20TH APRIL - WITH JOHN

John provided an interesting and unusual still life this week, reminding us all of our duties in the garden, summer games and some unusual decorative objects.  the centrepiece was some highly colourful Ghanaian cloth.  I particularly liked his second pose - very characterful!

There have been a few items of work sent in that were done at home, or where the artist left early and did not put their work on display at the end of the morning...

First, Carolyn,  an amazing study of the trunk of a walnut tree using watercolour paper she was given, and a drawing of a mug of steaming coffee...  The texture of the tree bark is wonderful!

Jackie was drawing John this morning, but she has also sent in a study of an unusual tulip from her garden.  She said, 'This Tulip was from our garden and apart from the wonderful colours and sheen on the petals it had this distorted leaf growing that I've not seen before. So it had to be painted!'

Diana left early, but has sent in the results of this morning's experiments.  '1 & 2, I have been loosely covering old sketches  and blank pages in sketch book with white acrylic paint, this gives a good texture which you can then use  again with ink,water colour oil pastel  etc  I will see what these turn into,it’s more fun if you don’t know what you’re doing.'  The second two are the beginnings of a collage, and its subject.

Frances, too, was drawing John, but has also completed work on a linocut, whose progress was shown on the blog some time ago.

Jane left early, but had been working on a long-standing project that she does a bit at a time - I think we all marvelled at the intricacy,  Pen and ink with a pencil underpinning of the main part of the tree.

Avril used her iPad to produce two rather colourful portraits of John, with more in her sketchbook.

Lesley also had to leave early (there were quite a lot of absconders this morning - we looked around and the room was half empty!  She managed to accomplish rather a lot in the time she had - very colourful, and three dimensional - though she says it's unfinished.

So here are the rest of the portraits, and the still life works that I photographed at the time.

It's very good to have got back to the critique at the end of the morning - I think everyone gets something out of seeing what each other has done.  The only drawback is that for the one taking the photos it's impossible to keep track of whose was whose, so you will have to forgive the lack of attribution - but that is how the blog always used to be done.
Don't forget that next week is the Chairman's project - Elements - the last of our indoor meetings until the winter.  Even if you haven't managed to be come up with something, please come and cheer everyone else on.   Looking forward to seeing you all next week!