CREATIVE BREAKS AT OUR COUNTRY HOUSES
Bring your sketchbook, your paints, or just a project you've been meaning to finish. Our art and craft holidays give you the time and the company to make something at one of our country houses, with the landscapes of Britain's national parks right outside the window. Some are led by a tutor, others are yours to spend as you please, and all of them come with good food and easy evenings at the end of the day.
Art holidays
Spend a few days learning to draw or paint under the eye of an expert tutor. Our art holidays run at two levels, so you can start from the beginning or build on what you already know. Introduction breaks in drawing, watercolour and acrylics take you through the fundamentals at a relaxed pace, while Next Step breaks help you develop your own style and handle more ambitious work. There are Experimental Portraits too, working from life and photographs to capture likeness and character. Most of the work happens indoors at the house, with the tutor on hand and time to practise, though a fine afternoon often tempts a group out into the grounds.
Walking and drawing outdoors
These holidays take the sketchbook out into the landscape. On a Rambles with a Sketchbook break you walk with an HF Leader and stop along the way to draw the views that earn it, a tarn, a bridge, a stretch of coast, so the walking and the drawing become part of the same day. Nature Journaling works closer in, taking time over the finer detail of the natural world and recording it through a mix of sketches, paintings and notes. Both are gentle, open to beginners, and built around the simple pleasure of getting outside and looking properly at what's there.
Craft Breaks
If making things by hand is more your line, our craft breaks give you the space to do it. On a Come & Craft holiday you bring your own project, whether that's knitting, crochet, wreath-making, model building, or a half-finished jigsaw, and work on it at your own pace, with no set sessions, endless tea and coffee, and somewhere safe to leave it overnight. We also run tutored craft weekends led by local artisans, where you'll learn a seasonal craft from scratch and head home with something you made yourself. Either way, you'll be among people who love making things, in a country house with the hills on the doorstep.
