Art East Anglia
Art East Anglia provide weekend workshops and courses in Norfolk. Our courses explore subjects such as portrait painting, oil painting, Plein Air landscape and drawing. We run regular art classes, short painting courses and workshops with internationally recognised tutors.
Our tutors include Andrew James , Ian Rowlands, Tom Stevenson, Claire Haward ,
Patrick Byrnes, Mark Chen, Anastasia Pollard, Suzon Lagarde, Adele Wagstaff, Julia Hawkins .
Working with the figure,
Painting beyond representation
Suzon Lagarde
11th 12th March 2026 Mixed Media / Paints
Sharing from their personal practice, Suzon will guide you in developing your own creative voice throughout this 2-day workshop. A process combining careful observations with heartfelt and spontaneous marks, overlaying realism and abstraction.
Working with a model on the first day, we'll use our observations as starting points for personal paintings - inviting in emotions and narratives. Playing with a range of techniques which allow us to brainstorm visually, we'll explore how to take painting from life further, transforming observation into something deeply personal and expressive. Those various experiments will help you find what best supports you in taking a painting from initial idea to finished piece.
Suzon’s enthusiasm and guidance create a supportive, inspiring environment where you’ll feel encouraged to take creative risks, explore deeply, and uncover your personal visual signature.
£240 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
All Levels
Themed Portrait Painting Intensive
Julia Hawkins
14th 15th March 2026 Oil Painting
Join us for the weekend dedicated to the art of the themed portrait. This workshop moves beyond simple likeness to help you create narrative artworks that capture character and tell a story.
Over two immersive days, working from a live model, you will explore how to infuse your portraits with meaning and impact. The model will be posed in a manner and dressed in clothing designed to inspire your creativity within the chosen theme.
Workshop Highlights:
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Develop a Theme: Learn to translate an abstract idea and narrative into an interesting dynamic composition.
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Utilize Composition: Master the use of props, pose and costume details to support your theme.
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Work from Life: Enhance your observational skills by painting a subject in real-time.
£310 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
Still life – a contemporary approach
Ian Rowlands
16th 17th May 2026 Oil Painting
Still life – a contemporary approach
A two day workshop that focuses on still life but with a contemporary spin, aiming to build confidence and fluency in painting from objects. We will avoid the standard and often contrived subject matter; flowers, fruit, vegetables in favour of more ordinary, everyday objects. Making the ordinary extraordinary.
Students may wish to bring their own objects to create a narrative in their paintings which may represent a kind of self portrait. We want to see every square inch of the painting containing an object or an interesting negative space which is as prized as the objects themselves.
£260 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
Fully Booked
Plein Air Painting
Maria Rose Plein Air Painting
8th, 9th, 10th July 2026 3 Days
Join Maria Rose ROI for three days of ‘plein air’ painting, capturing the North Norfolk coast in a fresh and immediate way, in oils or acrylics. Maria will introduce the fundamentals of plein air painting, helping you to simplify the process of working outdoors from life. We will be exploring our locations with multiple short painting sessions on small panels, responding quickly and intuitively to changing subject matter and looking at how colour theory can help us to react more instinctively to create lively and fresh landscape paintings responding directly to nature.
£320 Morston, Brancaster
Fully Booked
Intermediate/Advanced
Experimental Oil Painting
Charlotte Houlihan
18th 19th July 2026
A wonderful opportunity to explore oil painting in a loose and freeing way! Experiment with mediums, application and surfaces. Designed to liberate you from conventions and encourage a playful relationship with oil paint. Bring your own studies and sketches to work from, or objects to create a still life or other setup to work from observation. Whatever your subject, the aim is to experiment with oil paint and enjoy all that it can do for you, and all that you can do with it. I’ll be sharing a series of painting exercises, playful experiments and a little of my own process and there will be plenty of scope for flexibility in work and time for individual and group discussion.
£ 270 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
All Levels
Last Few Places
Still Life Painting in Oils
Clare Haward
22nd 23rd 24th August 2026 3 Days
Between Observation and Memory
In this three day workshop, students will begin with close observational studies of a still life set up. Time will be spent considering the composition, exploring colour relationships and paying attention to form, tone, temperature, line and shadow. We will make tonal and coloured sketches in oil. We will look at the compositional idea of the 'notan', colour mixing and paint application, as well as consider scale and viewpoint.
Students will move on to recreating these compositions from memory, creating simple distillations or wild reinventions. Decisions will have to be made regarding colour, composition and gesture, and memory will combine with intuition to create imaginative paintings rooted in the observed world.
£ 280 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
Fully Booked
3 Day Portrait Painting Intensive
Charlie Pickard
5th 6th 7th September 2026
A three-day workshop dedicated to one of the most captivating challenges in art: the portrait. This course offers a rare opportunity to work from the live model over multiple extended poses, giving you the time and focus needed to develop a fully realized and expressive likeness.
Throughout the class, you’ll study the structure of the head and face, learning how form is revealed through planes, value, and light. Instruction will emphasize accurate colour mixing, thoughtful colour design, and confident brushwork to bring vitality and clarity to your painting.
Individual feedback and group critiques will support your growth toward greater academic precision and artistic fluency.
Perfect for painters looking to deepen their understanding of portraiture and refine their technical foundation.
£330 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
Portrait Painting In Oils
Andrew James
12th 13th September 2026
This intensive portrait painting workshop is for a small group of students, allowing time for personal guidance to develop individual’s skills in accordance to their ability. The course is built around aspects of expressive portraiture. Disciplined observational work will be pursued whilst looking to simultaneously develop the formal qualities of oil paint in order for it to become a more explicitly descriptive medium.
£290 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
Last Few Places
Painting Flowers In Oils
Mark Chen
14th 15th October 2026
In this workshop we will explore flower painting from abstract visualisation through to a finished alla prima result. The focus will be on building complexity through texture, transparent and opaque layers of colour, and learning how to push atmosphere and structure without losing freshness in the painting process.
Topics covered will include:
• Using grisaille and complementary colours to create illumination
• Establishing the dark structure and controlling colour/value transitions
• Blocking out the light masses with clarity and simplicity
• Final adjustments: edges, colour notes, texture, and surface variation
The workshop will also look at different ways of handling paint and simplifying natural forms into strong visual statements while retaining the organic movement and delicacy of flowers.
£280 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
Intermediate/Advanced
All Levels
Drawing the Portrait on Toned Paper
Patrick Byrnes
21st 22nd November 2026
In this two-day workshop participants will draw the live model in a single portrait pose using graphite and white chalk on toned paper, developing the fundamentals of portrait draftsmanship by learning to synthesize visual and conceptual modes of analysis. Starting with a linear construction emphasizing accurate proportion, anatomical structure, and a sensitive fidelity to nature, artists will proceed to rendering the illusion of three-dimensional form by analyzing the geometry between light source, subject, and viewing position.
Additional areas of focus will include establishing an accurate value range, anatomy, perspective, edges, line quality, and the balance between sculptural, graphic, and atmospheric aesthetic aims. Beginning to advanced artists are welcome; instruction will be customized to all levels of experience.
£290 Hindolveston NR20 5DD
