Join artist Mary-Anne Bartlett to whirl around the galleries of Vienna to sketch the city and to see many masterpieces of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  From the Secession to the Albertina, from the Opera to St Stefan’s Dom, from the wonderful Museum’s Quarter to the gardens and galleries of Schoenbrun and the Belvedere, this is a grand city full of character, as well as “Kaffee und Kuchen”. Vienna lives and breaths art and vitality.  It’s an exciting place to sit in a cafe and start drawing – buildings, people and activity.  Decorative architecture from  Baroque to Jugendstil by fits comfortably next to bright modern slabs of colour with no ornamentation. 

The Austrian way is to embrace new style and design – in art, fashion, food and design.  The city’s streets, galleries, bars and parks are full of people enjoying the spring.  We have time to explore this delightful city with our sketchbooks, taking in exhibitions as well as some of Vienna’s most treasured attractions.  Klimt and the Secessionists, Schiele and contemporary art will all feature in our gallery visits. One of the highlights of the week is a visit to sketch the Lipizzaner’s practising at the Spanish Riding School. We stay in a comfortable hotel in the historic centre, walking to nearby painting locations.

Tour cost from £998 per person sharing Single Room Supplement £336

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

We visit Zambia at a cooler time of year.  Shelly Perkins will be running a full week of painting in South Luangwa National Park, which supports one of the highest concentrations of game anywhere in the world! 

This relaxing residential course is a wonderful opportunity to study wildlife in depth, improve your field sketching techniques and your plein air confidence.  

Our knowledgeable safari guides are passionate about wildlife, experienced with artists and help us to explore and understand the ecology of this unspoilt wilderness.  Our days will be governed by what is happening in the animals lives and by what our guide leads us to each day.  We will spend time in the national park and also work up sketches back at our Safari Lodge on the banks of the great Luangwa River.

We will sketch, paint and photograph impala, giraffe, zebra, baboons, and shy leopards in woodlands of Miombo and Mopane.  Shimmering rivers and sweeping oxbow lagoons, pods of hippos and flocks of water birds will fill the pages our sketchbooks and doubtless fuel months of artwork afterwards…

This Art Safaris is challenging and great fun whatever your level of artistic skill; non-painting partners are also welcome to join.

Tour cost: from £1963 per person sharing excl. flights

Single room supplement: £281

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

Travel to Orkney to paint mesmerising landscapes, coast and wildlife with Art Safari tutor John Threlfall on Orkney from 2 – 9 June 2019.

There’s a glimmering brilliance to Orkney in June.  It’s joyously decorative as if it’s been storing all its light, energy and colour until now!

John is really looking forward to taking this Art Safari to some of his favourite painting locations.  We will spend our time island hopping, visiting the most amazing bird colonies and walking on glorious beaches, interspersed with stone circles and ancient dwellings….   

Our base is in Kirkwall, in a simple but comfortable hostel right on the harbour.  We will be taking over the whole this 8-room hostel, giving us the freedom to spread out and use all of the space for living and painting. 

Tour Cost from £850 per person sharing

A room of your own (only four available):  single supplement £200

Transport Costs (not included): A share of transport costs will be added based on a sliding scale from £90 per person in a shared 9-seater vehicle if there are 8 people in the group or up to £180 per person if there are only four people in the group. 

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

Join artists Mary-Anne Bartlett and Mark Boyd for two intensive days of studying animals.  It’s rare to have time to think too hard about the anatomy of an animal when it’s moving around its natural environment so we’ve ingeniously devised a day of anatomical drawing in the Natural History Museum in Tring followed by a day of studying animal movement at Whipsnade Zoo.

On the first day we concentrate on the skeletal structure by studying the exhibits in the Museum from the menagerie collected in Victorian times, along with the beautifully presented static displays.  The skeletons and stuffed creatures make fantastic educational subjects.  Tring is part of the Natural History Museum in London. 

On the second, it’s a day at the zoo to study movement.  Whipsnade, part of ZSL London Zoo, is home to many large mammals as well as birds and amphibians, all of which will enliven our drawing sessions by moving out of position frequently.

Cost £155 for two days (excluding entrance tickets)

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

Join artist and explorer Mary-Anne Bartlett on this new and very exciting Art Safari to Yunnan Province, China.  This 15-night painting holiday starts in Kunming, ‘City of Eternal Spring’ and winds through village and towns on the Ancient Tea Horse Road to the mountain paradise of Shangri-la.  Yunnan is both breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly culturally diverse, and every part of this journey is a feast for the painter’s eye.  Your sketchbooks will be filled with images of snow-capped mountains and wildflower meadows, richly decorated temples and quaint courtyards, many styles of traditional costumes and scenes from traditional rural life. 

This is an unspoilt and quieter part of China, far removed from the bustle of its modern cities. Accompanied by our local English-speaking guide we will learn about the many ethnic minority cultures – including Bai, Dai, Naxi and Tibetan each with their own distinct language, traditional dress, food, traditions and architectural styles, making this a real voyage of discovery! 

Along the way there will also be plenty of opportunities to sample some of the many local delicacies such as ‘crossing the bridge noodles’, ‘Yunnan eight bowl’ or Ba Da Wan served on special occasions,  and Yak butter tea! China – 12-27 June 2019 – detailed itinerary

Tour cost: from £4885 per person sharing excl. international flights Single room supplement: £1400 Call 01394 382235 to book your place.  

This is a wonderful early summer workshop, spending lots of time outdoors and returning to develop our ideas in the Art Safari Studio. 

We are celebrating the life of Edward Fitzgerald, one of Woodbridge’s most famous (and wonderfully eccentric) former residents.  He is most widely remembered for his translation of the Rubaiyat, a selection of poems originally written in Persian and attributed to Omar Khayyam. He also loved sketching and dabbling in watercolour.

We begin with a welcome gathering on Monday evening at Woodbridge Tide Mill for sun-downers and canapes, accompanied by some verses from the Rubaiyat – setting the scene for the days to come.  

Karen leads this short art break with demonstrations, exercises and one-to-one tuition time. Your sketchbooks will fill with happy images of some of Edward Fitzgerald’s favourite places in Suffolk. Out and about, sketching and painting en plein air, we will spend time at the pretty Market Hill in Woodbridge, on the banks of the River Deben Estuary, at Little Grange, and in the peaceful seclusion of Boulge Church where a Persian rose (raised in Kew from hips collected at the tomb of Omar Khayyam in Naishapur) is planted at the foot of Fitzgerald’s grave.

Cost £375 for art tuition, refreshments, picnic lunches and Tide Mill evening

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

We are delighted to be returning to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, for a  six night summertime painting break with artist and bird expert Mark Boyd.   This holiday is perfect for anyone wishing to hone their observational skills, with the opportunity sketch and paint endangered species with Mark, in surroundings that are created to mirror the animals natural habitat. Our Jersey days will be filled with a combination of wildlife sketching and painting at Durrell, and Island landscapes – the rocky coves of the north coast, and sweeping sandy beaches of the south coast, boats, lighthouses and castles.   We stay in the Durrell Farmhouse Hostel, the accommodation is simple and comfortable.  Wake-up to the exotic sounds of lemurs chirping and calling!  We will have passes to come and go, in and out of the park during opening hours.   Tour cost: from £835 per person sharing a triple bed room, single room supplement: £250 (now only 2 rooms available) Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

This is a wonderful 3-day summer workshop, spending lots of time outdoors and returning to develop our ideas in the Art Safari Studio.

Suffolk is a county of huge skies over a patchwork of fields, ancient hedgerows and winding narrow lanes. We visit some of the county’s castles to paint these magnificent monuments and to enjoy the changing skies.

Mary-Anne leads this short art break with demonstrations, exercises and one-to-one tuition time. Your sketchbooks will fill with happy images of Suffolk in summertime. Out and about, sketching and painting en plein air, we venture to parts of Suffolk that have enchanted artists, poets and authors over the centuries including isolated churches, water meadows, castles, woodlands and villages.

Cost £285 for 3 days of art tuition, refreshments and lunches

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

Just when you want to throw yourself into painting your tutor reminds you about composition… We are thrilled to have Vicki Norman here in Woodbridge to showing how composition is the trigger for free, confident and energetic painting.

The three day Art Safari painting course emphasises the importance of composing your image before and during the painting process.  In particular thinking about matching colour and tonal values while keeping structure and a sense of fun and freedom within your paintwork.

Paint in oil, acrylic or watercolour for this eye-opening course.

“By focussing solely on the colours for a few minutes before you begin, you can allow yourself to concentrate on capturing the sense of light and the essence of the day through the temperature and balance of the colours. It can be a very satisfying process and is often one of my favourite stages in making a painting,” says Vicki. 

“Matching the colours before you paint on location has another great benefit for which I have often been grateful; if the weather suddenly changes, or the boat you are painting sails away, you already have all the information you need to complete a painting in your studio!”

Come to the Art Safari Studio to paint the Suffolk summer with Vicki and to put these lessons into practice.

Our evenings are social and make the most of the cultural activity of Suffolk.

Cost: £285 including lunches and refreshments.  

We visit Zambia at an exceptional time for wildlife viewing.  By late August, almost all of the animals have migrated to the riverside areas to get access to water and concentrations of game are at their highest.

Guided by expert safari guides, we set off on morning and afternoon game drives to sketch herds of elephants, lion, antelope and zebra, while midday is for relaxing and painting in our lovely lodge watching wildlife on the banks of the Luangwa River.

This extraordinary and beautiful wildlife area is a place to watch the world’s miracles of nature.  There are wonderful river landscapes, dry lagoons and gnarled trees to tempt any landscape painters too…   

Your art tutors, Mary-Anne Bartlett and John Threlfall are accomplished artists and seasoned Africa-hands; they will teach you how to look at the bush and respond quickly and graphically to the sudden arrival of moving animals.  

This is a nicely relaxed residential safari where you can dedicate your time to drawing Africa’s finest animals and return with full sketchbooks and memories of many happy sunrises and sunsets in a wilderness never to be forgotten. 

All standards are welcomed.

Tour cost: from £2141 per person sharing excl. flights

Single room supplement: £281 (2 spaces available) 

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.

Artist Roger Dellar is leading this new Art Safari itinerary to the historical coastal town of Chania in Crete, with its beautiful 14th Century Venetian Harbour.

Roger will tutor in oils for this Cretan Art Safari, with demos and tutorials looking at perspective, light, shadow and reflections.  This is a place Roger knows and loves and he will share his favourite painting spots in the narrow streets, squares and bustling market places, and on the harbourside.

We spend a day in the nearby foothills of the White Mountains, with long undulating views and ancient olive trees as our inspiration at Manousakis Winery. Tasting some organic wines with a delicious mezze lunch.

The early September temperatures should be pleasant for painting and relaxing in Crete.  Our base is a friendly, comfortable hotel in Chania old town and we will walk to nearby painting locations.

Tour cost: from £1283 per person sharing excl. flights

Single room supplement: £252

Call 01394 382235 to book your place.