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| Letters from the barn |
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| No. 1 · September 2026 |
Cornish Craft Barn, Truro |
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Cake, a competition, the winter diary — and two new clubs |
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| SS748 — Les Trewin, water soluble oils. Les teaches a full day at the barn on 16 October and 27 November — places are being booked. |
| A letter from the barn rather than a list of dates — though the dates are in here too, because you ask for them. This month: an alphabet that became a typeface, our artists of the month for June and August, a competition for the grown-ups and one for the children, Carla Jennings back with Creative Confidence, two brand-new clubs — Acrylics & Mixed Media on Tuesday mornings, Watercolour on Wednesday mornings — and the whole diary through to February. That last part is worth reading twice if anyone is asking what to get you for Christmas. |
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Celebrating |
Karen has a font of her own |
| Karen drew an alphabet by hand at the Children's Book table. It is now a working typeface, installed — so the words in her book will be in her own hand, not a typeface somebody else chose. Several of the group are scanning finished illustrations and laying out their first digitally published books, ready for the printers. |
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The Children’s Book Workshop |
Three minutes at the table |
| If you have never seen what actually happens at the Children’s Book table, here is the film — no dates, no prices, just a workshop running. |
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| Want the longer read? Inside the Children’s Book Workshop — how the course runs, what you make, and what the group are publishing. |
| The autumn run, Series 5, starts on Friday 23 October — 7 Friday mornings, 9am–1pm, £160 for the whole series. |
| Join Series 5 → |
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Celebrating |
Two birthdays, two cakes |
| Two birthdays round the table this month. Wendy on the 27th of August, carrot cake; Roger on the 10th, coffee and walnut. I bake one for each of them and we stop halfway through the morning to sing badly and eat it, which is as much a part of Art Club as the painting is. |
Wendy, on the right, and a carrot cake.
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Roger, four candles, coffee and walnut.
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Artist of the month |
Cindy, and three in a row |
| August went to Cindy — and not for one painting. She took work begun in sessions home and finished three in succession, which is a harder habit to build than any technique I can teach you. Most of us have a drawer of nearly-done. |
| Arthur’s door was the standout. |
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| The whole picture turns on one decision — how dark to make the near things. The door and the arch go almost black and are worked thick enough to count the studs; the sea through the gap is thin, pale and smooth. That distance between them is what makes the light read as light. It takes some nerve, because the dark has to go further than feels comfortable before the bright starts to sing. She held it. |
| And the other two, both from the same fortnight: |
Two figures, a few dark marks — and suddenly the beach has a size.
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The bodyboarder, coming out of the surf.
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| June went to Roger, for the framed watercolour — one figure on the rocky path, the trees closing overhead, and the whole composition walking you toward them. |
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| This one came out of our Sunlight & Shadows sessions, where we spent time with Lucy Willis, Thomas Schaller and Ken Howard — three painters who built careers on the same question: not what a thing looks like, but where the light is coming from and what it does on the way past. Ken Howard painted in Cornwall for the best part of fifty years, so we are looking at our own weather through his eyes. |
| Which is the thread through all of this month’s winners, now I look at them together. Roger’s mist, Cindy’s doorway. Neither painting is about its subject. Both are about the light, and what had to be made dark so you could see it. |
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There is a prize now. Every artist of the month gets a copy of
How To Be An Artist by Jerry Saltz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at
New York magazine. It is hugely entertaining — funny, frank, and full of his own
irreverent take on how to stop worrying and get on with making work.
Roger and Cindy, yours are waiting at the barn, and I will embarrass you both with a
photograph in the October letter — which is also where I will announce
September’s artist of the month.
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| All of Cindy’s three, and Roger’s special mention — a beach from above with walkers the size of a comma — are in the summer gallery. |
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Out and about |
A morning at Trelissick |
| We took the paints outdoors again this summer, and Trelissick is the one people keep asking about. A whole morning under the trees on the lawn — the light coming down through the leaves in patches, which is a gift and a menace at the same time, because it will not stay still for you. |
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| What I like about this photograph is how little it looks like a class. Everybody is doing their own thing, at their own pace, in the shade of one tree. |
The viewer frame. A rectangle of card, held at arm’s length, and suddenly you are choosing a picture instead of copying a view. Nothing else we teach does as much for as little.
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The whole studio on a blanket. Pans, water, brushes, biscuits. You need far less than you think.
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And Chapel Porth, on the sand |
| Then down onto the beach at Chapel Porth, and up to Wheal Coates for the engine house on the cliff — as hard and as rewarding a subject as Cornwall offers. |
| The difficult part outdoors is never the view. It is that the light will not hold still: you choose a shadow, and forty minutes later it has moved and taken your painting’s reason with it. The answer, every time, is to decide what the picture is about in the first ten minutes and let the rest go. Everybody finds that out the slow way, which is the only way it sticks. |
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Notes from a holiday |
France, with Amélie |
| Amélie is a regular around the studio — she has a habit of appearing mid-session to say hello to you all, and I know a good many of you look out for her. |
| As much as I missed the barn, it was lovely to get away to France with her. She is still, I am pleased to report, working her way through fresh artichokes — followed later in the summer by s’mores on a toasting fork she made herself, in the crafting field at Rock Oyster with the Cornwall blacksmiths. |
| We cannot seem to holiday without an art project or two on the go. Amélie quite literally had me carry twenty kilos of seaweed, two hundred metres up the beach, to dress her sand mermaid. |
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| Shells set one at a time into the tail. The hair is the seaweed, and it went on getting longer until the light went. |
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| The local town was running a photography festival — black and white portraits of the fishermen, mounted on boards along the roadside. Look behind Amélie in the fifth photograph above: weathered face, cigarette, oilskins, a sky full of gulls. Fantastic material for portrait work, and free. |
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| And when you arrive in a French town that has shut for the afternoon but the supermarché has not — the answer is one large tub, a spoon each, on the most scenic bench you can find. |
| See the whole summer, bigger → |
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Competition |
The brief to the end of October — for you, and for them |
| As autumn draws in and the best of an incredibly hot summer comes to a close, both briefs look back at it while it is still fresh enough to paint. They run for the rest of September and all of October — so there is time for a second go if the first one fights you. |
Adults — a populated beach. Surfers a long way out; a busy afternoon; the RNLI flags. Or paint it from where you were sitting — Trevaunance Cove, Fistral, the Blue Bar looking down over Porthtowan from the coast path. The word doing the work is populated: figures at a distance, three or four strokes each, and the whole trick is getting people into the picture without painting a single face. Any medium, any size, one entry each.
Under-12s — animals. Your own: the dog who will not sit still, the cat asleep on the good chair. Or one you have watched this summer and liked. The hedgehogs and the swallows are nearly gone for the year, so draw them now, while you can still remember them properly. Bring it to the barn or send a photograph.
Entries in by the end of October, for both. |
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Stuck for a way in? Cindy’s and Roger’s are the worked example — that is exactly this brief, already solved twice.
The under-12s brief is brand new, so there is nobody to beat. Whoever enters first gets the first drawing on the wall. |
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Visiting tutor |
Carla Jennings — Creative Confidence |
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| If there is one course I would push everybody towards this autumn, it is this one. Carla’s three afternoons — Mark Making, Colour, Composition — start with the part of painting most of us skip: just making marks and enjoying it. Scribble, scrape, drip, print, smudge — with brushes, sticks, card edges, whatever is on the table — and find out what each one does before a “proper” picture is anywhere near the paper. |
| It is enormous fun, and it is serious underneath. You go home with a toolkit of your own marks, colour you mix on purpose and a feel for composition, and every workshop you do after it — watercolour, acrylics, the Clubs, the Children’s Book table — starts from somewhere braver. It is built for anyone who overthinks the first mark. |
Three Tuesday afternoons from 29 September, 1pm–4pm
£99 for all three — £33 a session. Places are being booked.
Can’t make the autumn? A New Year run starts Tuesday 12 January. |
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| Carla’s three afternoons — £99 |
| And if you want to take those marks somewhere: Botanical Mixed Media, a full day on Friday 2 October (£55), or Mini Botanicals, a Tuesday afternoon on 1 December (£39) — three hours of small botanical pieces, with frames on the day if you want one. |
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What’s on |
What is left of September |
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October to February — and a word about Christmas |
| The winter diary is open. Book yourself on one — or two; plenty of people do both Clubs, Acrylics on the Tuesday and Watercolour on the Wednesday. Or gift a January date to someone. Better still, leave this open on the kitchen table and let somebody gift one to you. 🙂 |
Thu 1 Oct
10am–1pm
4 dates |
Thursday Art Club — single sessions
Come to one Thursday at a time. |
Full — join the waiting list |
Thu 1 Oct
10am–1pm
4 dates |
Thursday Art Club — October block
Four Thursday mornings in October. |
Full — join the waiting list |
Fri 2 Oct
10am–4pm
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Botanical Mixed Media — with Carla Jennings
A whole-day guest workshop with Carla Jennings — hand-painted collage papers built into… |
£55
places are being booked |
Tue 6 Oct
9.30am–12pm
3 dates |
Acrylics & Mixed Media Club · Series 1 — Autumn
Three Tuesday mornings: acrylics first, then inks, texture and collage over them. |
£90
places available |
Wed 7 Oct
9.30am–12pm
3 dates |
Watercolour Club · Series 1 — Autumn
Wednesday mornings to make water do what you meant. |
£90
last few places |
Fri 16 Oct
10am–4pm
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An Introduction to Water Soluble Oils — with Les Trewin
Oil painting without the solvents — a full day with guest tutor Les Trewin, making your… |
£49
places are being booked |
Fri 23 Oct
9am–1pm
7 dates |
Children’s Book Workshop · Series 5 — Autumn
Five Friday mornings, a fortnight apart, from an idea to work you are proud to show. |
£160
places available |
Tue 3 Nov
9.30am–12pm
6 dates |
Acrylics & Mixed Media Club · Series 2 — November & December
Six Tuesday mornings after half-term. |
£180
places available |
Wed 4 Nov
9.30am–12pm
6 dates |
Watercolour Club · Series 2 — November & December
Six Wednesday mornings after half-term. |
£180
places available |
Thu 5 Nov
10am–1pm
4 dates |
Thursday Art Club — November block
Four Thursday mornings in November. |
Full — join the waiting list |
Fri 27 Nov
10am–4pm
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An Introduction to Water Soluble Oils — with Les Trewin
Oil painting without the solvents — a full day with guest tutor Les Trewin, making your… |
£49
places available |
Tue 1 Dec
1pm–4pm
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Mini Botanicals — with Carla Jennings
Three hours of small botanical pieces with Carla Jennings. |
£39
places available |
Thu 3 Dec
10am–1pm
3 dates |
Thursday Art Club — December block
Three Thursday mornings in December. |
Full — join the waiting list |
Tue 12 Jan
1pm–4pm
3 dates |
Creative Confidence with Carla Jennings (3 Workshop Series) — New Year
Three 3-hour workshops — Mark Making, Colour, Composition. |
£99
places available |
Fri 15 Jan
9am–1pm
5 dates |
Children’s Book Workshop · Series 6 — New Year
Four Friday mornings across January and February, a fortnight apart, plus the monthly… |
£160
places available |
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| See the full diary → |
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New |
The Art App, and an hour with me |
| The app is live: your workshops, your handouts, the monthly brief and your streak, on your phone. A guide with screenshots follows in its own letter — this is just so you know it is there. |
| And Julie came for a morning after Travel Journalling, and we built a toolkit of techniques she is taking to Mexico. That is what an hour is for — your work, your questions, your pace. Evenings and some weekends are open, and you can bring a friend: the hour takes up to two. |
| Find an hour → |
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| Damian |
| Everything is at the Cornish Craft Barn, Kea Downs Road near Truro, unless said otherwise. Tea, coffee and cake are very much part of the day. |
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