A pleasant evening spent swapping places as members painted images of each other.

​Good to see some new members getting to grips with this. Some of them never having done it before and others returning to painting after a break.
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​No prizes for guessing the members portrait!

After an interesting demonstration by Anthony Smart last week, it was the members turns to paint a still life this week.

There were various tables set up and we were able to pick a still life to paint.
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​Above are some of the resulting paintings.

​Again it was good to see several new members.

Anthony started by discussing  how he sets up  a still life and then shared with us how he painted a couple of his own pieces of work..

​He started by sketching out his composition using a mixture of Umber and Ultramarine. Standing away from the canvas enabled him to get the shapes to be quite big as well as starting to get the relationship between the objects.

​In this instance the striped cloth would help to give a perspective to the painting.

​ When painting, he tries to use as few colours as possible, often only using Red, Yellow, Blue, Umber and White. The exception to this is when a specialist colour is needed for a particular object.

​When doing a still life he says it is important to remember where you are standing; even drawing around your feet as a reminder and to ensure you have the same viewpoint.

Working his way around the canvas he checks continually how the objects relate to each other. then  he proceeds to block in the shapes and adding shadows.

​He paints thinly at first and as things settle into place, the paint becomes thicker. He starts with a large brush and works with this as long as possible before progressing down in stages to finally using a small brush to add small details.

The  still life he demonstrated  provided a range of challenges as it included shiny surfaces and reflections.  The fabric, although appearing white, had several subtle colours within it.

​One interesting fact he mentioned was that although he doesn't work from photographs he sometimes likes to include a framed photograph as part of his composition, especially if it means something  to him.

​Unfortunately, due to time constraints, Anthony was unable to finish his piece of work.  It was a shame as It would have been interesting to see the final stages leading to the completion of the work.

​This demonstration was another fascinating insight into how an artist works and it should be interesting next week when members paint their own still life.