 Reference photographsAndrew sketched out his composition roughly in pencil, then after spraying the paper, he applied a loose wash of colour from his premixed colour palette. The greens were then added as well as darker blues and purples. The two paintings were allowed to dry during the short break. After the break Andrew continued to work on the paintings using a range of techniques to demonstrate his working method. The final two paintings below would have the final touches added when the surface has dried. A fascinating insight into the artist's working method and members certainly learnt a lot from the demonstration. Session one four postersSession 2 Individual PostersLast year six member were invited to talk about their artwork by David. This proved to be successful so it was added to the programme for this year, Lynn KirkleyDavid introduced Lynn, a Salfordian, who has been a prizewinner in our exhibitions, and runs workshops. She brought paintings of her family with her, as this is her inspiration for this talk. Lynn went to Hope High school and was good at art. She does a lot of representational work and talked about two of the artists she likes, Klimt and Hopper. She is also inspired by club members and the work on show at the gallery. Mentioning her close links to her family, she talked about her grandad as seen in the painting below. Having taken a photograph, she decided she had to paint it. Lyn often does two versions of he works as mistakes on the first one, can be rectified on the second one. Then she talked about the painting of her dad done in acrylic paint. One aspect she loved doing was his fingers and has several drawings of these Lyn has lots of studies showing a picture of her mum during covid where she is knitting. During the Covid pandemic she started work on a selection of concertina sketch books, which she has continued to do. Her latest work is focusing on small groups having conversations painted in mixed media. Laurence ShelveyAs a youngster Laurence drew cartoons and sketched tattoos, eventually moving into pubs doing decorative boards. Inspired by his art teacher, who said that he was an imposter, as he copied artist’s styles, he was challenged to find his own style of painting. Moving on, Laurence showed us the work he does now, such as his portraits, landscapes. he also showed us a few copies of traditional artists such as Monet, Degas etc. saying that he was still inspired by these great artists. Laurence made it clear that finding himself was one of the, hardest thing he had had to do. Laurence explained that he tries to capture something in his own paintings that is inspired by Renoir or Japanese art. He is never happy with his work. He often starts with a pencil sketch then when happy with this, he plays with it in his own style. His helper Mavis showed us a range of different styles in his folder, from all around the world. Another great inspiration for him was his teacher from the London School of Art. Karen LesterKaren who is now working from her studio in the Lake District was a member of the art club, where she was the exhibition officer. Her influences were her parents who liked hiking etc. which gave her a love of landscapes, especially the changing seasons. She said she wants the viewer to connect with the work, which includes, trees, water and moss. Karen is influenced by different artists like Alwyn Crawshaw, John Blockley and Ann Blockley. She has learnt a lot by copying from their work, simplifying where she needs to. She described her style as messy and impressionistic. Karen enjoys going on painting holidays, saying that different techniques influence her artwork. There is always something new to learn. She attended Kendal college to do a foundation course which she enjoyed. Then Karen showed some prints she has done based on Morecambe Bay. Recently, she has experimented with oils and cold wax and does a lot of mixed media work nowadays. Michael BillingtonMichael has an art degree. This introduced him to the Renaissance and he talked to us about how he was inspired by the work of Leonardo da Vinci, in particular the painting of Mona Lisa. He then showed a canvas with her image, and it included a crushed Campbells soup tin! This was a link to another artist who also interested him, Andy Warhol. Michael worked on a screen print on the same theme mentioning the use of lapis lazuli, an expensive blue colour. He likes to look at the work of artists who use collage and showed us an example of his work. He mentioned artists have always copied from each other and how some artists have work that is similar to other work. Finally, he showed a large painting of Mona Lisa entitled ‘Painting by Numbers”. Meredith CollinsonMeredith mentioned that she has a nice commute to work with superb views of the Pennine moors, which has influenced her paintings. She is inspired by the colours of the seasonal changes and likes the vibrant colours of David Hockney and his portraits of people. She also likes Jackson Pollock with his use of inks and the fact he listens to music as he paints. Meredith brought with her a selection of reference books from which she gets ideas for her work. After visiting Australia, and meeting an Aboriginal artist, she took the idea of using 'dots' back with her. Using this for inspiration she worked on her own interpretation and incorporated it in her painting of Winter Hill, which can be seen below. Another influence that she mentioned was by children's author Tove Jansson who created the Moomins characters. Showing us pages from one of his books we could see the wonderful illustrations, characters and movement created influenced her. Finally, she showed a sketch she thought was influenced by Tove and read a passage from the book. Tony EasomTony started his talk by explaining that as young as four years old, he took to drawing. This happened to be on a tiled mantlepiece in his home. Sadly this effort was rubbed out by his sister before his dad came home from work! He talked about his love of music and how much he enjoyed his time at primary school. He was made leader of a group and influenced the children in it to do artwork. At high school he had a very good art teacher called Tony Rice and was inspired by the idea of perspective. Tony explained that due to his work, he travelled a lot, doing various jobs, and the places that he visited influenced his art work. He loves cranes and boats, flags, ships and sails and he showed us examples of how he incorporated these into his artwork. He is inspired by industrial scenes that have always been around him. For a while Tony worked in South Africa. Here he took lots of photographs and did drawings from them. Tony finished singing a verse from Dirty Old Town which members joined in with. A fitting end to an interesting afternoon Saturday 2nd November #salfordmuseumandartgalleryA super afternoon sketching Tanya who was a perfect sitter and fascinating personality, telling us about herself, the charities she supported and some of Salford's history. #salfordartclub #salfordmuseumandartgallery #salfordartists Always looking for new ideas for a session David Norris suggested it would be interesting to let a few members talk about their artwork and inspiration. Susan LeechMany of Susan's ideas relate to France and its culture. First, she showed her one-inch paintings completed during lockdown, featuring items from her house in Lymm. Having had a cottage in France she has collected many items which provide inspiration for her paintings. Next, she showed one of her concertina art pads and has started one based on French literature. She displayed and spoke about a painting based on a French museum and the artists she likes. She enjoys sticking collage on her work and then adds writing and paint on them. Another concertina pad was based on visits to Tenby. Chris BassonChris was born in Swinton and several of his first works were around where he lived and featured a church and other buildings that are all gone now. He had a good teacher who inspired him, and he encouraged him to do an arts scholarship. One of his tutors was Ernest Goodman who started Salford Art Club. Chris worked as a commercial artist and had to relearn the art of drawing for this job. He was then conscripted into the army, and met a good bunch of people, which led to a lot of travelling. He then showed sketches from his trips in the army. After leaving the army he struggled for a while before eventually meeting his good wife and when they got the chance, they sailed around the world. He continued sketching, always enjoying life as an adventure. For inspiration he likes capturing a moment in time. He then showed a portrait of Martin Luther King that he had painted. His recent work has strayed into surrealism and showed us a recent painting based on Manchester with a small cityscape and other themes on it. Derek Croft Derek talked about how, many years ago, his firm had a calendar made based on the Old Masters paintings. This interested him and he decided to ‘have- a- go’ at painting one of the images from this. Unfortunately, these early attempts were not to his liking and the painting was put away into storage, to be brought out on occasions to work on. He came across a book containing this particular artwork and after learning more about it, he had another attempt at reproducing it. This time he used acrylic, not oil paint. He felt that this was successful and so brought the finished piece to show us. Philip WestcottPhilip talked about his art education at Salford Grammar school and the excellent grounding this gave him. Moving on to College in Leeds to study Art and Design he found that the art projects set were based on skills already learnt and was disappointed that these sessions did not develop his knowledge and technique. He then showed his first figurative painting based on local people. One artist he liked was Edward Hopper, an American artist. He explained that whereas Hopper’s main focus was on isolation in his work, Philip focused on the interaction between people. To do these paintings, he sketched the figures out in a yellow watercolour pencil and then tidied them up with a brown pencil. Finally, the outlines were drawn in waterproof ink. Before stretching, the paper was soaked, and the pencil washed away leaving the ink drawing to be painted in acrylic. His other painting was one of his landscapes painted in oils with a palette knife during one long session. Watercolour studies as well as photographs are used for references. These scenes tend to focus on an isolated area rather than a large vista. Tim WardTim was born in Salford and when looking at his work as whole, he realized that his themes throughout often focused on reflections, water and cats! When starting out he bought pastels and started to paint images of animals. He also used watercolours, but often returned to pastels. Tim then showed us a watercolour painting of Venice he had completed. Looking for a way to learn more about art, he joined Salford Art Club and was inspired by the other members and the materials they were using. Other paintings shown included a pastel of Broughton Park, a favourite place of his to visit, as well as a watercolour of Lake Garda and one of the Lake District. He is very much into pastels as they have a very tactile feel to them. At one stage he decided to re- learn how to paint in oils and began by painted waves. His recent painting was of a tiger looking at a monkey, which included his theme of reflections. His final piece, on show, was a return to pastels but this time using pan pastels with a painting of a lighthouse. Robert WatsonRobert always had an interest in art and achieved an O' Level in it. He showed a talent for pencil portraits and continues to do these from high quality photo books, improving his skill over the years. He worked for Wigan council and was often asked to do sketches by other members of the staff featuring their children or animals. As life progressed, there was less time to pursue his interest in art, and it wasn’t until he retired that he started to draw again. Joining Anthony Barrow’s class, he was introduced to colour, but was still working from photographs. Needing more inspiration, he joined Salford Art Club where he could draw from life, as he believed he could capture more of the soul of the sitter. His artwork has moved on and he feels that his work has improved. He finished by stating that he enjoys working from life now! An enjoyable session that will hopefully encourage other members to participate in a future session. Thank you to David for organizing this.
#salfordartclub #mikerobinson #salfordmuseumandartgalleryMike introduced himself and explained how he started being interested in the arts by doing cartoons whilst working in South Africa. The present style, he would be explaining today, he had developed over the last ten years. With this work he mainly works in black ink, although colour is sometimes added. He started with this technique whilst on a sixth month break from work, using stencils and a French curve to get his outlines which he slowly fills in with intricate patterns. He often carries his small pieces taped to place mats around with him to work on when he gets a spare moment. At this stage, he handed out a booklet he has started to put together which showed more examples of his work as well as small templates for our members to use if they wished. Telling us he works from the top left corner, 'tumbling' his drawing downwards to the bottom right corner so as not to smudge his ink, (Hence the name for his work) He has finished ten books of his work and is now working on his eleventh. Below are some pages from the help sheets to give us ideas as we started to do our own work. Members work from the daySusan introduced herself to the group and gave a brief talk about herself and her artwork. She enjoys painting flowers and started by reading a poem from a book she is working on about her artwork. After showing a couple of her finished paintings she started work on her demonstration piece. This was on a canvas, on the theme Spring. It was on a recycled canvas and needed an undercoat of mainly white acrylic with a few added subtle colours. This background would become part of the final painting. Using a sponge she blended in this underpainting. Paint was then applied with a palette knife and again smoothened with a sponge in areas. Roots, grasses and stems were then added, starting at the bottom of the canvas. She continued to work all over the areas, mixing the colours on the canvas, achieving a sense of movement. As she progressed paint was applied and areas removed as necessary. This would continue until the work needed to be left a few days before it would be retuned to for extra work to be done where necessary. At this stage several members of the group started work on their own interpretations of the floral theme and we are hoping to continue with this theme next week. Members interpretations of the floral theme.Susan demonstrated an interesting way of working and I’m sure members learnt a lot from this and will be able to use these techniques on their own work in future.
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