NEWSLETTER November 2012 [Editor: Brian Richardson]

Editor's Notes

The Exhibition was again a great success with an entry comprising 192 ready-to-hang works, 65 portfolio

paintings, 140 greetings cards, and pieces of pottery.

14 ready-to-hang works, 7 portfolio paintings, 1 piece of pottery and 39 cards were sold.

Winner of the Winsland Prize was Carole Head with "Snowdrops".

Winner of the Themed Prize was Doreen Hill with "Celebration"

Winner of the Peoples' Choice was Liz Makin Bradshaw with "Spring Breeze"

Terry Ralph's screens proved their worth once more in enabling the exhibition to be hung in record time.

Membership Renewal

You will find an application form for renewal of your membership with this newsletter. Subscriptions fall

due on 1st January and your membership lapses if not paid by the 31

st January.

AGM

The AGM will be on Friday 1st February 2013 and the calling notice, which shows the current committee,

is included with this newsletter and indicates whether or not they are willing to stand again for election. If

you wish to nominate someone for the committee please ensure that they are willing for their name to be

put forward.

Reviews

As usual the reviews are based on Sam Dauncey's brilliant reports for the website unless otherwise

attributed. Any errors are the editor's.

Watercolour Roses by Freda Anderson, 14 September 2012

There is no way that even humorous, multi-talented Freda could complete a watercolour in a 90 minute

demo. She started by suggesting that one could paint from silk flowers instead of fresh ones because silk

doesn't wilt. Tonight she worked from a couple of photos of actual roses. She also advised fitting the work

to a standard frame size as non-standard frames can be expensive.

Her starting point is to mark "golden section" lines inside an

actual-sized rectangle and lightly pencilling the main points of

interest there. She then divides the resulting outside negative

space into several (not more

than eight) balanced areas –

in tonight's painting, by

strategically placed leaves.

Next comes a tonal version

from which she prepares a

tracing (using black pen)

which is finally transferred onto the watercolour paper (soft pencil

all over the back of the tracing and a red ball pen for the actual

transfer, so you can see what you are doing at each stage).

Actually, instead of ordinary paper she prefers hot-pressed watercolour board (from Jackson's). It's easier

to lift paint out from, is more tolerant of scrubbing and stays sound enough to be gesso-ed over and

reused for an acrylic if the watercolour fails.

Freda had prepared a single-layer watercolour underpainting prior to this evening's demo.

Before starting she sprayed all her paints with water and then got us thinking about what glazes she would

need for the apricot and purple petals.

She had an enormous selection of colours in her watercolour box/palette:

staining/transparent colours down one side

opaque cadmium colours down the other and

along the top a group of floral and leafy colours and a group of earth colours

Freda enthused about "Australian Yellow" but couldn't remember where she found it! Anyway, she used it

to glaze all over the flowers and leaves, lifting out lighter areas with a dry tissue or, for softer edges, with

moist cottonwool. This glaze was left to dry while she started to darken the background.

She mixed a grey using Alizarin Crimson, Windsor Blue and a green (so as not to have too much yellow)

and applied this quite wet, adding specks of pure colour, wet-into-wet, allowing these to spread and run.

She even painted the grey over the leaves but blotted back the lighter areas.

For flowers and still lives she often finds that a background consisting of an artificial arrangement of

rectangles (3, 5 or 7) can be effective but that did not seem appropriate here.

Painting of the background gradually extended right round the picture. The dark grey was put carefully

round the edges and in between the flowers with the tip of the brush and then the wet line of paint was

pulled out into the adjacent area with whatever stronger colour was appropriate (e.g. blue towards the

top).

This sort of watercolour painting needs careful attention to the relative wetness of paper, brush and paint

which only comes only with experience

Texture can be added by spraying paint or water from a toothbrush (still mostly wet-into-wet) and even

dabbing the toothbrush onto wet paper.

Several times Freda stressed that darks tend to recede and lights to

come forward. Wherever one leaf or petal is further away than

another it should be darker.

After the interval Freda got onto the first rose. She experimented

with a glaze of "Australian Yellow" and crimson but it was too

grubby, so she switched to permanent rose.

The sequence was to put the dark (grey or blue) in along each

edge and then pull it out with the permanent rose and then add

more yellow and red. A rigger was used to create the effect of thin

veins in the petals.

It is a 3 or 4 coat process to get the depth of colour you want. She was approaching this stage for the

apricot rose but barely touched the other one (she would be using a blue and pink glaze there, rather than

the permanent rose).

Instead, she went back to darkening the background and lightly scrubbing out lighter areas with her wet

cotton wool.

Freda said that it is helpful to look at your part-finished picture in a frame. We did, but it made no

shortcomings visible to me.

As in previous demos, she said that this picture was far from

finished.

Will we ever see how the purple rose comes out in the finished

article?

Thank you again, Freda, for a very informative and amusing

evening

Graham Scandrett's Workshops, 12th

and 19th

October 2012

First Week : Pen and Ink drawing with single colour wash

Subject: Buildings and details of

buildings

Equipment: Cartridge paper

Pen with waterproof ink

(either dip or art pen)

One colour watercolour

Photographs:. Buildings (groups)

details of buildings,

i.e. doorways, windows,

mouldings

Graham's briefing is most easily described in separate bullets of advice:

Don't do your drawing in pencil first - it's very hard to keep any spontaneity if you trace ink over

existing work. It's OK to make a few pencil marks to fix the positions of major features, but that's all

Rötring ink is recommended - if you use Indian, only distilled water should be used to thin it

As well as art pens, you can use all sorts of dip pen:

* ordinary metal nib

* reservoir nib (although if you dip it you're likely to get a blob - fill it with a brush)

* bamboo

* porcupine quill (needs no sharpening)

* Venetian glass

Normally he would work with the board almost flat

Start with thin lines - don't do everything with the same amount of detail - leading the eye to the most

important area(s)

Use thicker lines in the foreground and thinner ones in the distance

Start adding shading as early as you like (cross-hatching or following the contours)

You can ink in lots of texture (trees for example)

Finally put in washes, using tonight's single colour of watercolour - very thin and each one allowed

to become totally dry before adding the next.

He also warned about trying to darken something in monochrome work by adding more paint - you will

just make it brighter.

The following illustration shows a montage of drawings by the members:

Second week: Subject: Landscape

Equipment: As last week but with several additional watercolours

This second week was in one sense the reverse of the first: putting pen over watercolour instead of

watercolour over pen.

Several members had not been here last week's briefing so Graham summarised much of it.

He stressed the need for at least two thicknesses of line (needing two art pens or one nib). For that reason

he wasn't too keen on pencil for anything more than very light guidelines - and pencils can dent the paper

too much.

For tonight's briefing he dampened his sheet of heavyweight cartridge paper and then put in very thin

patches of colour. Dabs of cerulean, cobalt and purple in the sky, viridian and purple for the grey mid-

distance and the same colours with lemon yellow and touches of red for the foreground meadow.

Thin paint on damp paper tends to run as well as spread, but "who cares?" But if you want sharp lines it is

vital that these washes dry completely before the pen is added.

To make the point that the artist has much more freedom than the photographer he produced a sketch of a

"more interesting" tree, saying that he thought he would use that instead of the one in his original.

He recommended starting with the thinnest lines (top back) and working forward into thicker ones

(bottom front), adding shading with the pen as you go. He didn't get very far before announcing that we

were there to work and so we'd better get on with it!

I was obviously not a good pupil. I realised when I started this write-up that I had put too much water on

at the beginning (so that my whole brand-new pad of paper dried wrinkled) and that, being obsessed with

the centre of interest, I had started down there with the thicker lines!

I thoroughly enjoyed these two sessions, Graham. Thank you, again. I wonder if others are like me:

enjoying being told the same thing repeatedly by tutors and demonstrators, forgetting much of it and

going ahead and doing my own thing anyway?

Montage of drawings by members.

Talk on Colour Mixing by Ali Cockrean, 2nd

November 2012 Ali began by explaining her background and how she tried various materials before finally concentrating

on acrylics five or six years ago. She uses mainly Chroma Atelier paints for her professional work because

of their extended open time but for demonstration she uses Winsor & Newton Galeria or Daler Rowney

System 3. She uses the paint straight from the tube or pot, not bothering with mediums. Since she uses a

knife, except for initial under painting, she finds that enough texture can be produced using paint alone,

especially when using Chroma which dries from the base up to the surface.

Ali then went on to demonstrate colour mixing by painting a colour wheel. She started with the three

primaries – cadmium yellow medium, ultramarine and cadmium red – placing substantial quantities of

each on a tear-off paper palette. She advised not to spread the acrylic paint out to mix it as with oils since

the thin layer produced will dry too quickly. Always use the point of the knife almost vertical with a

stirring action.

From the three primaries, Ali then produced the three secondaries – yellow and red to make orange, blue

and yellow to make green and blue and red to make purple. She said to always add the stronger colour to

the weaker, and then went on to produce six tertiary colours, i.e. orange-red, red purple, etc.

Ali doesn’t use process blacks. She finds them too stark, giving the appearance of a hole in the picture.

She makes black from ultramarine and one of her favourite colours, burnt umber. She mixed the two

pigments 50/50 to produce a neutral black. Adding more blue or umber gave different hues. She added

white to various proportions of the mixes so that we could see them more easily. This gave, effectively, a

series of greys.

Ali then went on to demonstrate how she makes various other colours. Cream is made from cadmium

yellow, white and a touch of burnt umber. Several hues of green were made by adding cream or grey to

the secondary green previously prepared.

Two other colours which Ali finds very useful are W&N phthalo turquoise and magenta (deep turquoise

and purple in Daler-Rowney System 3). Magenta added to ultramarine gives a very fine purple; magenta

into red gives a cherry red and adding burnt umber to this gives a deep red. Turquoise added to yellow

gives a vivid green whilst turquoise added to ultramarine gives a useful blue for sea. Adding turquoise to

parts of a sky gives more realism.

Ali then spoke about skin tones. By adding red and yellow to white she obtained a peach colour and then

she added blue to give an acceptable skin tone. A darker tone can be made by adding burnt umber.

For the last quarter of the demonstration, Ali started a small (10 x 10in?) canvas board. She under painted

a blue sky and brown/green foreground with diluted paint using a brush. She then worked into the under

painting with other colours using a knife, and also demonstrated the use of a colour shaper, normally used

for blending pastels.

Ali rounded off her talk with some words of advice.

If priming canvas or canvas board, do not use household emulsion as it does not have lasting properties.

Always use acrylic gesso primer.

Always varnish finished work; dried acrylic attracts dust.

Keep mixed colours in some form of stay-wet palette.

Mix all the colours you are likely to use before you start painting.

All-in-all, a very informative and entertaining evening. [John Stacey]

Portrait Workshop with Brian Sayers, 10 November 2012

Twelve aspiring portraitists met at Jackie Corrall's house on Saturday 10th November for a workshop on

portrait drawing given by London based artist Brian Sayers. He began with a brief history of portraiture

stretching from ancient Egyptian funerary paintings to the work of living artists such as Frank Auerbach

whose portraits are almost abstractions in which he has invested much of his own emotional history in the

energy of his manipulation of thick masses of paint.

Each of us was given a copy of a monochrome photograph of a teenage girl from which to work. Brian

stressed that to achieve a likeness required careful measurement to position and size the main features. He

then got us to delineate the tonal areas, suggesting that they be limited to no more than four between

complete black and the white representing the lightest highlight. There followed instruction on the

shading of these areas to produce a 3D effect. Then, working with concentration and enjoyment, we

produced some creditable portraits of which this one by Katie Macdowel illustrates very well the shading

technique for the appearance of 3D.

Brian referenced the work of artists such as Euan Uglow, William Roberts and Sir William Coldstream in

illustrating his talk, which was given with enthusiasm and much humour. It was a most rewarding day and

thanks are due to Jackie for hosting it and, of course to Brian for his guidance.

[Brian Richardson]

Christmas Party 2012

This year's party will be on 14 December starting at 8.00pm (weather permitting). The format will be the

same as for last year. A sign-up sheet for your contributions to the food is displayed alongside the Friday

evening signing-in book.

If you intend coming to the party but don't normally come to a Friday evening DYOT please email one of

the committee what food you intend bringing so that they can enter it on the sheet for you. Don't forget to

bring your own cutlery, crockery, something from which to drink and something to put in it.

Contributions for the raffle will be very welcome together with a lively mind for the quiz.

Any contributions for the newsletter, preferably on an art-related theme, should be submitted to:

Brian Richardson, 6 Spring Woods, Sandhurst, Berks, GU47 8PX,

or by email to: bricha3691@aol.com.

Your views on any exhibitions you visit would be especially welcome.