Dear Member
Our August Summer Exhibition will be getting under way in Pinder Hall when you receive this Newsletter, so please promote it in any way you can, for example with the flyers we sent you or on your social media. Do bring your friends and relatives along. As well as a large selection of paintings to view and perhaps purchase, we have some lovely ceramics, glassware and embroidery. It’s never too early to buy some exclusive Christmas presents for your loved ones! We will be open from 17th to 29th August, 10am to 6pm (5pm on the last day).
In July Tony Parsons gave us an exciting Zoom demo of how to paint Gestural Poses in oils from his studio in Sussex (near Brighton). His subject was an upside-down figure of a girl on a swing. He said “It’s useful to have an upside-down figure because you don’t get bogged down in details and ‘what you know’ about the figure.”
Tony’s canvas was mid-tone gray and he used Michael Harding and Seawhite of Brighton oil paints. He mixed skin-tone colours with a palette knife in advance and then applied paint with mostly flat nylon brushes, which are softer and more flexible than bristle brushes. He recommended ‘Zest It’ as a paint medium and to clean brushes.
Tony’s Palette – Cool to warm colours, plus Titanium White. French Ultramarine and Alizarin Crimson (cold, shadow colours), Cobalt Blue (for colour mixing), Burnt Sienna, Orange, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red and Titanium White. He mentioned Kings Blue Deep (used for the shadow areas of the white costume), Pthalo Blue and Caribbean Turquoise. However, his tip was to try and keep to a limited palette for harmony.
He began his demo with messy, scribbly lines and then roughly put in tones of colour for the figure. He then blocked in the negative space to confirm the outline of the figure. (Tip – stand back from the painting and leave it so that your eye will see what’s wrong when you return to it. If you see an error correct it! Don’t carry on and try to make it work – it never does.) He continued to develop the painting without going into a lot of detail. To finish he softened the hard edges with a brush and added a suggestion of an abstract background. Here is the finished result.
During the question and answer session he showed us his paintings in the studio. They are very dynamic and full of movement with a broad range of subjects. Tony’s website is, artistonthehill.co.uk and he can also be found on Instagram. Another artist to look up is David Shevlino (on Instagram or davidshevlino.com). Tony also suggested that you could learn a lot about layering oils, wet on wet, by watching videos of Kevin Hill or Bob Ross at work (although he didn’t seem to be a great admirer of Bob’s trees!)
Many thanks to Donna for these notes on the demo.
Sunday Painting
At the beginning of August six of us enjoyed a lovely day painting in Rachel’s garden, after such a long break from ‘Sunday Painting’. The weather forecast was for rain much of the day but thankfully we ignored it and went ahead anyway. One brief shower at 11, then dry for the rest of the day. Rachel has many interesting objects around her large garden and we rounded off the afternoon with a marvelous sponge cake brought along by Pam (who painted the lovely watercolour, left). It felt good to be back together, doing what we enjoy. Many thanks to Rachel for her kind invitation and hospitality.
The next Sunday Painting is planned for September 5th, 10.30 – 4pm, when you can come along to spend a relaxing day at Pam Hammond’s home and garden, Any queries, please email Lyn at lrforcac@gmail.com
Monthly meeting: 16th September 7-9pm in The Parish Centre, Church Gate, Cookham, SL6 9SP.
This will be our first ‘live’ meeting at the Parish Centre for a very long time!
Wildlife artist Andrew Forkner is coming with a Power Point presentation showing his start to finish method of painting birds.
At the start of his career Andrew produced mostly illustration work, drawing birds and other animals for journals, magazines and books (most notably as principal illustrator for ‘The Birds of Oxfordshire’ for which he produced the colour plate for the dust-jacket and 87 of the 147 ink drawings in the book). He has also produced several commissions for the RSPB.
A self-taught wildlife artist, he works in a variety of media, including graphite pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics and pastel to complete his originals. You can have a look at some of Andrew’s work and the books he has written on his website www.andrewforkner.co.uk .
Another live event is coming up on Saturday 2nd October: A Workshop with Sonia Bacchus painting figures, using acrylics. Sonia has given us very good demonstrations several times, so we hope members will be keen to join this workshop. The venue was due to be in Parish Centre but will now be in Cookham Dean Village Hall, Church Road, Cookham Dean, Berks SL6 9PD. Limited to 16 places. £30 per person.
Please email Sue Sepehri by 18th September ( smsforcac@gmail.com ) requesting how many places you will require. Sue will then email your confirmation and outline your payment options. No payment will be required until Sue has emailed you and confirmed your place.
(We do appreciate that there are a few members who do not use email. We hope that those members will get a friend to send Sue the initial email and she will take it from there. If you can’t do that, ask a member of the CAC committee at one of our meetings and they will contact Sue.)
Tuesday Painting. With the lifting of covid restrictions we will be back in the Cookham Dean Village Hall. As with the usual ‘Tuesday Painting’, anything goes – so feel free to work on or off topic. It is good to have a few paintings in the Newsletter so do send me pictures of your art if you have something you would like to share (rdjforcac@gmail.com).
On the right: Seascape in watercolour by Lyn, inspired by the work of Lois Davidson (See TIP OF THE MONTH).
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Tuesday Painting: Suggested TOPICS |
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| August 31st: A pastoral scene (Monet, Renoir) | September 21st: Paint what you like |
| September 7th: Paint what you like | September 28th: Waterfall (include autumn colours) |
| September 14th: Harvest | October 5th: Paint what you like |
Yours sincerely
R Jones email rdjforcac@gmail.com
Newsletter Editor
P.S. Are you wondering whether to join the Club Holiday in 2022 on 23rd September for 7 nights to Selworthy in Somerset?
There are TWO ‘better’ single rooms and ONE twin still available at the time of writing – see all the details in our last Newsletter, or contact Wendy Mercer – wgmforcac@gmail.com