I had a lovely visit to family in Hertfordshire and one highlight was accompanying my sister to Shardeloes Equestrian Centre, where she works as a freelance riding instructress. Due to clients still away over the Easter period she only had a few lessons to take and I welcomed the opportunity to take my sketchbook along for a session drawing horses and ponies from life!
 |
| A retired Shetland pony... |
 |
| Dozing in a stable... |
The selection of sketches shown illustrates how gestural sometimes these drawings need to be. Animals do not stay still! Sometimes a position will be taken up again and the study can continue, other times the pose will have to be abandoned and another sketch commenced. It is best to accept the nature of this type of work and adopt the spirit of enquiry. The drawings certainly have faults but overall contain an essence, a feeling of life. I love looking at artists' sketchbooks and I hope you enjoy this peek into mine. I would just to say a 'thank you' to the staff at Shardeloes for welcoming me.
The weekend before last I was part of an Open Day at Henderson Art and Framing. The idea was to invite people to come and see the studio, view some artwork, meet the tutors and hopefully get inspired to sign up to a class. We didn't really know what the response might be but Sue did a great job advertising the event and several current class members came along to support us and brought interested people with them.
 |
| Display of work for classes at Open Studio Event |
The day was a great success with plenty of visitors and some new people signed up for classes. Myself and the other two tutors commented on the buzzing atmosphere and felt the event was definitely worthwhile.
 |
| View 1 of workshop in progress |
 |
| View 2 of workshop in progress |
Finally, the Water Mixable Oils Workshop took place last Wednesday (see images above). I was pleased with how the day went and the participants were delightful and very industrious! It was a full day, and working step-by-step can sometimes be challenging as we all work at a slightly different pace - some need to work quicker than they would like and others have to slow down a bit. I hope that everyone went home with their 16 x 16" box canvas and felt that during the process of painting 'Agapanthus' they had learned some useful techniques and gleaned plenty of information about these products. As I provided polystyrene plates to use as palettes I made sure they all had some freshly squeezed pain,t in the limited palette of colours we had been using, so that there would be an opportunity to 'tweak' the work should they wish over the following day or so at home...
Whew, a whistle stop catch up of news - definitely need to post more often. Right, off to the studio this afternoon as time is running short to work on a drawing for the upcoming WNAA exhibition at the end of the month titled 'Drawing Attention' - the closing date for entries is rapidly approaching!
No comments:
Post a Comment
The internet is a great place to connect with like minded people - I would love to hear from you!