​'Remembrance Art 'Auction' SALFORD'
Good Day, as we approach Remembrance weekend we have been donated 9 paintings / drawings from Salford Art Club (based out of Salford Art Gallery/Museum) to be 'auctioned' and the monies will go towards local chrarities/groups identified by the Eccles Remembrance Event Group. On this occasion it will be Broughton House as the main benefactor.
We 'open' our auction at 09:00 Sunday 6 November, and will 'close' it on 12:00 midday Monday 14 November, 2022.
Now this is our first 'Remembrance Auction' so we are testing the water really. We also have a another first (for many years) in that we have our 'Eccles Remembrance Concert' at St Mary's (Eccles Parish) Church (in the centre of Eccles) starting at 7pm Friday 11 November 2022 (poster attached below).
So, if you would like to 'bid' for any of the Art Work then please put a note on the page with the picture you would like.
* Bidding starts at £10 for each piece*.
Our sincere thanks go to Philip WESTCOTT and the Salford Art Group for their very kind donation (other work may be added in the next day or so)
Many thanks to everyone for your ongoing support for Remembrance.
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Kind Regards : Graham WALKER : Eccles Remembrance Event Group

The club managed to raise 315 pounds from the sale of donated paintings. The happy auction winners shown above with their paintings.

Another well attended event with members old and new enjoying each others company. The setting was excellent and it's success reflected the successes of the club over the past year.

In his talk, David mentioned our Salford Art Gallery exhibition, which displayed the high standard art work of our club. There was an  increase in  attendance as well an improvement in our sales.
 It seems a shame that the exhibition will only be on alternate years in future,.

After an enjoyable meal, the raffle provided lots of excellent prizes and there were many smiling faces from the lucky winners.

Finally, many thanks to Moira for the hard work in organising the event.

Another well attended party and lots of food to eat. Two excellent quizzes  and lots of good conversation. What more can you ask for?

Pleasing to see Salford Art Club represented by several members work at this event. In it's tenth year, this exhibition for charity, has raised over a hundred thousand pounds and enabled the Bury Hospice to have extra beds and staff. 

The paintings were chosen by Gerry Halpin MBE, the art director and his team and what an excellent job they have made of it. I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the work on show. The staff putting the exhibition up in such a short time must have worked very hard and the support from the public on the night was impressive. 

Art club members represented were Lynn Kirkley, David Norris, Dorothy Pointon and myself. On the night, I was pleased to be presented with the Ken Bromley Award for my painting, Autumn Lightoaks Park,  and look forward to buying more art materials with the voucher. 

This is a worthwhile event for a good cause and one that members are welcome to contribute to in future.

Philip Westcott

A very good turn out for the annual "Christmas Meal". Members and friends joined together to celebrate another fantastic year of the club. 

After an enjoyable meal and good conversation on the table, it was time for David's speech. After the problems the year before, it was good to be back in the Gallery with some excellent evenings. The club continues to flourish with several new members adding to the ethos of the club.  

After the speech, the quiz papers were marked with two tables sharing the prizes.  Next, was the raffle. As is the case every year, there was a good number of prizes, so there was a good chance of winning something. Considering the amount of art materials on show, the Teddy Bear was the first to go. 

​Another very enjoyable evening and many thanks to Moira for organising it.

Another excellent turn out for the annual "Christmas Meal". Members and friends joined together to celebrate another fantastic year of the club. 

​After one or two problems towards the end of the year, due to building work at Salford Art Gallery, it has been good to start of the New Year; back there with some excellent demonstrations already.
​As David said in his speech, "Painting can be a lonely occupation and meetings can be rather quiet as members concentrate on their work. Occasions such as this, as well as the tea breaks, give us a chance to talk about our art and to generally socialise."
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​After the meal, David's annual speech and the quiz results, it was onto the raffle! With so many prizes surely there must be an even contribution to each table. This proved not to be the case as we waited in vain on ours for the first number to be called out. Thankfully, to loud applause, we eventually had a winner!
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​Another very enjoyable evening and many thanks to Moira for organising it.
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A long term member Pat Bellotti sadly passed away on the 4th December.
This is just to provide the final schedule for the funeral for Pat Bellotti.
Tues 12 Dec at Blackley Cemetery for a service at 12.30
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We are scheduled to meet at one of the chapels at Blackley Cemetery. Since Pat wanted a green burial, I think it's the chapel nearest to the Woodlands burial site.  If I am wrong I will let you know, but the plan is to assemble at 12:30pm for a half hour remembrance with some of Pat's favorite piano music by Debussy and some words from myself and Matthew and some of Mum's beautiful and very moving poetry. We only have the chapel for half an hour. So, if anyone wishes to say a few words in the chapel, please let us know ASAP. We'll work out the detailed plan around this.
 
Then we proceed to the Woodlands burial site at 1pm for the actual burial. We'll speak a few more words and poetry at the burial. Again, if you wish to say something let us know, though of course if anyone feels moved to speak at the plot I think we will have more time for impromptu remembrances and stories so don't worry if you're not sure until the moment.
 
What we really need from everyone who plans to attend is an RSVP so we know how many there will be:
1 At the chapel
2 At the burial
3 Coming to the house afterwards to pick up a keepsake; this one's especially important as Pat's house isn't large and we may need to make an arrangement for some folks to go to Slattery's nearby for a bit.
 
I also just want to thank everyone who has reached out in email, online or by phone for all your kind words and to apologize if we haven't been good at responding, but we're a bit overwhelmed with things to sort out. We do hope to make up for that when we see you.
 
Many thanks,
 
Victoria and Matthew
​

Over the last couple of Wednesday evenings (2 x 2 hours) I ran a demonstration and workshop on Urban Sketching at Salford Art Club, held in Salford Museum and Art Gallery.  I am also a member of this art club so for some reason (I think it always is when you know people!) it was a little bit more nerve wracking than usual.  However, members made me feel very at ease and we had a couple of great sessions.  Fortunately, on the first session earlier in July, the weather was great, enabling me to demonstrate my colour-first technique outside and also set the group off with some thumbnail sketching practice around the outside of the gallery as a way of capturing snapshot views of the place before settling on an overall view.  Unfortunately we had to run the second session inside the gallery but with plenty to sketch (and an example to hand of how this compares with the outside situation), this wasn’t too much of an imposition!  The main focus of both sessions was capturing the essence of the place using relatively quick techniques and creating depth in the drawing (without necessarily focusing on perspective only).  Members seemed to really enjoy the sessions and engage with the approach of drawing from life.  For me, with an interest in reportage illustration as well as urban sketching, this is the focus of all of my work.
​The Demonstration
The  demonstration and workshop was based around some top tips for urban sketching.  I also run workshops about urban sketching and drawing from life so the tips are my starter for 10 if you like!  Composition, proportion and measurement and creating a depth in the drawing were the main talking points as I demonstrated my Colour-First approach.  I used an A3 board with the paint palette clipped to the side but this isn’t the easiest of sizes to hold in this way (My usual urban sketches are about A4 size unless I am working to commission).  However, I wanted to show how I organise myself when creating this type of sketch.

​The process as shown above is as follows:

• Set up and stand directly in front of your subject matter with everything you need to hand.  You need to be able to directly look easily at the subject as you are not going to measure anything at this stage.
• Place the colour loosely just taking note of overall shapes, allow colours to bleed together (don’t work together with the brush), use a limited palette 3-4 colours at most.
• Working from big shapes to detail, use a fountain pen or fine liner to draw the subject of interest.  Note you need to make sure the paint is fairly dry otherwise the ink will bleed.  However, this can give a nice effect as long as its managed! For the background, you need to have a finer line weight (sometimes I use a watercolour pencil rather than a pen to achieve the ‘distance’ effect).
• Add darks (taking care to highlight shadows, separate planes etc, taking care to ensure the foreground is treated accordingly (heavier line weight).

The discussion about creating depth in a drawing focused on identifying Foreground, Middleground and Background and ensuring that each of these is readable through the way they are presented in the drawing.  Darker more detailed elements in the foreground (perhaps using red or a brighter advancing colour to bring them forward), the main focus of interest in the middle ground and less detailed, and finer line weight and paler elements in the background (perhaps using more receding colours like blues).

​(With Thanks to Tony Easom of Salford Art Club for all the group photos from the evening sessions)
Materials used focused on discussions about the fountain pens I use (Lamy Safari with extra fine nib (main line work); Carbon Platinum pen (for finer lines) and Kuretake Brush pen (for the darks and foreground).   Watercolours are a mix of Windsor and Newton and Daniel Smith tube paints decanted into pans.
Thumbnails
After the demonstration (and a well deserved break for everyone-although I have to admit to talking about sketchbooks and sharing some of my work during the break!) I briefly outlined the idea of quick thumbnails (15 minutes or less for each image) as a way of capturing a place in multiple images (you divide a sheet or page into e.g. quarters for this).  This is useful as a way of identifying a preferred composition so that you can then move onto a more detailed sketch of one of the views.  It is also useful when you are visiting a place and perhaps want to create more of an overview of a place than one scene will do.  These can then be selectively coloured or worked up if required.  The thumbnails below were done around the outside of the gallery prior to the session as a way of showing the approach.  The group then had a practice at creating thumbnails before finishing the first session.

​Colour-first inside the Gallery
On the second week we weren’t as lucky with the weather but no matter!  There was plenty to keep everyone busy and we chose a spot in-between galleries with some wonderful layering!  Here’s my demo. piece (colour first) as an aide memoire, before the group got started on their own colour-first pieces.

​As you can see from the images below, everyone really got stuck into giving colour first a go, even though it takes a while to really get your head around the process, especially with respect to abstract colour

​With thanks to everyone who came along to this two week demonstration and workshop and I do hope members will carry on sketching and capturing the world around them from life.  There really is nothing better!  I received some great feedback too and I’m already looking forward to more demonstrations and workshops I have booked in the coming months.  Watch this space for updates and results!

This is taken from Liz's website ​http://lizsscribbles.com/my-demonstration-and-workshop-at-salford-art-club/​
​I would like to thank her for her time and help given to members and look forward to seeing more of her work.