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!
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.
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!
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.
Isn’t the brighter weather better than day after day of dreary greyness? It’s lovely to see the spring flowers appearing in all their colours. Here are the suggestions for March but if you’d prefer to ‘do your own thing’, then please do!
Wednesday 12th – 7-9pm – Michelangelo 1475-1564
Michelangelo was born 550 years in the Republic of Florence and his paintings, frescoes, sculptures and architecture still adorn the places they were built, painted or sculpted, or are in museums throughout the world.
If you like drawing and painting faces and people then choose Michelangelo himself or any of the people in the stories of Genesis, painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Place in Vatican City, or in The Last Judgment painted on the chapel’s altar wall. The Creation of Adam sees two hands almost touching, so you could study hands and draw them in detail.
Michelangelo’s sculptures include David, Pietà (others were sculpted later in his life), the Bruges Madonna, Moses, Bacchus, Victory, Apollo, and the Slaves.
Many buildings in Rome and Florence were designed by Michelangelo and he was one of the architects involved in the building of St.Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Wiki entry… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo
Website with lots of info, click on the words on the banner at the top… https://www.michelangelo.org
Michelangelo’s masterpieces in Rome… https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/michelangelo-masterpieces-in-rome.html
Sistine Chapel… https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/storia-cappella-sistina.html#lnav_explore
Ten famous sculptures… https://onlinegallery.art/en/blog/the-10-most-famous-sculptures-of-michelangelo-406/
Saturday 22nd – 10am-3pm – Art Deco
Whilst this subject might sound very similar to last month’s Art Nouveau, it’s actually the next step forward in the history of design. Gone are the sinuous, natural lines and forms of Art Nouveau and in come the geometric lines inspired by speed, modernism, industrial machinery and the bold colours of Fauvism.
After the First World War there were many artists and designers active in France but the world came to see these designs in an exhibition in Paris in 1925 called Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts), shortened to Arts Décoratifs.
Not just paintings, but sculptures, buildings (think of many of the skyscrapers in New York of Art Deco design), fashion, jewellery, home design etc. Well known artists and designers include Tamara de Lempicka, René Lalique, Le Corbusier and Georges Lepape. The costume designs of Romain de Tirtoff, who you will know by his shortened name of Erté (from his initials RT) has designs on the front of thousands of greetings cards and calendars in shops today. Clarice Cliff the ceramics designer used Art Deco designers in her work and we had a session on her in 2022… https://chalkartgroup.uk/2022/09/16/clarice-cliff-september-2022-wednesday/
Art Deco is very broad subject, so decide if you’d like to draw or paint people, buildings, objects, jewellery or one or two of each.
Wiki entry… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco
The 1925 exhibition Wiki entry… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Exhibition_of_Modern_Decorative_and_Industrial_Arts
10 Art Deco buildings… https://www.arch2o.com/10-most-fascinating-art-deco-buildings/#google_vignette
10 Art Deco artists… https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/art-deco-artists
Clarice Cliff… https://claricecliff.com/home
(Please note the session finishes at 3pm and we have another 15 minutes afterwards to put away our tables and chairs.)
Chalk Art Group 