Once again - Transylvania Meadows!

I don’t know have you ever visit Transylvania, that beautiful part of Romania, but it is strictly recommended. It is truly wonderful to walk around in such beautiful meadows in between many wild plants placed all around lovely Saxon villages. Copsa Mare is one of them, and I am glad that I had a chance to be there. 

I have thrown back to meadows of Transylvania, because dear James and Rachel de Candole, kindly invited me to organize a master class in their property. James and Rachel are one of the founding subscriber to the Transylvania Florilegium which was my previous reason to be in this land. After being here back in 2015 to paint some wild plants for the Transylvania Florilegium, I am here again, but this time to explore on those wild plants to teach how to paint!

James and Rachel are living in Copsa Mare for many years with their two children, one cat, two dogs and five horses (two of those horses were quite giant to me!). When they become founding subscribers to the Transylvania Florilegium, they have also come up with the idea of organizing some series master classes to increase the attention to the flora of Transylvania. I was the first one who teaches in these master classes.

These master classes are limited to four people, and I think such limited number of attendees is making it a ‘Master Class’. In my classes, the attendees were, Helen Cousins and Jackie Tilston from UK, Johanna Eemgard from Sweden and Jennifer Duval Smith from New Zealand. I can’t be more appreciated to see such a brilliant group of people together and painting together. 

It is truly a wonderful thing to walk around the meadows to find your own sample to paint, and I believe this is an important step to mastering botanical illustration - choosing your sample, protecting it and preparing sketches before it fades. We saw many plants samples during our visit, and thanks to Johanna who was very knowledgeable to identify many species we have seen. Well of course, we didn’t have the time to paint everything we saw, although we got excited with each plant, we have only selected some of them to practice and paint, and one of them was an orchid species, Orchis militaris, which can be a challenge! Well, shortly, the class was wonderful, and our classroom which is called ‘pod’ was truly fabulous. 

I am not going to write about the delicious food that Rachel was preparing, and the brilliant wine that James was making sure that we have enough in stock! You must experience this yourself.

So, this was the first master class of the series, and there will be more workshops ahead with some amazing tutors from all around the world;

Anita Walsmit Sachs, late 09/19
Julia Trickey, early 10/19
Lara Call Gastinger, early 11/19
Margareta Pertl, mid 05/20 
Christabel King, mid 06/20 
Mary Dillon, late 06/20
Elaine Searle, early 09/20

And of course I am going back to teach! 

Check their website to explore more about these classes; https://www.podart.space 

Also you can have a look to https://www.copsamare.life for picturing a bit more where we were.