Sketching and Painting Holidays
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words, Greek Islands? Is it the infinity of blue, from the water to the sky to the serenely painted chapels, perched on high above rocky bays? Is it a wizened fisherman, mending his nets beside brightly coloured boats in the harbour in timeless … Read more
After a break of several months of personal travel without any Vistas departures, it was both a novelty and a challenge to be back in the saddle; a week ago I hosted a one-day workshop for a lovely bunch of ten ladies in the village where I’m house-sitting for a month. It just so happens … Read more
Opening an email from the owner of our Indaruwa hotel in Sri Lanka, on the Ocean Breezes itinerary, I was delighted to read news of their latest win, as she wrote: ‘Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice award 2025: We are among the top 10% of hotels worldwide!!’ Shangri Lanka is one of our favourite places to stay, but all Vistas … Read more
Beaches…desert…sand-coloured rocks and adobe buildings. From Scotland’s West Coast to southern Sri Lanka and the high dunes of Merzouga, Morocco, we encounter a lot of sand on these painting holidays. But what colour is sand? Quite often, our eyes deceive us. Thinking of holiday destinations around the world, we’ll be aware that there are almost … Read more
Here I am in the lush and luscious nation of Samoa, being a student of myself. Struggling with my paper choice, tolerating it like a hair shirt; and quite unable to match the clear, rich-yet-transparent emerald of the water with the watercolour ‘inks’ I’ve been using since December. This got me thinking, and remembering the … Read more
The things I get up to when I’m not leading holidays! The brief sounded reasonable enough: paint a mural onto a garden fence. It was right up my street – the project, that is. The location was Tolga, in the Atherton Tablelands, northern Queensland. It was rather a large fence, long and relatively low, which … Read more
Yes, I suppose I did steal the title for the new trip. But it’s appropriate – the rare, endangered corncrake is significantly present on the unpolluted island of Colonsay. The words slip easily off the tongue; and besides, I loved that book. Any similarity ends there, though and there is definitely no criminality involved in … Read more
I had a choice: A second snorkel over the reef with the possibility of seeing green turtles, or to stay behind on the catamaran and ‘relax’. The morning snorkel had been pleasant, but the visibility was poor; the waters green-brown and murky after the recent heavy rains and flooding. The reef here, too, is not … Read more
Some people can paint standing up. I’m not one of them. Despite the recent gift of one of those water-pen thingies – an empty plastic tube with a smallish brush tip, which you can squeeze to fill with water and then dip into your colour – I can never quite get the hang of where … Read more
Ocean Breezes… so delicious, they named a cocktail after it. Alright, so it wasn’t ‘they’, it was ‘we’… because we have inadvertently invented a new drink, which became such an integral part of our trip. Sneaking around to someone’s room before dinner – usually Alison’s, because she had brought the bottles in the first place … Read more
