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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Chalk Art Group 