Last week on Thursday and Friday, I had another two filming days for my next SketchingNow course – Watercolour on Location. These days were mostly done inside my home, with the exception of one fun little 7am cafe film shoot on Friday morning.

The program for the two days was very tight as we were filming a heap of videos: Intro warm up exercises, all the videos for the four big lessons (theory, numerous short demos and gallery), the voice overs for the outdoor demos of the week before and other bits and pieces. We wrapped up at 6pm on Friday – I was very happy but totally exhausted at the end.

We filmed over 40 different videos – quite a few were only a minute or two in length but more than half were 15-30 minutes each. It was a lot to coordinate and prepare for! You can see the sketchbooks, theory pages and props which I had piled up on the table to my left in these behind-the-scenes photos.

My videographers took four hours to set up (last year it was only 3 hours) and because I moved a lot more furniture out of the way we were able to improve the setup from last time – in terms of lighting and camera angles. I was very happy with this new setup so the extra effort was definitely worthwhile. There were four cameras rolling all the time so we have plenty of footage!

And yes! the moving of furniture was another big part of my prep for the filming days. I’m temporarily living in a tiny 1 bedroom flat and here are some photos of my space pre-camera gear and then back to normal. I’m very thankful that there was a spare unit nearby, three doors down, where I could store lots of my gear and the enormous pile of the boys’ equipment cases.

Although it was a massive undertaking I had a total blast during these filming days. There were a lot of laughs in between takes (and some on camera too). My videographers are a joy to work with, not only do we have a lot of fun but they are the ultimate professionals. I’m so happy that I’m in a position where I can invest in such top quality videography.

As for the content of the course… It’s definitely the most satisfying and fun course I have put together. I’ve loved all of my four courses to date, but there is something extra special about this one as it contains my favourite concepts/techniques and most represents the way I work now. I’ve planned the lessons as a whole much more than previous ones and have been able to really build the content around the feedback I have gotten from lots of people interested in doing the course. I love teaching core concepts for beginners but it’s great to be able to get onto more ‘meaty’ topics knowing that I’ve already explained the basic stuff in Foundations, Watercolour, Edges and Buildings.

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