18 members attended Paul Hinks’ 5 hour soft pastel workshop and 2 members came along to paint their own subject. Soft pastels for some was a totally new medium and a day of learning for all.

Paul talked about pastel paper and different makes of soft pastel sticks and pastel pencils that he has used or uses now. Pipe lagging and paper stumps can be used to blend pastels and an ordinary plastic rubber can lift pastel from the paper. We were shown how to add a grid to a photo on an iPad using an app called ‘CopyIt The Grid Drawing Method’, which costs £9.99 from the Apple App Store, and how useful the greyscale tonal chart is for finding the tonal value of an area of a picture.

Paul had asked which wild animals the members would like to create in pastels and the top three animals requested were an orangutan, lynx and elephant, with a crocodile also suggested as you don’t see many in pictures. Using a large sheet of white Pastelmat paper he divided the sheet in 4 and used each quarter to concentrate on an animal.

With the orangutan Paul showed us how us how to complete the initial drawing and then add colours and shapes to achieve the texture of the hair and flanges. On the lynx we were shown how to achieve likeness of the fluffy ear hairs by using several colours of pastel pencil. The crocodile had scale shapes added and on the elephant we saw how to use dark pastel to create the trunk’s wrinkly shapes. Such a brilliant way to show all 4 animals in one go. Here’s the sheet at the end of the session…

The workshop started in a structured way as we coloured backgrounds and started sketching but soon we worked at different paces as some began adding pastel slowly and others confidently dived in with their pastels. Paul walked around several times to give advice to everyone individually and was a very personable and patient tutor as we could ask him anything and he helped us. Some members brought in their own wild animal reference pictures and he tailored his advice to each person.

Have a look at his accounts on Facebook as ‘Paul Hinks Art’ and Instagram as ‘paulhinksart’ to see his other artwork and commissions as they are amazing. Please give him a follow to see new works as they are posted.

Several photos were taken of members’ work at lunchtime as they left their desks to get another tea or coffee, but not all are shown. These photos show the many different makes of pastels being used and how we were a bit messy!

At the end of the session all the pictures were placed along the ledge at the side of the hall for all to see. The photos are grouped by similar animal, with individual ones at the end. Some are finished and others will be completed at home, so please send your photos to Tracy or Steve when finished. No one did the elephant’s head and full trunk, so will anyone give it a go at home?

Thank you, Paul, for such an informative and enjoyable workshop, we all had a marvellous day learning from you! We hope you will return for another workshop with us.

May’s sessions will be posted on Thursday 1st and the next session at the hall will be on Wednesday May 14th 7-9pm.