Chris W couldn’t make the Saturday session last month on The Diversity of Humanity , so painted her picture at home. It’s in watercolours and is a striking composition with great use of rich colours. Lovely work, Chris, well done!
It’s time for our annual competition which is a friendly affair and NOT compulsory. If you don’t want to enter a painting that’s fine, please use the suggested idea as inspiration for a drawing or painting. The competition theme will be on both Wednesday and Saturday sessions, but if you prefer you can come along and ‘do your own thing’ but not enter the competition.
Wednesday 11th 7-9pm – Start painting for the competition
The subject is – SUMMER
There are countless subjects to draw or paint for this broad subject…
People – on the beach, wearing a sunhat and sunglasses, sunbathing in the park, paddling or swimming, sailing on a lake or the sea, making sandcastles, visiting a theme park.
Places – your favourite place to visit in the summer, a beach hut, holiday cottage, walking in the woods.
Flowers – summer blooms in the garden, cut flowers in a vase, a bride’s bouquet or groom’s buttonhole
Animals – your pet lying in the sun, farm animals in a field, heavy horses pulling a cart.
Landscape or seascape – your favourite view of the British countryside or coast in the sun (or rain!), trees in full leaf, boats in a harbour or out at sea.
Food – a cream tea, picnic, barbecue, sandy sandwiches on the beach, trees laden with summer fruits, fruit in a bowl or cornucopia.
Words and pictures – add words or a poem to your summer picture.
Twelve poems about Summer – https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/literary/summer-poems-poetry-solstice-shakespeare-bronte
There’s no right or wrong way to paint this subject…just your way.
Saturday 28th 10am-3pm – Competition continued
Continue with your Summer picture, or paint another. All pictures to be on the display tables by 2.30pm then we all cast one vote for our favourite painting. There will be small a cash prize for the winner and runner-up.
A maximum of two drawings/paintings per member. If you have a picture but can’t attend today please arrange with someone to take and collect your artwork. Or if you come to the Wednesday session but know you can’t make the Saturday session, your picture can be put in our storage cupboard upstairs and brought down for the competition.
If you feel uncomfortable entering the competition that’s fine, you don’t have to. Paint the Summer theme but leave your painting on your own table so it won’t be on the separate tables with the submitted pictures.
Good luck everyone!
Twenty members attended the session with the suggested subject being to draw or paint a portrait of a person of a different ethnicity to themselves. It was a busy session with lots of work being produced, along with cuppas and biscuits and natter as usual.
It was pleasing to see that several people used pastels to create their portrait, using techniques learned at the workshop, as well as watercolours, acrylics and inks. Most are finished but some are works in progress.
Cynthia finished her Lynx from the workshop and it’s absolutely beautiful. The lynx’s coat looks real with the highlights the hairs. Well done!
Other members continued with their wild animals from last month or drew and painted to their own theme.
Great work everyone, it was a good, productive session.
Our next session is on Wednesday 11th June from 7-9pm.
Chris W has finished an amazing portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. It’s in pastels and she has captured his skin colour tones in such a beautiful way. Well done, Chris, super artwork!
Lesley has called this painting ‘Sheila’s Hounds’ as they are her friends two greyhounds painted for her birthday in July. The background on the original photo is of a radiator but Lesley has changed this to the Scottish Highlands instead. What a great idea!
Lesley has not been able to attend sessions for a while but hopes to be well enough to return in the Autumn. We look forward to your return :o)
Angela started drawing Sepoy Namdeo Jadhao VC at the last session and finished it at home. He won a VC in 1945 at the age of only 23, details of which are from the National Army Museum… https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1966-04-5-1
Lovely work, Angela, with good use of pencil in many tones on Namdeo’s face.
Tracy enjoyed drawing and painting a face she saw online during the recent VE Day commemorations. Dorothea ‘Pixie’ Barron is 100 years old and gave an interview with The Big Issue about her life and joining the Women’s Royal Naval Service after she left school and serving as a Wren during WWII. Last year she celebrated her 100th birthday with a Spitfire flight! Read the interview here… https://www.bigissue.com/life/ve-day-second-world-war-dorothea-barron-interview/
After an accurate drawing was made Tracy used watercolours to capture Dorothea’s beautiful face.
Julia started her painting at the session on Art Deco, with colourful, geometric circles her main focus. She spent a long time drawing the circles then hours painting each one in acrylics. Many of the circles have more circles on them.
Well done, Julia, what a fabulous painting!
Fourteen members enjoyed two hours together being creative by drawing and painting portraits. After our recent soft pastel workshop it was good to see several artists using pastels for their portraits and pictures.
Some drew their grandchildren whilst others used images available online. There are a couple of finished portraits and the others will be completed at home or at the next Saturday session.
Some members drew and painted their own subjects.
Lovely to see so many at the session to have a good natter with! Please send any finished pastel animals or portraits to Tracy for putting on the blog. Thank you :o)
Our next session is on Saturday 24th May from 10am to 3pm with the subject being ‘The Diversity of Humanity’.
Susan started her soft pastel picture of a lynx at the recent workshop and completed it at home. There’s amazing detail of the lynx’s fur, especially his ears. Good work, Susan!
With the focus on portraits this month here’s what five members of the group, Susan, Brenda, Steve, Jane and Tracy, did during Adebanji Alade’s sketch week in March.
Local artist Adebanji lives in Gravesend and is President of the Royal Society of Oil Painters, the resident artist on BBC 1’s The One Show and a published author with his Addictive Sketcher books. He has an online art group sketching and painting and twice a year runs a sketch week open to the public for only £10 for 5 lessons. They’re at 7.30pm onwards but if you can’t watch a lesson live you have until the following Friday to watch and take part.
Once you sign up you’re sent a list of materials but if you have a sketchbook, pencils from 2B to 8B and a rubber, you don’t need any extras. At 7.30pm the session started online with a run through of materials and a chat about that day’s picture. Everyone is emailed the reference photos which have been taken by Adebanji or are free on the Unsplash website. You can print the pictures out or save them to your phone or tablet to use.
Adebanji showed how to grid the reference picture and then reduce the photo to external and internal angles, internal shapes, light lines, dark lines, light tones, middle tones, dark tones, erasing areas then reinstating darks. Whilst the sketches start loose the image suddenly appears and in an hour you are done. You’re encouraged not to fiddle with the sketch but to leave it as it is otherwise you try have a perfect sketch, but they not meant to be perfect. After sketching he encourages questions online from the public and spends another 30 minutes to an hour answering them.
You could join a Facebook page if you wanted to see what other artists created. In the week we drew two portraits, a figure, a landscape and an animal.
We all enjoyed the evenings sketching live or catching up and thought it was fantastic value at only a tenner learning from such an experienced tutor. Adebanji’s enthusiasm is infectious and you really want to do your best. It felt exhausting sketching and learning at the same time but you could pause the live programme then play it again. We all liked learning how to sketch like this and using blending stumps and hatching and will use everything we learned in our own sketches in the future. Follow Adebanji’s advice and don’t sketch for more than one hour, stop after 60 minutes and they will forever be a sketch and not a perfect drawing.
Here are Susan’s sketches that she drew live.
Brenda sketched the old man twice, once live and once on catch up. She also sketched a lily using the same techniques.
Steve did a couple of the sessions live then caught up by replaying the sessions on YouTube the following week.
Jane unfortunately had a problem with intermittent internet connection all week but sketched when she could see the sessions.
Tracy used an iPad for the reference pictures and after finding it difficult to swap between pencils quickly she used nail varnish to put dots on the pencils to see 2B to 8B much easier.
Well done everyone you did so well! Thank you for sharing your sketches to see what we learned during the week.
Adebanji’s next sketch week should be towards the end of the year, so hopefully more members will take the plunge and join in.
Chalk Art Group 