27TH FEBRUARY 2025 - WITH PENNY

thank you to Penny, our newest member, for stepping in to 'host' this morning's session. She kindly took over what should have been my turn [Hannah], when it wasn't clear when I would be able to do it.  As you can see she provided an interesting still life, with different views and varied subjects from each aspect.  She was an excellent model, I didn't see her nod off once!  Sorry I cut off the top of her head in the last photo; I mostly took it to have a better look at her hands.

Diana was one of those working on her own compositions this morning, along with Lesley and Ian C.  She was brightening old paintings that looked rather dull since she has new glasses - very vibrant.  Lesley's pastel show a Scottish landscape, with a brilliant sky and river reflecting the blue above.  She is going to work on it further at home.  Ian's imagined landscape is also a pastel work, following the recent workshop, but he said (as did Lesley) that the colour was much darker following spray to fix the work.

Frances worked from the still life, Penny and something of her own.
First quick ink sketch.
Second… watercolour loosely applied first then ink equally loosely applied afterwards.
Third… few minutes ink sketch of Penny.
Third… a watercolour Murmuration which had been lying under a pile of stuff unfinished . Now possibly finished with ink added.

These are the still life works from, respectively, Harriet, Jane, Maggie-Anne and Angela.  Maggie-Anne regretted that she had run out of time to finish the blue jug, and Angela, who had also used pastel following the workshop, was unsure about her treatment of the background of her drawing.  The consensus wwas that the composition worked. There was some discussion of the difficulty of isolating the subject from the general background in the Bowls Club.

Sally and Avril both tackled the still life and the portraiture.  They each produced a number of works this morning.  Avril's comment on one of her pictures can be seen written on the second from the right.  Sally 'took a line for a walk' around the pineapple in the still life, and she was pleased with the likeness of Penny she achieved in a few minutes at the end of the morning. Judith tackled the trug and its contents twice - adding ink for definition the second time...

And now to the portraits - first the Joneses, who had been watching a tutorial, and both worked in charcoal.  Ian enjoyed the process of applying and smudging the charcoal and also used pastels to good effect.  Josie was most pleased with her first attempt, which was cut short by a change of pose.

Next, Jill and Jackie.  Jill said she was most concerned with getting the proportions right. Jackie was best pleased with her pencil version, the third of her portraits,

Carolyn has anticipated the 'Jungle' theme next week, and sent us drawings of a number of very varied houseplant leaves.

I used my iPad, and the still life was achieved using its layering effect and different brushes: pencils and charcoal.  I then attempted to draw Penny, starting with the charcoal and adding pencil.  I decided her hands looked like a bunch of bananas, so I finally did a study just of her hands.

Don't forget that next week is Monoprinting,  run by Avril and Lesley, with the option to stay all day for £6. Details are on the Stop Press section. Bring lots of paper, copy paper is fine and old failed watercolours etc to collage onto if you want. Some glue to collage prints together too.  The subject is 'Jungle', so if you want go with that,  bring some leaves with you. Lesley says she has found Susan Clifton’s  gelliplate printing videos on YouTube really helpful.  They can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaiXikyqzm2LV7PXVmqAoXg

Next week Avril will also be the blogger ( a busy week!), so send any contributions to her.