Steve completed his soft pastel picture of a Crocodile. He used mainly pastel pencils for the detail and soft pastels for the background and of course the colours were blended with pieces of grey pipe lagging.
Steve’s Finished Soft Pastel picture
Chris W’s finished picture
Chris W chose to create an orangutan pastel picture at the workshop but used a different reference photo to Paul’s. She completed the picture at home by adding to the orangutan’s face and colourful fur and putting in a soft green background. Super work, Chris!
Finished pictures by Dot and Tracy
Dot continued to work on her Art Deco lady at home by changing the background from lots of small geometric shapes to larger ones. This has made the lady much more prominent. Lovely use of colours too, very striking.
Dot completed her orangutan pastel picture from the last session which was the pastel workshop. She’s added more hair around the head, beard and on the body using several orange and red pastels colours.
Tracy finished her orangutan pastel picture by adding more gingery colours to the body hair and and taking time on all the wrinkles and highlights on the face flanges. She particularly enjoyed creating the orangutan’s hands and using pipe lagging to soften the greens in the background.
Good work ladies, thank you for finishing your pictures for us to see!
If anyone else completes paintings or pictures from the pastel workshop, please send photos to Tracy or Steve to add to the blog.
May 2025
Hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather but not getting too hot. Lovely to set up your drawing and painting equipment in the garden to enjoy the fine weather.
If you didn’t pay your yearly subs all in one go at the beginning of the year the next payment of £28 is due at the beginning of this month, which cover the next four months. Please see previous emails from Steve of how to pay this amount. Thank you :o)
This month the suggested subject is for both the Wednesday and the Saturday sessions, but with a slight difference. But if you prefer your own subject that’s absolutely fine.
Wednesday 14th – 7-9pm – Portraits
Many of you love drawing and painting portraits but lots of us find portraits very challenging! Choose any person, male or female, child or adult and create your picture in any medium. Don’t do the whole figure but head and shoulders or just the head.
VE Day 80th anniversary commemorations are on next week so maybe draw or paint a portrait of military personnel, men or women from that time, or their portrait when older.
Info about next week from the VE80 website… www.ve80.com
Saturday 24th – 10am to 3pm – Portraits – the Diversity of Humanity
Using any medium draw or paint any man, woman or child who is not of your ethnicity.
The United Nations had an exhibition in 2019 called ‘The World in Faces – One People. One World. One Love’ with 30 photographs by artist photographer Alexander Khimushin and it’s now available to view online… www.un.org/en/exhibits/exhibit/world-in-faces
Further photos have been released by the photographer (some are duplicates)… www.boredpanda.com/the-world-in-faces-project-diversity-of-the-world-through-the-portraits-of-its-people/fbclid=IwY2xjawKAht9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFDaUR3REtMRURXaFpXcnEyAR5k7hAnY3_nciwzfFwGSW_LgzyszKfwOtWswTviSFqCz5qD_JUGqO37qxTjAg_aem_R2FkZVAoRtWERVULE-3ypQ
Alexander Khimushin’s website… www.khimushin.com
They’re amazing photos but bring your own reference photos along if you prefer.
If you can’t come to the sessions but want to try the subjects at home, please send photos of your pictures to Tracy or Steve for putting on this blog.
Paul Hinks – soft pastel workshop – April 2025 – Saturday
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.
Susan’s Art Deco painting
Susan has completed the painting she started at the Art Deco session last month. It’s a beautifully painted image in Cuba in vibrant colours and the details especially of the car and lady are amazing. Well done, Susan!
JMW Turner – April 2025 – Wednesday
Turner’s paintings still hold our eyes and imagination 250 years after his birth. Fifteen members enjoyed an art session based on Turner and drew and painted images based on his paintings or to their own theme.
Among the Turner paintings used for inspiration are Self Portrait (c1798/9), Bill Rock Lighthouse (1819), a detail from the Burning of the Houses of Parliament (1835), Snowstorm – Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842), Colchester, Essex (c1825), Stonehenge and Sunset, both undated. Some paintings pastoral, some full of light and drama, a few finished and several to be completed at home.
Some artists painted their own colourful subjects.
Lovely work everyone, Turner was a challenging subject!
Our next session will be a soft pastel workshop on Saturday 26th April 10am-3pm, please email Tracy if you’d like a place.
Finished paintings by Chris W and Tracy
Chris W finished her painting from the session on Michelangelo. It’s from a portrait of Michelangelo painted in 1545 by Daniele da Volterra.
Super artwork, Chris, his eyes are mesmerising and beard and hair beautifully painted, well done!
Tracy completed drawing the head of the sculpture of David by Michelangelo. She found his curls challenging but enjoyed the subject.
Tracy also completed a watercolour started at the Art Deco session. The original in oils is called ‘Autoportrait’ (Tamara in a Green Bugatti) by the Polish artist Tamara de Lempicka in 1929. It was commissioned by a German fashion magazine to celebrate the independence of women. She painted herself as a personification of cold beauty, independence, wealth and inaccessibility.
April 2025
The group has had a good start to the year with five new members and most other members attending one session or other which is great news. For those too poorly to attend at the moment, we wish you well so you can paint with us again very soon!
Here are this month’s session ideas and, as always, they are simply suggestions, you can come along and ‘do your own thing’.
Wednesday 9th – 7-9pm – JMW Turner 1775-1851
Born 250 years ago this month Joseph Mallord William Turner is known mostly for his oil paintings but he was also a printmaker and watercolourist. We had a session on Turner a few years ago when his image first adorned the new polymer £20 note, but as it was a successful session and everyone was inspired by his use of light and drama, we return to him. Draw or paint a dramatic scene using colour and light in any medium.
Info on Wiki… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner
National Gallery info, scroll down to see his paintings… https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner
10 Turner paintings… https://animato.uk/blogs/news/turners-top-10?srsltid=AfmBOoo1eUNFk_g7e7rAvrq8napKD7t4z6hyZ7qacDsRkj6cHRdZ4iS2
Saturday 26th – 10am-3pm – Soft pastel, wild animal workshop with Paul Hinks
Paul Hinks ran a workshop with us in March 2024 and as there have been so many positive comments about the day, he is returning. Paul 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… https://paulhinksart.co.uk
Here’s the blog post of Paul’s last workshop if you want to see what we did… https://chalkartgroup.uk/2024/03/24/saturday-23rd-march-2024-paul-hinks-soft-pastel-workshop/
It will be a soft pastel workshop and the subject will be wild animals again as this is his speciality. More details of photographs and equipment needed will be supplied very soon to give you time to purchase items, but you don’t have to spend anything if you don’t want to, bring along what you have. Oil pastels are not suitable though, you do need soft pastels which are the chalky ones.
At March’s Wednesday session Tracy asked everyone what animal they’d like to create in pastel and eleven different animals were suggested, with several people not minding. Paul will find reference pictures of the top 5 animals suggested and send Tracy an email which will be forwarded to you. If you’d rather source your own reference photos of wild animals that’s absolutely fine, just make sure that you have the correct colours for that animal. It’s no good choosing a flamingo or tiger then realising that you only have blue and green pastels!
The cost will be £12 each to cover Paul’s fee, the hall hire fee already covered by your subs. Please note that Paul is booked for 5 hours from 10am to 3pm so we plan to have an exhibition of all our work on the ledge about 2.45pm to admire what we’ve created.
Please turn up promptly to start at 10am so we don’t waste any time. If you arrive late (we appreciate parking can be difficult at times) please find a free seat and unpack quietly.
Check the date first to see if you are available. If you are free and want to attend then EMAIL Tracy on her usual email address, or text or use WhatsApp to message her.
*** PLEASE DO NOT USE the comments box below as messages can take days to get through! ***
Once Tracy has confirmed your place please pay the £12 by bank transfer (preferred) or cash.
Paul hasn’t set a limit on numbers so hopefully everyone can come who wants a place.
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. If you can’t come please let Tracy know in good time.
As you have already paid for the hall in your 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 set up 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!
Art Deco – March 2025 – Saturday
Last month many of the artists liked painting to the natural Art Nouveau theme and this month we decided that bold, geometric Art Deco was just as interesting!
Eighteen members drew and painted images inspired by New York skyscrapers. Clarice Cliff pottery designs, elegant ladies by the artist Tamara Lempicka, objet d’art, interiors, railway posters, fashion, wrapping paper designs and car bonnet mascots.
Some pictures were finished but others are works in progress, to be completed at home.
Some members created pictures to their own theme, including from the previous session on Michelangelo.
Lovely work everyone!
Look out on 1st April for the next newsletter and the next session will be on Wednesday 9th April 7-9pm.
Chalk Art Group 