I am largely a self-taught watercolorist and illustrator so I often make notes of experiments or ideas for future paintings. For more than 20 years I collected the notes into short articles for the online ArtCafe community of artists, later giving workshop students printed handouts of the more useful articles.

While the ArtCafe is now closed and I no longer teach painting workshops I do still enjoy sharing some of my inspirations and painting techniques through occasional posts here. Please print any for your own use but don’t re-post them or distribute without permission.

• Improvising from Nature: painting a toad’s world step by step