Art Retreat in Portugal

SOLD OUT -I am so excited to announce my next painting retreat! I will be teaching a Mixed Media Sketchbook Retreat at the beautiful Sofia in Monsaraz retreat centre in Portugal from 18 (Thursday) to 22 (Monday) April 2024. During this getaway you will learn to create loose, mixed paintings in your sketchbook, inspired by the beautiful surroundings of Sofia in Monsaraz.

I will teach you how to combine different materials, like gouache, coloured pencil, and pastels, how to paint on location, overcome perfectionism and work in a loose expressive way, how to capture landscapes and still lives, as well as an in-depth class on colour theory. This retreat is perfect for both complete beginners and artists looking to improve their skills, and professionals looking to revive their creativity and recharge. You will come away inspired and refreshed, with a full sketchbook, new skills and new friends.

The retreat includes 6 art classes, wine tasting, tea tasting, yoga, meals and transport from Lisbon airport. Art materials, flights and travel insurance are not included. To make your reservation or to ask any questions email info@sofiainmonsaraz.site. You can read the full itinerary for trip and find out more about the venue and accommodation on the website. You can also watch my video here to find out more.

Testimonials for Emma

"I’m a bit lost for words on how transformational this retreat has been for me. It’s been an honour and privilege to learn from such an amazing and yet humble artist such as Emma. Her guidance, feedback, lessons, tips and tricks have been invaluable, she’s helped me overcome my fear of producing art, my main objective for coming on this retreat, moreover she’s highlighted my love for creating art! I’m very excited to bravely embark on the next chapter of my art journey once I return. She’s giving me the toolset to overcome failures and produce work that I’m proud of!"

"It’s been an honour to learn from Emma in person, I can hardly express my gratitude for the knowledge she has shared, the spark to draw and paint has been reignited!"

"It’s been such a well thought out, wonderful week of friendship, sharing and inspiration. I can’t wait for the next one!"

"Thank you for sharing your gifts with us this week! I’ve learnt so much and have a renewed joy for painting and a new love for gouache. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and the rest of the ladies. The retreat has been unforgettable and I’m looking forward to the next one!"

Testimonial for Sofia in Monsaraz

“This is a magical place with a wonderful host and hostess. The location has to be seen to be believed. A rural idyll with some great sights and restaurants nearby. The food was amazing - local produce, freshly cooked and abundant. The spirit and nurturing environment is the best location for a retreat be it artistic, creative or corporate team building and coaching. Perfect in every way. “

"Sofia In Monsaraz is more than a retreat center, it is a wonderful and wholesome life experience. No detail is too small for Sofia. She is kind and generous and wants to make sure that you feel nurtured and at home. Beautiful nature, fresh vegetables, delicious local cuisine, and excellent facilities for conducting a variety of retreats.

Art Retreat in Valencia

I’ve been back from my art retreat for just over a week and I’m still on a high from what an incredible experience it was, still busily working in my sketchbook recording my memories and making the most of all the inspiration. It’s hard to even know where to start. At the end of April I taught a week long art retreat with UpTrek just outside Valencia Spain with a wonderful group of women and we all had a magical time. During the week we focused on sketching and painting on location, using mixed media, developing a sketchbook practice, understanding colour theory, and capturing people. The week included day trips where we sketched on location in Valencia old town in the City of Arts and Sciences, as well as lots of time spent at the venue where I taught masterclasses and everybody had a chance to work in their sketchbooks and ask for help and advice.

For me as a teacher it was truly an honour to see my student’s work transformed in that week. I’ve done a lot of teaching before, but usually just for a couple of hours, maximum one day. It was really incredible to see students develop as artists, and for me as a teacher to be able to respond to them in real time and tailor the retreat to make sure they got the most out of it that they possibly could. I could see that for many of my students perfectionism and fear of making a mistake was holding them back. Some of my students were spending a really long time sketching and not painting, and when they did paint they were scared to add bold tonal contrast and texture. I took everybody to the Umbracle, a botanical garden in The City Arts and Sciences, and challenged everybody to do a 10 minute painting of a tree. Everybody picked a palm tree or an orange tree, gathered their materials, and then they add 10 minutes to paint it. And that was when the magic happened. People who had previously spent hours agonising over a painting, suddenly painted something beautiful in just 10 minutes, sometimes less. It’s amazing how the time restraint made people bolder and encouraged them to trust their own instincts. Everybody was amazed by what they had created! We did this exercise a few times and it was such a big breakthrough moment for people.

I also loved sharing my passion for painting on location. It was something that most people hadn’t done before, but sitting together painting, chatting, sharing materials and sipping on an orange juice or a Horchata and just felt so natural and people produced beautiful work imbued with memory and atmosphere. Valencia itself is such an incredibly beautiful city and was the perfect place to paint and gather inspiration.

For me the most wonderful thing about this trip, on top of seeing everyone’s artistic development, was how much everybody bonded and what a lovely group it was. We all had so much fun! Every evening at 7 we all gathered to share our sketchbooks over a glass of cava and a canapé. It was a real highlight for everyone. A favourite moment was going to see a flamenco show in Valencia, and our wonderful host Laura teaching us all some flamenco moves before we went. We had such a wonderful time! On the last night the venue hosts surprised me with a little book which they had asked all of my students to write a message in. It was so lovely it made me cry! And a few of my students got a little bit teary eyed as well.
A lot of people have been asking me if I will teach another retreat, and the answer is I would love to! I’m already making plans for next year, so watch this space, and sign up to my newsletter to be the first to hear about any new retreats.

My beautiful students looking very proud of their final pieces.

Gouache Sketchbook Online Course with Domestika

I am very excited to announce that I have a brand-new online course available with Domestika!! I’ve been working on this course with Domestika for quite some time and filmed it in their beautiful Islington studio earlier in the year. This course is all about one of my favourite things, working with gouache in a sketchbook! We look at using gouache, creating different consistencies of paint, creating textures, using different types of brush, colour theory as well as selecting reference photos, sketching and creating a final piece. We also look at how to scan, edit and reproduce your work, and even how to add hand lettering. I had so much fun filming this course and I am so excited to share the magic of working in a sketchbook with gouache with you!

You can watch the trailer to find out more.

Gouache Techniques for Sketchbook Illustration - A course by Emma Block from Domestika on Vimeo.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in click here to sign up at a special discount price, the course will be going live in one weeks time.

Filming this course was a really big deal for me as it was my first time being away from Herbie for that length of time. Just two weeks before he had been in hospital after a serious allergic reaction, so I was pretty anxious about the whole thing, but in the end I missed him way more than he missed me, which is usually the way with kids. I had so much fun making your course and I really hope you enjoy it.

2017 in Review

It’s that time again, the year in review blog post! I’m terrible at remembering what I’ve done in a year, and tend to think I haven’t done much of anything, which is why I’ve got my diary out so I can go through the year month by month and remind myself of all the exciting stuff that’s happened. My hopes for 2017 were to grow my business in bold new directions (hello book deal!) but also to achieve more work-life balance and spend more social time with my husband and friends. I’m very happy to say I think I’ve done it!

January

My year started off with some pretty exciting work as I traveled to Berlin in January to live illustrate for SisterMAG. In January I started hosting my own watercolour and brush lettering workshops at West Elm. Until then I had been running workshops for soemmmebody else, and taking sole responsibility for teaching, promoting and running workshops was a little bit scary. I kept having dreams that I hadn't sold any tickets or that I turned up without any materials. I’m happy to say neither of those things happen and I have now taught a whole year of sell-out workshops at West Elm. I’m very excited to be adding some new workshops to my repertoire next year, including my gouache workshop which has already been very popular. I worked on a couple of book covers in January and provided illustrations for the Mollie Makes Creativity magazine. My husband and I also booked tickets to Peru!

February

This was the month but I got my book deal! At the end of 2016 my amazing agent sent out my book proposal to a few different publishers, and by February I had an offer! I read the email on my phone walking back from a Pilates class and when I met my husband for coffee I started crying out of shock and happiness. This month I taught a couple of brush lettering workshops with Etsy, which was really exciting as I wanted to work with them for a long time. I also did some illustrations for the Betty Collective website.

March

In March I went up to the north Norfolk coast to visit my aunt and uncle. One of my goals for 2017 was to take more time off, and visiting family who happened to live in a beautiful part of the country was a great way of doing that. That month I also did some live illustration with Dermalogica in Selfridge’s, and Viktorija and I hosted a second London Drawing Club event at the beautiful Barbican conservatory. I also illustrated some very popular postcards for Mollie Makes and illustrated a lovely article for Stylist Magazine.

April

In April we celebrated my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary, and the day afterwards my own wedding was featured on Love My Dress. I had a super busy month of workshops, trying to squeeze in as many as possible before my trip to Peru. I also did some live illustration with Reiss at Brent Cross shopping Centre. I also made time to see the amazing Hockney exhibition with Viktorija.

May

I spent most of May travelling.  I had a quick trip back to Suffolk to see my parents at the beginning of the month, and then I was home for one night before heading off with Nancy to a trip to Somerset with Joules, and then three days later I was heading off to Peru. Our time in Peru was absolutely amazing, and you can read more about it here. It was such an incredible trip and a great way to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.

June

In June I taught a really lovely watercolour workshop for Pinterest as part of their interior design awards, at the beautiful Bourne and Hollingsworth Building. I also taught a very special watercolour workshop with Oasis that took place in London Zoo. I got to chat to the zoo keepers and feed two pygmy hippos, which made it one of my top workshops ever. June was also the month that I initiated my Monday afternoon dates with my husband. He is a jazz musician so mostly works evenings and weekends, which means we need to be organised about spending quality time together and not just working all the time. He rarely works on Monday, so we decided that was the best day to take an afternoon off and do something fun together. In the last year our Monday afternoon dates have included trips to the cinema, exhibitions, lunches out, walks in national parks, vintage shopping and we've explored lots of new neighbourhoods in North London.

June is the month that I really started writing my book properly. The last few months I had been waiting to get the contract sorted, and I didn’t want to start actually writing it until everything was signed, although I had been researching and planning it in my head. It was so exciting to actually sit down and start writing my book! For me the challenge was finishing up all my other projects and saying no to new work to give myself the time I needed to do it.

July

I spent most of this month writing my book and enjoying the heat wave in London; going to barbecues, street fairs and summer parties. I also had the chance to go to a really lovely bloggers event in Somerset, which was such a lovely break away from the city and work. I had to hand in the first half of my manuscript on the first of August, which meant the last few weeks of July were very busy getting things finished and organising hundreds of images and pages and pages of writing.

August

August was all about writing my book, and I only taught one workshop all month to make sure I had plenty of time to focus on it. People always say how difficult it is to write a book but I actually really loved it. It was so nice to just work on one creative project continuously for three months, and not have to deal with contracts, negotiations invoices and everything else that comes with being freelancer. I also managed to enjoy the sunshine in London a bit and visited Columbia Road flower market with friends. I also worked on some content with Pink Lady Apples.

September

In September I had to hand in the second half of my book. This time I was much more organised, having named all the files correctly as I went along and kept the manuscript in better order. It turns out writing a book in order from start to finish makes life a lot easier than writing it in any old order you feel like! In September I also taught my first ever Instagram workshop which completely sold out and was a big success. I’m teaching another one in February.

October

In October my husband and I headed off to Lisbon as a post-book writing treat. Whilst I might have finished writing the manuscript and painting all the illustrations, there was still edits and changes to make, which I worked on during October. Fortunately the edits to the book were very light and not much needed to be changed. In this month I also personalised notebooks with brush lettering for Papier at Brides the Show, and did some live illustration at Harrods. I also had an interview and photoshoot with Moo in my flat, which was really exciting as Moo were one of my very first clients, read the interview here. I also worked with my friend Kathryn on the branding for her new company Wander for a While. I also developed some new products for my shop including note books and new Christmas designs.

November

November was a bit of a funny month. I had so many hospital appointments and social engagements that I felt a bit all over the place. The hospital appointments were for my wrist (for my ongoing RSI) and for my troublesome tooth. Fortunately both seem to have settled down for the moment. I also spent a lot of time preparing for an onslaught of festive workshops in December and sent out lots of Christmas Etsy orders. I also worked on some lovely magazine illustrations that I can't show you yet and some branding for The Market Beautiful. I also got to attend Weekend:IN again, this time in East London.

December

In December I taught lots of Christmas bauble painting and lettering workshops with clients including Topshop, Battersea Power Station and Seven dials. I also finalised the cover of my book with my publishers and got to see a first proof copy of my book. It was so exciting to see all those months of work come together into 250 beautifully designed pages.

So that was my year. I achieved my main goal of getting a book deal and writing a book, I also managed to travel and spend lots of time with friends. I think there’s a bit of a myth that as a creative freelancer you have to be badly paid, working constantly with no social life, and definitely no exercise routine, and it’s just not true. This year has been all about saying yes to exciting opportunities, no to the projects that aren’t right for me and learning to look after myself.

I’ve got some pretty big goals for next year, which include travelling more and hopefully writing more books. I’m so excited to see my first book come out this August, and I can’t wait to share it with you. Thank you so much to everyone who has come to my workshops, bought something from my shop or just followed me on Instagram, Your support means so much to me.

Brush Lettering with Etsy

I was very excited to be asked by Etsy to teach some brush lettering skills to the attendees of its pop-up wedding fair at West Elm. The workshops were ridiculously popular and the tickets sold out within three minutes of launching. Across two days I taught 24 students how to create beautiful brush lettering, ideal for brides (and grooms) hoping to DIY their wedding stationery. The workshops received a lots of interest on Instagram and on the day from other people attending the fair.