January 14th, 2021

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.

And Carolyn's own contribution this week of a cyclamen that re-flowered.

Here is Sally P's take on the 'mystery object' from last week.  'For this picture I used an old gelliprint as the base and then collaged using other gelliprints. A very relaxing and therapeutic time. And quite a challenge.' I think behind the picture is a tablecloth (?Sal), which looks as though it has been chosen to complement the image!
As you will see the 'mystery object' (tin opener) has proved very inspiring this week.  There was some discussion this morning on Zoom about the value of the abstract image to spur us on our way.

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.

From Diana another collage version of the tin opener.  She has had a difficult week and said, 'Mindless  cutting out and sticking bits of paper really helps if you are worried about anything!'


 

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.