About us

We are Adam and Liddy and together we are "Something Less Boring".
With close on 20 years of experience between us coaching, teaching and working with people of all ages. Our aim is to bring art and sport to everyone by creating a safe, friendly, inclusive and entertaining environment. You’ll find us in pubs, cafés, village halls, community centres, schools, and care homes.
When Covid-19 struck and the subsequent lockdowns curtailed our real life activities we began offering live online art workshops and activities via Zoom, which still continue

Liddy's passion for art was ignited at an early age, following her dream of creating art, Liddy achieved BA Hons in illustration and subsequently went on to complete a PGCE in ART Teaching. Liddy has taught all ages over the past 12 years gaining a wealth of experience in many disciplines. Liddy's passions are papercut art and abstract painting, she'll consider commissions in both techniques.

Her art has sold on Etsy and Not on the High Street over the last three years and was recently featured on Philip Schofield's ITV television show "how to spend it well at Christmas"

Adam has played football socially for the best part of 35 years and coached ladies and junior football in the Milton Keynes are since 2012. An FA Level 2 Qualified coach also with FA Youth awards 1 & 2 specializing in developing young players. Adam has also coached and facilitated futsal in Northamptonshire gaining Futsal level 1 coaching qualification also.

We've also won a Small Business Award from Theo Paphitis and been accepted on the prestigious Nat West Entrepreneur Accelerator Scheme...go us!

Naomi Rose Johnson is our wildlife and pet drawing guru, the Princess of the Pencil! She has her own business - NRJ Art & Commissions - a creative artist with a BA (Hons) in Illustration, She specialises in detailed, hand drawn portraits of pets, wildlife, cars and much more.
As well as our pencil drawing workshops, Naomi tutors the Macrame workshops too!

All our SLB representatives are DBS checked and First Aid Qualified.

Liddy and Adam aka Something Less Boring

Naomi Rose Johnson - Macrame and Pencil Drawing Tutor

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SLB Services

At Something Less Boring our main drive is to provide interesting, fun, diverse activities for you to enjoy in safe, welcoming and quirky venues, and if you happen to learn some new skills then all the better!

Our online offer, follows much the same path. We'll offer a wide range of subjects in different media, both live (on Zoom) and in the form of recorded videos, standalone sessions and courses too.

See what a Something Less Boring art evening looks like here

Sip & Paint

Our very enjoyable social art sessions at pubs and bars in the Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire area. Each month we will follow a different theme and with drink in hand after just over two hours you'll have a lovely piece of wall worthy art to take home. We mix up the media so you'll get to use acrylic, watercolours and occasionally pastels

Join us at The White Hart Sherington, Brewpoint Bedford, Cod & Waffle Leighton Buzzard, Star & Garter Silsoe.

Paint, Coffee & Cake

Paint, Coffee and Cake - Monstera Leaves in watercolour

A variation on Sip & Paint, as much fun and so social too, we visit some of the nicest independent coffee houses in the area to enjoy a morning or evening of creativity, coffee and cake!

Join us at Out of Office in Newport Pagnell and Milton Keynes. You can paint with us at The Quirk Space in Olney and at Kiki's Cafe in Milton Keynes too. Weekly morning sessions happen at The White Hart Sherington on a Thursday and The Rose & Crown, Hartwell on a Friday.

Art Courses

Discover Your Style, Get Drawing and Pencil & Paintbrush are our three in-person art courses.

Discover Your Style is a six week course that will expose you to a range of different media as we follow one theme. The next DYS will look at landscapes, artists will choose a landscape and over the course complete five versions of the same landscape in different media.

Pencil & Paintbrush draws on Liddy's skills as an illustrator which allows attendees to learn pencil drawing and watercolour skills to create lovely loose and simple works.

Remote Art Club

Run online using Zoom, the Remote Art Club sessions are generally two hours long with a wide range of different subjects. You'll need only a small simple selection of materials to join in. Primary colours, watercolour or acrylic paints three or four brushes and something to paint on, canvas, paper or cardboard.

Paint Like...

A customer attempting Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Paint Like... grew out of a need to offer something during the pandemic lockdowns. We nervously tried to guide folks to replicate some of the great artists work. That tentative experiment has grown to become a really popular online event. From Van Gogh's Sunflowers to Basquiat's Untitles (Head) we've done lots, check out our booking system to see who's up next!

On Demand

Can't make our live events on Zoom? We have over 85 videos of our favourite Remote Art Club and Paint Like sessions in the On Demand library, for just £5 a month we think it's a bargain. Two new videos are added every month too.

Introduction to Watercolour Course

Misty Mountains in watercolour from our online course

The video based Introduction to Watercolour course is designed for beginners and improving artists who want to develop their watercolour skills and techniques while working at leisure at home.

The course consists of over six hours of video, covering the basics through into completing your own projects. You'll follow Liddy's gentle, clear and informative instructions to work through in your own time, picking up tips, tricks and techniques as you go.

The Online Watercolour course is suitable for anyone who would like to learn how to paint with watercolours, you will be amazed at what you can achieve with the right direction.

Pencil & Paintbrush Online

Greens for Monstera Leaves - colour mixing watercolours

Taking inspiration from the popular face to face course of the same name, P&P Online will bring to you a four week course online, giving you the opportunity to learn some fabulous skills in illustration before completing lovely loosely drawn and painted watercolour pieces informed by a range of photographs. Sundays in the October

Get Drawing

We so often hear of the fear of drawing.

Get Drawing aims to banish those fears through simple and guided tasks and instructions to help you learn new skills and improve on existing ones, in this enjoyable small group series at The Chester House Estate, Irchester.

Each session is bookable individually and has a different theme and stands alone, but all together they build into a wide ranging course to improve your drawing skills.

Pencil & Paintbrush Online

Introduction to Watrcolour

We do quite a bit of other stuff too, from Macrame to Mandala Workshops and Printing to Life Drawing. But these events tend to be a bit less regular. You can catch up with our latest events by signing up for our Newsletter, checking out our Facebook page. We also offer private Sip & Paint events at various venues, details are on our booking system. Liddy will also offer private online courses in drawing, painting and illustration too. Liddy will also do commissions, she specializes in illustration and papercut artworks along with large scale abstract work in acrylic and oil. See details on the Liddy Parry Art page. Phew....that's it!