If you were going to choose a spot to massacre on canvas, it would be hard to find a much more breathtaking one than this. I am seated at the crown of Gessopalena, a village in Italy's Abruzzo region, with 360-degree views of rolling hills. The craggy ruins of the old town spill out around me and the scent of fresh pine fills the air. I have a glass of chilled prosecco in one hand, a palette of acrylics in the other and the still waters of Lago Sant'Angelo are winking at me in the distance. The view couldn't be bettered. My painting, on the other hand, could do with some improvement.
Trying to do justice to the Italian landscape is a big ask for the most experienced of artists. So how would I, a keen but inept beginner, fare? I am here for five days on an all-inclusive holiday, aptly titled Painting for the Petrified. Apart from cleaning up after an art-loving two-year-old, I haven't actually picked up a paintbrush for about 20 years. My drawing repertoire extends to a malformed cat, a dodgy snowman and an unconvincing bird.
Happily, it turns out I'm not the only amateur. Most people admit the appeal was that it is pitched at the total novice. One person has dabbled in life drawing, but another admits to cheating at Pictionary. I had some preconceptions that painting holidays were for pensioners, but the group is younger than I'd expected. (Alongside creative holidays, the organisers run Drink and Draw nights in London pubs, with themes such as Alcoholic Expressionism, Beermat Portraits and Slightly Sloshed Sketching). More than one person tells me the trip appealed because their job is so completely uncreative, and a doctor who signed up says she was partly inspired after a medical paper suggested learning a new skill helps combat stress and keep you sane.
There are two tutors taking on the challenge of turning us into budding young Turners. Selwyn Leamy is an artist who works primarily on urban landscapes but spent three months in the nearby town of Pennadomo on a painting residency last year, while James Lockett is a former art teacher and curator. They begin by taking us amateurs up to the cobbled town of Gamberale and set us some simple but surprising exercises.
We are told that the trick at the beginning is to work quickly. When asked to draw, most people get bogged down in perfecting small areas of their picture. They remind us that some of the great masters were more about describing landscapes than capturing every tiny tree. To drill into us the art of thinking big and broad, they tell us to sketch the whole picture in a short time. First it's 10 minutes. Then five. Then two. Then suddenly we're drawing the same scene but using both hands. Then from memory.
It sounds crazy but it is a crash course in breaking down how we normally work, distilling elements of the landscape and not worrying so much about the outcome.
"Just relax," says Selwyn. "People get so het up with how rubbish their stuff is. The trick is to just enjoy it."
In the event of us not being relaxed enough, we break for a picnic and barbecue lunch in the Majella national park. Abruzzo is known as the garden of Italy. It is mountainous but close to the coast, which means you can go from snow to beach in half an hour. It's very lush, with lots of farming and rural communities, which makes it perfect for painting and – as I quickly come to learn – eating. As a reward for my artistic endeavours, I help myself to a huge plateful of pecorino cheese laced with truffles, salami, homemade pizza bread and oregano-soaked tomatoes, only to learn that this is just the antipasto. Garlicky spaghetti and grilled sausages follow, washed down with copious amounts of wine. I start to wonder whether the holiday should be renamed Painting for the Pissed.
After some more sketches and lessons in composition, we head to the pool at our family-run hotel for a talk on different approaches to landscape painting, from Van Gogh to O'Keeffe, and an analysis of our work so far. Ever encouraging, Selwyn talks about how I've captured "the texture of the rock" and the "subtle reflection" in my water, but hauls me up where I've reverted to drawing some random lines to represent a tree.
The next day we upgrade from pencils to charcoal and start to understand the various stages of creating a picture: starting with the sketched pencil outline, then filling in the mid-tones in the background, the darker tones, and the highlights which, if you do it right, are what really bring out the light and shade in any picture. You wouldn't know it from my pictures, but I'm very much into the swing of the holiday by now and find myself wankily describing charcoal as "a very forgiving medium" and chatting about the "integrity of a line".
I am gagging to graduate to paints – which we do next – but still we're confined to using black and white, to help us concentrate on the light and shade of the scene. Looking at my painting, I am about to despair that it is just a big grey smudge when I start adding highlights and lowlights and suddenly it all clicks. It's like a painting epiphany. The road looks like a road, the house like a house. Granted it's no Van Gogh, but it's not awful, either. Feeling really quite proud, I celebrate with that glass of chilled prosecco.
From then on I start acting (if not painting) like a pro. I catch myself screwing up my eyes, looking for patches of light and shade, and how I could break the landscape down into shapes. I realise that I could become intolerable if I had any real artistic ability, but my completely overenthusiastic and failed attempt to paint in colour proves that I don't.
The tutors remain charming and encouraging and wonderfully tactful throughout, but while their enthusiasm for the art is infectious, their talent, unfortunately, is not. In terms of competition, I don't think the likes of David Hockney or Kevin Jackson have much to worry about from me. But if they want a laugh on holiday, with great food and copious amounts of wine, I do know some people who can help them out …
• The next Painting for the Petrified holiday in Abruzzo with Frui (020-7241 5006, frui.co.uk) is on 26-30 May and costs £899pp, excluding flights. Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from London Stansted to Pescara airport, Abruzzo, from around £160 return in May, including taxes
