Surprise photographs

Many thanks to Michael Edwards for leading this fun and useful evening session. The serious side of this activity was to help MHAC members and visitors loosen up their style of painting. Most worked in water colour, but you can also use other mediums.

The Technique

Place a number of photographs on a table so that they face downwards.

Use a mount to draw a rectangle on the painting surface. It should be the same size as the photograph (6 x 4 inches, 15 x 10 cm).

Select a photograph and put it upside down on the easle. Time 15 minutes.

Disassociate the brain by spending 10 minutes on concentrating on putting in ‘the shapes.’

In the last 5 minutes put the photograph the right side up and apply the details to the painting.

Amazing pictures and done in 15 minutes! Now I can understand how you can do a daily painting.

An Evening with Robert Lodge

In the words of Frank Sinatra; Robert, “I did it my way”. The examples of Robert’s paintings and drawings demonstrate his wide ranging skills in all media.The artists he admires  most are Van Gogh, Millet and for traditional painting Caravaggio.  Variety is definitely the key word for this evening.

When painting plein air Robert would use a view finder to scan the landscape until he settled  upon an inspirational view. He would even place the view finder on a cane and refer to it for the first 30 minutes. Once the view was found he would take a photograph, before the light and weather changed. Next comes the sketch, followed by the painting. As a rule he would only work outside for about an hour and a half. The painting would then be completed in the studio.

For this evening a pencil sketch of farm buildings in a landscape was transfered in plum coloured acrylic on an indigo coloured canvas board. As the painting progressed he used his visual memory to develop the painting. He recommended novices to use the cheapest paints although he did admit you can tell the difference in finish between student and artist quality paints. Most of the brushes used were long synthetic flats. He didn’t use a flow improver, and built up layers with thin paint. An old plate was his palette. Using a  hog pro art one and half inch brush, he painted the sky in cobalt blue. The order of work was background, middle ground and foreground: working dark to light. The details left to the last. Darks placed next to lights,  warm colours were contrasted with cool colours, fingers and thumbs were used to create smooth passages of paint, dry brush technique applied to allow the under colours to glow through. Twisting the paint provided some interesting shapes and textures. A tissue smoothed gently over the surface created some soft edges. Impressionists do not use black, but on this occasion Robert used black mixed with blue to get an indigo colour. It was a surprise to see him use ‘flesh colour’ in a landscape.Robert chose to work in an impressionist style because  it is quick, and he certainly worked quick, a complete painting from start to finish in one and a hours!

The magic of Jane french

Jane French's painting of her son

At our last meeting, we were fortunate enough to have gifted artist Jane French give us a demonstration in portraiture using oils. Her source photo was that of her son, some years earlier. Starting with just a faint pencil sketch on canvas, Jane set about applying mid tones of paint first, working her way around the face in careful, deliberate strokes using a chisel edged brush for most of the time. A thinner brush was used only to pick out finer detail at the end.

A final dash of white for highlight to the eye and lower lip had the effect of making the painting come alive, even at this early stage of development. Most of us could detect magenta and yellow in the face in the photograph, but we were amazed at how Jane could see blue and grey, which worked perfectly once we saw it applied.

All in all, a lovely evenings entertainment, and much food for thought in respect of our own prospective paintings.

Great Achievement for our Members

June pond - Jane Palmer

Last weekend several of our members entered work in the Great Bowden Visual Arts exhibition. This event has been held each year in the village hall since 2007 and is well attended, often selling a number of works of art.

This year, four of our members sold six out of a total of eight paintings sold, which is quite an achievement and shows just how much talent we have amongst us.

Here is a selection of some of the works that sold:

Leicestershire Landscape - Jane Palmer

The Rooster - Frank Bingley

Ewe - Frank Bingley

Other members successful in selling work were Michael Edwards and David Coleman.

Life Drawing

The life drawing evening was quite successful. The sitters, shown below in order, sat for ten minutes except for Stew who sat for twenty minutes because it was so hard to capture his natural aura, or was it because he had a guitar? 

We were also visited by Lana and Bryany who hopefully will become members.

Glenys Alexander

       

Ken Lilley

Dave Colman

Frank Bingley

Stew Levy

Bryany

Glenys  Lana  Lynda Eleanor Bryany

An evening with our President - 'Frank'.

 Scenes and characters of Market Harborough

A talk by Franklyn J Scott, alternatively known to us as ‘Frank,’ our club President. 

As a child Frank was inspired by a TV program called Adrian Hill’s Sunday morning sketch club. He entered a pencil sketch of a junk shop and he won first prize. This inspired him to study art. Educated in Leicester at Gateway School, and then the attached college of art. He gained a degree in graphic design. His first job involved printing where he worked in a studio in Oxford Street. He moved on to be a designer in Syston, display manager for North Eastern Gas, teacher in Oadby, to running his own sign writing business and finally to date a free lance artist.

On a his return from Australia, he decided to do a series of pictures of Market Harborough. In the painting of the old grammar school and church you will notice the shadow on the TSB wall is wrong with the time on the church clock, this was the start of deliberate mistakes in all the following Market Harborough paintings. Jim Divine carries a Tesco shopping bag, Jim never shopped in Tesco! Eric Waterfield's bicycle appears in every picture, certainly Frank knows all the local characters idiosyncrasies and evan included Ali Bunce’s foot in one picture! Richard Martin (Martin’s pet shop) approached Frank to paint the picture of Church Street. A print of one of these was presented to a visiting dignitary and now hangs in the Whitehouse in America. These paintings  are evidence of how Market Harborough has changed since the 1990’s.

This is only one small aspect of Franks work, scenes of Market Harborough, along with landscape paintings and night scenes can be found on his website www.fjscott.co.uk/

Thank you Frank for such an interesting and informative evening.

2016, public vote for the top 4 paintings

This year the public chose 4 favourite paintings.

The first was Alan Walkers painting of, 'Whitby.'

The second was Lynda Talbott's painting of the, 'Aquarium'.

Joint third place, was Lynda Talbot's painting called 'Gone Fishing', and Bob Morley's painting,  'Caenwych Farm'.