For a little Easter gift Kay bought some chocolate eggs and popped them in an egg box. She spent half an hour painting a chick and egg shell in watercolour. Adding words to the painting she fastened it to the top of the egg box.

What a lovely idea!

There’s a couple of days until Easter, so get painting if you want to create a similar painting or gift idea.

17 members signed up for the Paul Hinks pastel workshop, for some it was a new experience. Two other members decided to do their own thing.

Paul was so informative, approachable and gave an excellent structured workshop. He talked us through the various merits of all the soft pastels available and other equipment to use including foam pipe lagging to use as a blender or eraser. Paul had on show his many sets of pastels from the very affordable to the very expensive. These are just a few of them.

He produced a terrific picture of a lion to illustrate the various stages of a complete work. There was not enough time for him to complete the whole work but he concentrated on the area around the the eye.

Paul managed to come round quite a few times and give individual advice. He had such a positive and encouraging attitude. It made for a great day and there was some great work produced. Most is still work in progress so either send images of your finished work to Tracy or Steve or bring in to the next meeting

There was a great atmosphere on the day. Thank you all.

Hopefully we will be able to have another workshop with Paul in the future.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday the 10th April. Happy Easter

Eleven members attended the session Heroes and Villains and what a challenging subject it was! We used acrylics, watercolours, graphite pencils, coloured pencils and ink pens to create our pictures. Most are works in progress of Superman, Catwoman, The Joker, Maya Angelou, The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Jekyll and Hyde, and Robert Oppenheimer.

Here’s an amazing completed William Morris-inspired watercolour painting and artwork from members who came along and painting their own subjects.

Our next session is the pastel workshop on Saturday 23rd March from 10am to 3pm. Email Tracy asap if you want a place.

The group has had a very positive start to the year with most members attending one session or other, which is great news. For those too poorly to come along at the moment, we wish you well as soon as possible so you can paint with us again!

Here are this month’s session ideas but, as always, they are simply suggestions, you can come along and ‘do your own thing’.

Try and get Pantone’s Colour of the Year, Peach Fuzz, into at least one of your pictures.

Wednesday 13th – 7-9pm – Heroes and Villains

A broad subject that you can create in any medium. Your hero, heroine or villain can be real people, living or dead, famous or family, from fiction or from popular culture like films and animation. Draw or paint one hero or one villain, or a hero and their arch nemesis together.

Saturday 23rd – 10am-3pm – Soft pastel workshop with Paul Hinks

Paul Hinks is a local artist whose work you may have seen at an Under the Rainbow exhibition at Bluewater and at events in Gravesend. His pastel artworks and paintings are absolutely amazing and you can see them here on his website… www.paulhinks.art

It will be a soft pastel workshop and the subject will be animals. More details of photographs and equipment needed will be supplied very soon.

The cost will be £10 each to cover Paul’s fee, the hall hire fee already covered by your subs. Please note that Paul is booked from 10am to 2.30pm, the extra 30 minutes of the session to be used for clearing up the hall. Please turn up promptly to start at 10am so we don’t waste any time with him. If you arrive late please find a free seat and unpack quietly.

Check the date first to see if you are available. There are 5 Saturdays in March, but we’ll meet on the 4th one. The 5th and last Saturday of this month is Easter weekend, but we are meeting the week before.

If you are free and want to attend then EMAIL Tracy on her usual email address.

*** DO NOT USE the comments box as messages can take days to get through! ***

Once Tracy has confirmed your place please pay by bank transfer (preferred) or cash.

If there are more people than places then there will be a waiting list. 

Please don’t book a place then realise the day before that you won’t be able to come. Unfortunately in the past we have had members cancelling on the day or just not turning up. This means that people on the waiting list miss a place and we also lose the person’s fee, costing the group money.

As you have already paid for the hall in your recent subs we aim to make the hall accessible for everyone on the day, even if you’re not taking part in the workshop. We’ll have the workshop towards the big window end of the hall and a couple of tables at the kitchen end of the hall available if you wish to come and ‘do your own thing’ on the day, but please work quietly, thank you!