come across as a group. Janet Warton was a prime mover and I hope they keep going. These artists had no trouble at all getting to grips with a marine sunset. The First meeting was at the West Stoke Hall in early February.

This marks the completion of the Venice project for me, a book with Search Press out this month, and step by step watercolour paintings of Venice for TV programs to be broadcast later this year. Thanks to Gary Templeman, Ash Knight, and all at Teaching Art. John Hope Hawkins started it all more than 30 years ago when he filmed a program with the artist Alwyn Crawshaw. I don't think anyone does it better.

Prosper J Dowden. 1921 - 1998.
My father. merchant seaman, world war 2 submariner, writer, poet, yachtsman, justice activist, advertising copywriter, amatuer marine and landscape watercolour painter. Taught me to paint in watercolour from an early age. Painted a series of marine watercolours in the 1950's - 1960's which remain an inspiration. Good painter of ambient light.

Hugh Ecob
My art teacher at school. Mr Ecob came in once a week to teach his own curriculum. The school didn't have one because they weren't interested. This left Hugh Ecob free to teach us how to paint. The result was that we could express ourselves and the school produced a few good artists. Hugh Ecob had evidently taught us persepctive as 11 yerar olds to third year art college standard. He also taught ariel perspective, figure drawing, faces, and much else. He was a commercial artist who knew his stuff.

William Lionel Wyllie. 1851 - 1931.
Portsmouth based marine painter. Mine and my father's favourite painter. For me watercolour was his best work, often quick on site sketches for oil paintings. Exceedingly good draughtsman and painter. Could paint open sea locations accurately with mood, atmosphere, time, season, and weather conditions instantly recognisable to seafarers. Etchings, Oil and watercolour. Ships and the sea, people and everything nautical.

Richard Bolton.
Illustrator turned watercolour landscape painter. Wrote Search Press books which influenced and encouraged me. Great draughtsman. Continually comes up with new directions in Landscape. Paints Tibet, New Zealand, Australia, China and England equally well. Master of machines, people, buildings.

Sergiev Andriaka
Russian, Moscow based master watercolourist. From the smallest of sketches to seven feet across, his paintings have absolute integrity. No flashy technique, no sentiment, just the impact created when looking at his work - it puts you right there. Done with brevity and economy, yet often detailed. His ability to execute is born out in one painting with a stroke or two, another by painting around every leaf. Skilled at glazing, producing multilayered watercolour. Skilled at constructing a painting through leaving out and painting round, by allowing the subject to appear by good use of negative space. The landscape is unfamiliar to western eyes, but Mr Andriaka represents it with emphatic strength, sublety, and understanding. His Moscow watercolour school may be the best place in the world to learn painting.

Alan Watkin died in January 2010
Watkin won a prize in the Paris Salon for a large watercolour of the Western Isles in 1957. A stunning painting but he left many more like it when he died. He was a disciplined traditional painter who never stopped researching and learning. Painted skies, British and European landscapes, Scandinavia and much else. He worked on many different papers including a large stock of old English papers which he had purchased over the years. He was an architect with consumate drawing skill. One of the best British Landscape watercolour painters of the late 20th century.

Richard Thorn.
A favourite among professional artists - many follow the work of Richard Thorn. Landscape and seascape paintings. Not similar to any other painter. Breathtakingly good painter. I have never seen a painter whose works I liked more in any major establishment. See what you think on www.bournegallery.com

Robin Wick.
One of the best watercolour painters in my county of Surrey. He was mentored by the late Barbara Crowe, at the time oldest member of the Royal Insitute of Painters in Watercolour. Robin is a very good draughtsamn, a watercolour purist who works mainly on site. He has performed a valuable service providing affordable top quality watercolour paintings for people in Surrey who at one time regularly commissioned him. I don't know if he is still painting.

Stanislaw Zoladz.Polish painter who has lived near Stockholm in Sweden since 1978, and has become something of an ambassador to Swedish Arts. He paints breathtaking marine scenes in the shallow water of the upper Stockholm Archipelago, low lying granite islets in the Gulf of Bothnia. He gets a steely quality of light which is utterly convincing. He can paint tight or loose. He has the discipline to sit and attack a subject for hours or days, analysing it and demanding to know - "what grey is that?"

Jospeh Zbukvic.
I have always liked paintings by Australian painters such as Arthur Streeton of the late 1800's, Penleigh Boyd of the early 20th century, and Ken Knight today. I like their direct approach to light. You can also see it in work by watercolour painters Robert Wade, David Taylor and others. J Zbukvic identifies ambient colour decisively. His work is often suffused with an overall colour which sets mood. Colourful though his work is, there are lessons to be learned from his approach to tone, or relative darkness and lightness without taking colour into consideration. This is a big contributor to the the quality of his work. Another strength is his use of free flowing colour. Mr Zbukvic "Zer - boook - vich" came to Australia from Croatia in 1972. His paintings are represented in public collections in Zagreb and Austraila. His work shows how beautiful Australia is, with parts of Melbourne, the Yarra Valley, and the Australian state of Victoria represented. Mr Zbukvic is also an equestrian painter, painting horses on site. His book "Mastering Mood and Atmosphere in Watercolour" - North Light - changes hands for hundreds of English pounds. He paints Venice but my favourite paintings by him are of Melbourne with the tram wires. He is one of a minority of painters who can paint cars well - which shows his real drawing skill - not suprinsing when you see how well he draws horses. Professional artists can learn a lot from him.

LaVere Hutchings (1918 - 1998)
I read a book by him called "Make your Watercolours Sing" and it has remained a helpful influence for me. They don't teach watercolour in art college, so most British painters have had to learn on their own. American artists have been invaluable at teaching us. My first exposure to their work was through the Walter Foster painting books which came over in the 1960's, then through numerous other art books by artists like Rudy DeReyna, Philip Jameson and others. LaVere seemed to daub colour around all over the place and let it shine through the finished result giving it vibrancy. After years of homegrown British restraint, greyness and mood, American paintings looked great. From LaVere I found out about colour coding - putting liberal amoutns of colour "under" the painting, before "starting". He was a disciplined painter who understood tone and really could draw.

The following are painters whose work I really like, with short write ups coming.
Vivienne Pooley, Rowland Hilder, Richard Tratt, Helen Allingham, Christine Taherion, Edward Seago, Geoff Kersey, Jean Haynes, Wilfred Ball, Arthur Melville, Jeremy Ford, Nita Engle, Frank Wootton, Helen Allingham, Arthur Streeton, Penleigh Boyd, Hashim Akib, Jonathon Taylor, Juan Luque, Rob Dudley.

If you know of any painters you think I would like, tell me about them on my main website contact form.

My Venice book "Ready to Paint Venice" is almost finished.   more »

The universal appeal of the SAA and their success in reaching out to everyone.   more »