EMILY BALL AT SEAWHITE | CONTEMPORARY DRAWING AND PAINTING COURSES |
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AUTUMN TREES | Celebrating the colours of the season |
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| Image: Autumn Tress, Emily Ball |
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“Autumn begins and nature slows. The light is softer. The colours and majestic shapes of trees illuminate the landscape.” ~ Emily Ball
Dear Visitor
To mark the changing of the seasons we are dedicating this newsletter to Emily & Katie’s fantastically celebratory course Autumn Trees.
This is a hugely enjoyable five-day course that not only serves to raise your confidence in working outside on location, but also helps you develop your personal language of paint back in the studio. It’s one of the highlights in the Seawhite Studio programme.
This year, Autumn Trees is being offered as both a Face-to-Face course and a Live Online course, offering you the flexibility to join Emily & Katie in a way that best works for you: |
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Face-to-Face: Autumn Trees at Leonardslee Gardens 9 – 13 November 2025 | £590
Banish any doubts you have of making studies on location. With Emily & Katie by your side (for five days!) you will discover new ways of engaging with your surroundings, resulting in fresh, dynamic studies which you can then transform into confident paintings back at the Seawhite Studio. |
| Live Online: Autumn Trees 24 – 27 November 2025 £250
Be inspired by trees local and familiar to you. Joining Emily & Katie for online tutorials followed by daily painting sessions in your own studio. |
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These courses are rich in ideas, inspiration and new approaches. Team taught by Emily & Katie, their combined extensive knowledge and shared love of teaching makes for a supportive and packed programme of exciting exercises that will guide you through the stages of making work from studies through to painting. Anyone who has joined them when they teach together knows how beneficial it can be – you really are getting two-for-one when they are together!
“I loved your teaching, the way you bounced off each other giving so many ideas and processes to continue with and think about. “ ~ Caroline, course participant 2022
As well as taking a deep-dive into each Autumn Trees course, this newsletter is also sprinkled with Emily & Katie’s thoughts and observations on working in and from the landscape. It’s an inspiring read…but if you can’t wait and are ready to book right now, then click on the buttons below to head straight to our website. |
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| Image: Autumn Trees, Katie Sollohub |
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“Driving through the countryside at this time of year I paint with my eyes, celebrating nature’s rich tapestry endlessly unfolding in distant views: the smell of dank autumn decay underfoot when finally I find my path and walk into the woods, immersed in the canopy, all senses alert to the changing season. Leaves fall and rot underfoot. Mushrooms bloom. Sound and smell heightened by the dampness in the air. And once again the colour. Colour at my finger tips. Colour under my skin. This is what I feel and more, when I think about painting Autumn Trees.” ~ Katie Sollohub |
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AUTUMN TREES AT LEONARDSLEE GARDENS Face-to-Face with Emily Ball & Katie Sollohub 9 – 10 November (Mon-Tues): Leonardslee Gardens 11- 13 November (Wed – Fri): Seawhite Studio £590 |
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“I sit opposite my tree and breathe in the inspiration that it gives. Everything is still and quiet. I kneel on the damp red earth; scrabbling around, playing with my materials in an attempt to draw and paint the shifting light, the life force and intricate abundance and variety of growth and foliage. This is my trees’ finale for the year; a fantastic display, a blaze of colour before the winter wind strips it of its leaves and the tree sleeps, waiting patiently for the start the process all over again in the Spring.” ~ Emily |
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| Image: Colour Autumn, Emily Ball |
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Celebrating, capturing and articulating in paint the exquisite beauty of trees in autumn is an enduringly attractive subject. But on your own, landscape painting can feel like hard work: it is difficult sometimes to motivate yourself to head out with all your kit, and you can feel self-conscious painting outdoors by yourself. With this course, Emily and Katie will accompany you into the landscape, setting the pace (and banishing lethargy!) with motivating and stretching exercises that will encourage you to create dynamic and exciting studies over the two days on location. |
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“Working from nature brings its challenges; it is physical, mucky and uncomfortable. However, it is this transitory space, fleeting sensations and physical engagement that I love and paint about.” ~ Emily
Image: Autumn trees course participant making studies on location |
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The first two days of this course will take place at Leonardslee Gardens near Lower Beeding, West Sussex, just 10 minutes from the Seawhite studio. This grade I listed garden has mature trees, woodland walks and beautiful large lakes, reflecting back the autumn colour. |
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“[In autumn] the colours start to deepen and get richer but there is also still enough warmth and moisture in the soil for growth to continue for much of the season… the fiery displays of Autumnal foliage really kick into overdrive. One of the obvious places to start is probably Maple Walk which will be ablaze with colourful Acer foliage for instance, but there many other hot spots at this time of year. Some of the best examples of foliage colour can be seen reflecting in our seven lakes across the estate so make sure you have a good wander during October and November to catch all that’s on offer.” ~ Jamie Harris, Head Gardener Leonardslee Garden (quote taken from Garden News, October 2025)
To find out more about Leonardslee Gardens, please click on the button below:
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Images: course participants making studies on location
| During the days at Leonardslee, Emily & Katie will guide you through processes and tasks that will help you ‘be’ in the space; becoming immersed in the sounds, smells and tactile qualities of nature in autumn.
“A fascinating journey, that has already highlighted things about myself as well as the world around me. Copying photographs could never be a conversation with myself about what I see and what fascinates and interests me.” ~ Glennis Edey |
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Images: Studies made on location at Leonardslee Gardens (Katie Sollohub)
The two days on location are followed by three days painting in the Seawhite Studio. The intention over these days is to give you the tools and courage to transform on-location studies into confident painting. Emily and Katie will support you – through group discussions, demonstrations and one-to-one tutorials – in developing your personalised language of paint; a visual poetry of marks, colours and motifs. By the end of the course you will have a collection of paintings; a personal body of work that celebrates your experience of being in the autumn landscape. |
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| Image: Emily delivering one-to-one tutorials in the studio (Katie Sollohub) |
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“Your course has provided me with exactly what I was looking for - a more involved and productive process where I can pick and choose the elements that I love, try without fear and push the studies as hard as I like. I am profoundly grateful.” ~ Zoe Taylor, course participant 2022 |
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| Image: autumn trees student work station in the seawhite studio (Katie Sollohub) |
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To find out more about the course and to book your place, please click on the button below: | |
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AUTUMN TREES Live Online with Emily Ball & Katie Sollohub 24 – 27 November (Mon – Thurs) £250 |
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“Teaching online means I can revisit favourite places in my mind and through my work. It means each participant can bring their own magical space with them to the virtual studio. It’s a real pleasure to lead the exercises that are designed to reconnect us with our sense of place, through all the senses, through meditation and through paint. To celebrate paint in all its glorious multicolour capacity to convey a time and a place, a memory, a sensation.” ~ Katie |
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| Image: painting (Katie Sollohub) |
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Autumn Trees Live Online is a wonderful opportunity to be inspired by a landscape that you know and love, whilst also benefitting from Emily & Katie’s teaching – and all from the comfort of you own studio!
You might have a favourite tree in your garden or you might like to walk in the woods or parkland near your home. Any of these will be a wonderful subject to explore. Being able to make studies outside in situ is vital to ensure that you create work with enough content to paint from. With this in mind, Katie and Emily have produced a series of short films (shot on location in the landscape) which demonstrate practical ways of making studies out in the landscape. As a participating student you will be sent these films as soon as you sign up for the course so that you have time to prepare at your own pace. The exercises offer different options and ways of making rich, inventive drawings and colour studies that will be the inspiration for paintings during the live streamed course from the Seawhite Studio.
"I really enjoyed the Autumn Trees online course. The ideas and videos we had as a starting point were fantastic and I loved having the time to sit, meditate and really focus on the colours, shapes and sounds all around me.” ~ Barbara Byars |
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| Image: Emily and Katie delivering a live online tutorial (Emily Ball) |
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On the 24th November the course really takes off: live from the Seawhite Studio, Emily & Katie will provide daily classes via Zoom that you can access from your own studio. In these sessions, they will do demonstrations and talk about their thoughts and decision making as they work. They will provide you time to work alongside them in your own studio space, referring to your drawings. They will make suggestions as to how you can continue working in your own studio for the rest of each day.
The Zoom tutorials will be recorded and sent to you so that you can re-watch any or all of it to really absorb all the tools and tips on offer. You will have access to these recordings for 30 days.
"You both explained quite clearly what the tasks were and your stream of consciousness was so helpful. The technology worked well too and as a live online course I don’t think it could be better." ~ Ghislaine Beeson |
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| Image: Painting by Ginny Jones, Autumn Trees |
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In addition to the courses daily Zoom tutorials, the support continues beyond the week in the form of a shared, private Facebook group, allowing you to share work, engage with and support your fellow coursemates. These groups have been full of activity and helpful to many course participants.
“I’m still inspired by the whole experience. I’m often out sketching on a daily basis since then. I enjoy it so much!” ~ Celeste Kelly To find out more about the course or to book your place, click on the button below: | |
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| Image: Woodland Weave painting, Emily Ball |
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“I am aware of the fact that this is all a cycle of change that it is a much bigger force, an unstoppable motion of life, death and regeneration that I can merely reflect a tiny glimpse of in my painting. All I can do with my marks, colours, scraping, excavating and layers of sensations is try and give form to my experience of being there.” ~ Emily |
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Taking it further… Join us for another creative adventure! |
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If you want more adventures with Emily in the landscape, why not book onto one of these out-in-the-landscape courses next year and celebrate all that each season has to offer. |
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Up on the Chalk Downs
27 – 28 April (Mon-Tues): South Downs, nr Sullington 29 April – 1 May (Wed – Fri): Seawhite Studio
£580 | |
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Colour & Light on the Downs
8-9 May 2026 or 29-30 May 2026 at Truleigh Hill, South Downs
£280 | | |
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