Let down again by the world wide web!  Sally P. sent me her pictures yesterday morning - and this morning I received them - twice!
She says, 'Inspired by Sally T's pheasant I took to my inks and watercolour paints to produce these three pictures of a pheasant, hare and peacock.
I was also inspired to start on my portrait. The first this pencil drawing. I have now started on an oil.'
Great colours, Sally, and a terrific likeness.

I am starting this week with a funny story to cheer you all up.  Some of you have made the acquaintance of our cat Oscar, who has appeared on these pages, and is always friendly (and always hungry!).  He went missing on Thursday last week, and we spent quite a lot of the weekend putting out messages on nextdoor.co.uk, catsearch, a notice at the village shop, and letting the microchip people know he was missing.  We got him back on Monday, when it turned out he had hitched a lift to a yard in Horsford, north of Norwich, got on another of the company's vehicles the next day to go to Lowestoft, and eventually was found on Monday morning in an engine compartment!  He is confined to barracks at the moment!!  I would say he was as fed up as we were with lockdown, if it had affected him one jot!
I have started to write the story of his adventures - watch this space...
And if you have a story to share, send it to me for inclusion here.
We had a very full Zoom this morning - but always room for more.  It is lovely to see those who haven't been seen for a while, and have a bit of a catch-up.  There are still lots of you out there who could just drop a line or two to the blog for us all to hear how you have weathered the year.  While I am on the subject of catch-up, Eileen Walsh has added a Gallery page this week, and Carolyn has had hers updated.  Links a bit later on.

First to Lesley, who has captured this week's weather in the fields around her house. 'Working in monochrome suits snowy landscapes! The first two are in HB pencil on copier paper, not a good choice, but I didn’t want to go out to my studio in the cold, wet and dark. The third is in Indian ink.' She worried that there was very little detail or contrast, but I think it still works very well.
'The last one is a stretch of the River Dove and an unnamed tributary, in Acrylic, the grass, reeds and bush really were that bright. I probably should continue working on it, but I think I’ve had enough of snow scenes!' 
I especially like the reflections in the water.

These two contrasting images come from Sally T.  The first is from many years ago - a view from an East Dulwich window, and the second is a drawing from one of the pictures she provided last week for inspiration.  She also explained the middle object from her still life last week. 'It originated from the Black Forest in Germany in the late 1930s and is a wood cutter carved out of wood. On top of the stick he is carrying was an axe which is missing. There was also a pipe in his mouth which is also missing. The base can be removed to put in very small pyramids of wood which smouldered and smoke comes out of the pipe similar to incense. It is quite hard to draw.'  A wonderful little object, though.

From Diana, 'Embroidery  for son Jim’s travelling companion. Inky scribbles  and bits of old prints for Sally’s  winter fields.'  And there is inspiration from Diana for this week yet to come.

Frances says, 'Having been thoroughly fed up with my latest lino project I chucked it all in the bin and turned my attention to Sally’s photos. First is 3 inches by about 6 in my suet hole book. Art Graph and inktense. Second on plastic Yupo where I loosened up with Art Graph and ink and enjoyed swooping about! '

Nice to see that Noreen has felt well enough during this week to produce these three.  The colours used in the brick wall echo the colours in the pheasant.

From Harriet, 'Two lily sketches and my self portrait, which I didn't show on zoom - it is unfinished and is made using collage, so no realism here, no spots and crinkles. It's from a photo taken a few years ago. It has curled up a bit.'  The reference to spots and crinkles refers to discussion on Zoom this morning about self portraits, and how we would all like to make ourselves look rather younger!

Here is the inspiration for next week sent by Diana. 
To accompany the images she said, 'In 1880 there was a brick works at Cranley Green ,Eye. The photos are of Abbey Bridge and round the back of the old gas works ( from the playing field).Many of the cottages in Eye have brick facades from this time covering up the timber frames.We have narrow 400 year old bricks as well as stone from the Abbey in the inglenook.  I love  painting the distortions  and reflections in glass and Hellebores and lettering.' 
I hope all of you do too. If you want a larger version for printing etc., you can download below.

So have a productive week, and I hope more of you are getting the jab, so we can look forward to having proper contact with each other again.  Keep well!

For those who didn't make it into the Zoom meeting this morning, do try again next week.  Something went wrong this week and a number of us were locked out until Avril sorted it out.  Thanks for that, Avril. And it was nice to see Sandra today after so long, and Angela joined us as well.  Some of us were out of sync and others froze regularly (some of this may be atmospheric and to do with the wild weather), but we persevered.  This week we have a clutch of cats, several reflections and some fiendish stairs, along with still lifes all inspired by Carolyn's pictures last week. There was mention on Zoom of the self portrait project to be completed by Easter weekend. ( April 2nd).  If you remember from Sally P's email, we would like you to complete a self portrait in any medium on a piece of paper 8”x8”. No canvas boards or frames.  Will you use a photo, or a mirror?

So first we have Carolyn's own quick painting of Monty, and a delightful sketch of friends of hers in Belgium eating frites, sent when she asked for a photo to turn into a drawing - good practice for the self-portrait exercise, perhaps?

From Sally L.  'This is taken from part of Caroline’s still life, watercolour, oil pastel, and a fortuitous chunk of gelliprinted tissue. It needs a lot more work.
This picture was taken from a photo and sketch of the flooded marshes at Beccles, unfortunately I used an old sheet of watercolour paper, as it was going to be my trial run, which absorbed the paint unevenly, I wish I hadn’t been so mean!'

Jackie says, 'Thank you Caroline for your photographs. This was a loose, experimental exercise which I'd intended as an ink and wash and on the way forgot initial plan.
'Made a few pencil marks, lacked enthusiasm but persevered so at least it's finished. Have lockdown lethargy! Thank goodness for the regular group meeting on Zoom.'

From Diana: 'Dug out my watercolours which I hadn’t used since March and changed the Dahlias to Marigolds (first picture).
The embroidery thread (second picture) dates from the 1960s  and  I’ve had the felting equipment for about 15 years. Never throw anything away,never tidy up.'

Another cat, different again, this one a linocut from Jane, along with an unfinished linocut, showing some of her process.
And below, Frances sent us more printing paraphenalia, and drying prints.

Avril has used the colours from Carolyn's still life last week to set up her own, and worked on it in watercolour and then pastel.

I took Carolyn's idea of reflection, and an old photo from Sheffield Park in East Sussex, and cropped the bridge in the middle to give me a subject for a drawing, which I hope I might make into an abstract-ish painting.

These are the images for inspiration this week from Sally T.  The rather fine Pheasant in the middle is named Joshua, and the still life is very intriguing.

See you all again next week, and hope you all have a fine creative time.

As a starter this week, here are some suggestions for online events and catch-up that might be of interest to you.
Firstly, The Royal Academy has Live Short  Life Drawing poses for you to try, available HERE and also Romeo the horse, who posed last year and is being re-posted for drawing, available HERE.
Secondly, Sky's Landscape Artist of the Year is back, and Sky Arts is now free-to-air on Freeview (it should be Channel 11, though you might need to rescan the channels on your TV to find it). It airs on Wednesday evening, but is repeated at various times during the week.
Thirdly, Rick Stein's Cornwall, Episode 1 (on BBC iPlayer), features Kurt Jackson and Rick Stein exploring the Land's End peninsular together HERE.

Carolyn has provided this week's inspiration, offering shadows, reflections, still life and an animal portrait.  This is Monty, who I think knows the word supercilious. The still life is full of summer colour, much needed with the gloom most of this week.

Sally L. took the 'view from the window' from last week and made her own.  A very useful tip here was to use masking tape to create the window bars, so you can draw or paint the strokes of the image right across the paper, before removing the masking tape.  The second picture was taken from a newspaper photo, which Sally liked for the fun it looked like the women were having.  This started with watercolour, then pastel, then gelli prints for the swimming costumes, and it does indeed look like fun.

'Two photos of the ice indented with grass held up against the sun, an oil painting in the making and my abstract based on Jackie’s tin opener!!! I think I like the first photo best out of everything.'  All from Frances.

'Here are my pictures for the week, the first is a continuation of last weeks work, over- printing on my lino print and then adding a little white acrylic. The second is from Jackie' photo, one is drawn and printed over and the second is a monoprint using the original drawing.' Harriet has managed to get these to me for the blog despite all sorts of technical issues, and trouble with interent connection.

Lesley has used Jackie's photos to make two paintings in acrylic on multi media paper.
The can opener includes gold metallic paint. The ferry picture is unfinished.

So that's about it for this week.  Yet again a little exhortation to encourage those who haven't been joining in with the blog, to show us what I know you have been doing during these long months, and to join us on Zoom.  It may be that you have found you have technical difficulties in getting into the meeting.  The first page that comes up when you click on the link in Harriet's email may be one that asks if you want to join with audio and video, choose that you do, and you should then find yourself in the meeting.  By the way, the invitation email should work for any week, not just the upcoming one.  If you are having trouble, please email.  If I don't know the answer (quite likely), I can probably find it.

Dear All,

I hope that you managed to have a good Christmas and New year with everything that is still going on in the world! It has been very different for us all!
I was hoping to be able send good news about the group meeting up sometime soon, but alas, this looks as though it is still far off in the distance! In fact it will probably not be before the outdoor sessions are due to start.
There are thoughts that perhaps by then we might be able to put together a ‘ mornings only’ and keep it local. Much depends on how the COVID vaccine rollout is going! (Rather slowly at the moment, unfortunately!) We will obviously let you know of any plans and developments.
In the mean time we will be continuing with our weekly Zoom meeting at 12.00 noon on Thursdays, kindly organised by Avril. Here we can look at and talk about the work we have done, say hello to friends or just enjoy observing. You do not have to have produced work to show!
We are also lucky to have our web page where you can look at the weeks artwork that has been put on and you can even leave a comment if you wish. Thanks to Noreen and Hannah for this excellent presentation. At the moment work should still be sent to Hannah.
Each week someone from a rota puts photos on for you to do a piece of artwork from or to inspire you. This has been working well since we started a couple of months ago.
I have not set a Chairman’s project this year as we still have to show last years work. We have thought about putting it on the webpage but feel that it would be better to wait until we can meet as often the work produced needs an explanation with it. If the majority of you would rather it be shown via the web page we could possibly manage this with written explanations. Please let me know.
Thank you to all who took part in the patchwork picture. I had a great time putting it together and the end result is stunning.  The title of the piece is called The Confetti of a City. It is by an artist called Leonid Afremov. A Russian born artist who lived for a long time in Mexico before moving to America. He was born on 12 July 1955 and died on 19th August 2019. His style is modern impressionistic. Hannah is going to give you a link so that you can read up about him if you wish to. It is such a colourful painting full of hope and cheer.

Finally, some of the committee who have spoken together, have thought of a project that we could do together to be completed by Easter weekend. ( April 2nd)
We would like you to complete a self portrait in any medium on a piece of paper 8”x8”. No canvas boards or frames. We will then put them together to make a composite picture that one day, hopefully, we will be able to show at an exhibition.
We hope that this will be taken up by lots of you. More information will be sent out in the next letter.
With warm wishes to you all,

keep safe,
Sally

First up, here is your inspiration for next week, courtesy of Jackie.  Sunnier days at Felixstowe, a close-up mystery(?) object  to consider for something more abstract, and a view from Jackie's window.  All of these can lead you either to use them as they are, or to find your own equivalent.  We could have a whole streetful of views from different windows, for instance.

Harriet says, 'My two images are from a lino cut that I'm working on. One is a print done on a book binding press. Sounds good but it is in my husband's workshop, on the floor, in the cold, with very little space, so I only do a few at the time. The other is using the gel plate and so the print is softer and I have used coloured pencils and a bit of acrylic on it.
It has been quite nice to do, quite therapeutic, working away at it and listening to the radio.'

On Zoom this morning, Avril mentioned the book that has kept her sane over lockdown, full of large images with guidance for drawing them. 'You can get these diagrams on Youtube or the internet, but members might like to do these two I chose from the book at random.' 

From Sally P. 'Three quick pieces of work from me to try to get back into the swing.
An hour on the bottle, drawing it not drinking! A left hand half hour and a right hand 20 mins in pencil

And I have been drawing, as it's far too cold to stay in my studio for any length of time.  These are both from photos, the first a road we cross on one of our walks, and the second the cat who sleeps most undecorously.

Finally, Diana had me fooled when I first saw this - I thought she had laid out her tools ready for work, as she said, 'Looking forward to everyone's  ideas'.   and I love the words. Very clever!