Multitasking artists

Marion and John exhibiting their exemplary brushwork last night.

Illustrated lecture on composition by Jean Napier

Juliet welcomed Jean as our first visiting speaker of the year. Whilst we were waiting for the lecture proper to start at 7 pm, Jean played a slide show of wonderful images of puffins on Skomer.

She then dealt with the main principles of composition, starting with the Fibonacci series and the "rule of thirds". She used as examples some of her own photographs, and explained potential pitfalls to avoid.

Over refreshments we had a lively dialogue: Jean had brought in mounted examples of a range of her fine photographs, and we were asked to identify our favourite and least favourite images, and to explain our reasons. It was fascinating to see that the same image could be rated high and low by different members. The main reason for favouring a particular photo was that it chimed with happy memories of favourite places and themes.

Sylvia concluded the evening by delivering an enthusiastic vote of thanks.

New gallery

We're now loading some examples of our work on the new gallery pages. Just click on the "Gallery" tab above to see them.

Collage evening

Beryl started us off creating collages by showing us some of her work (one done in the '60s when she was tutored by the late Richard Hamilton), and then we got straight down to it. The meeting was so well attended there was hardly room to glue.

Next week we have a break from practical work – an illustrated lecture by the well-known photographer Jean Napier.

A stuck-up lot: some of group experimenting with glue and paper.
Thanks to Dot for the photo.

Full house for Sian

Last night there was a record turnout of 20 members (including two youngsters) for Sian's tutorial on Character drawing from the imagination. 

The first stage involved loosening up, and responding to the mark, by developing images from "squiggles". We then developed characterful faces and bodies from often eccentric shapes, divided into 4 by 2 crossing arcs.

Sian then showed how to put characters in a setting, and described arranging shapes within a frame to make a balanced composition. She circulated a wide range of illustrated books and images for us to analyse and take ideas from.

Next week we will be developing facial expressions, and working towards our final pieces. Eventually, we'll post some of the final images here.

Character drawing from the imagination, by Sian

I thought we could start the session with some basics on character drawing, by looking at some key artists in Disney in character development, Japanese Art and line work, followed by some fun games involving drawing characters to spark our imaginations up. Then we can move on to the principles of illustration and putting our characters into a scene, using our own individual style to our own advantage.



If you have a poem, story, children's tale, a sentence, a word, a concept or a picture that inspires you, that you think you would like to illustrate, then feel free to bring this along and once we have played some games and looked at the principles you could begin to work on your own interest. If you don't have anything in particular you would like to illustrate don't worry: I will bring lots of picture books and images with me to so we can look at them and be inspired.



Also Marian mentioned a lovely way of putting a book together, a way of folding the paper to make a little book so our ideas could also progress to this, either in this session or through into the next one!

Back to Skool

We are having our first session of the New Year this Thurs, 12 Jan. Sian will be mentoring the topic "Character Drawing". More info shortly.