Oil Pastels with The Seasons Art Class - Pear & Cow

In my Monday The Seasons Art Class we spent the first three weeks learning to draw with pencil then the next two weeks learning to use oil pastels.

The fourth week was about the different marks you can make with oil pastels and then a tutorial on drawing a simple object. With a pear in front of me for inspiration, I drew in oil pastel on A3 mixed media paper. The pear came out looking pretty nice and I enhanced it a little in photo shop to make it look even better.

The next week was about drawing simple shapes to form animals. For my subject, I drew a cow from a photo onto A3 mixed media paper. My cow came out really nice with minimal effort. Oil pastels are pretty awesome and I want to experiment with them some more :).

Keep Painting and Artistic Syle Will Come

After suffering an artistic crisis of confidence over the last few days I decided to go to my favourite place…You Tube. Lisa from Lachri Fine Arts showed up in my search along with someone I wasn’t familiar with, Shoo Rainer.

Lisa's www.youtube.com/watch?v=INGlR2I5NjE main points were:
Your style will come in time.  Just keep working and doing what you love… one day you will have that ah ha moment. But remember when you do find your style, don’t be complacent because you should always strive to be better.

In his video www.youtube.com/watch?v=9umpEl-OlQw
Mr. Rayner described artists in the past who would work for 7 years under a master artist. Then, if lucky, they would go on a journey and visit other places and artists, all while producing new work.

Today we have YouTube, books, t.v., internet and libraries, which makes learning easy. Just keep drawing/painting and know who you are; become an expert in what medium you choose. Paint with passion and drive… your style will come. There will be hurdles but you need to keep working. People who do survive and become famous also have doubt but they keep pushing to keep moving forward practicing and honing their skills.

Both vloggers had great points. It's worth watching the videos yourself because you might take away something more than what I summarized. After watching these videos, I went down to my art table and started painting. Hope this helps and forget dancing…KEEP PAINTING!!!

Life Drawing at Ericaceous Art

Today in my drawing class at Ericaceous Art we concentrated on tone. It has taken me four weeks to have a better understanding of how to draw from a live model. I thought it would be the same as drawing a still life... but it’s definitely not. You have to overcome the fact that you are looking at a nude person and it’s o.k. to stare. Also, live people are larger than objects on a table so it’s a size thing. With a live model you have to draw smaller or move your easel to a position so you can draw what you see. I hope that this is the turning point for me and that I continue to get better.

‘3xWeekly’ My Friend's Dog - Totoro

My friend posted a picture of her dog Totoro on Facebook and he is absolutely adorable. Hopefully Lynn will think I’ve done an o.k. likeness. I made a few sketches in graphite, then a quick drawing in soft pastel, then another in oil pastel with colour. Although there was a lot of initial prep work, this painting didn’t come easily.

The final portrait was done in acrylic on 8” x 10” board without tracing. There are a lot of things that could be fixed on this painting, but I'm never going to get 3 a week done at this rate.

In hindsight, it might have been better to do a larger painting with less detail…maybe next time.

Kids for Kids Charity Day with Artist Karen Pearson

Karen Pearson, an artist/teacher, was supporting a Kids for Kids charity by having a painting and sketching event. The day was held in Dorking and hosted by Juliet and Mark; their garden was open to artists of all abilities using any paint medium. The cost of the day was £15; a sum that would buy 3 hens and a rooster or a mosquito net to protect children from malaria. The charity founded by Patricia Parker MBE had a goal for the day to raise enough money to also buy goats which could be bred to provide milk and meat for hungry families.

The event was fantastic; you can tell a lot of preparation went into planning it and the weather was beautiful. Karen gave a short tutorial on drawing and painting en plein air; she also gave everyone a list of ideas with compositions organized throughout the garden.

The dog in the picture was not part of the arrangement but I couldn’t resist. Maybe I'll paint her in a '3xWeekly' pet portrait.

The composition I chose to draw was popular, so I also decided to draw an artist while she was drawing the shed. Karen and another artist, whose name I don’t remember…sorry, came around to help with any questions or in my case some drawing advice.  Later, I drew another setting, an apple tree with a wheel barrel; didn't like it but then proceeded to draw the person drawing the apple tree.  These drawings weren't very good and I'm not going to show them. The gardens were so beautiful I spent a lot of time walking around, taking in the scenery and talking with other artists.  It was a gorgeous day and if there is ever another opportunity to do this... I will in a heartbeat.

At home, I decided to tackle a drawing with watercolour pencils from a picture I took on the day. I really like pencils, you have so much more control than with a paint brush.

Top 5 Art Blogs

Lachri - If you’ve been reading my blog regularly you'll know I’m constantly writing about Lachri Fine Art. I absolutely admire Lisa who tirelessly draws, paints, teaches, critiques and helps with social media tips. Lisa must be working 24/7 because she has created copious amounts of beautiful artwork while keeping up to date with practically every social media platform... how does she get it all done? Along with her blog, you can subscribe to Lisa’s YouTube channel (Top 5 YouTube Subscriptions) and lets face it, sometimes it's easier to watch a video rather than read.

Carol Marine's Painting a Day is another favourite of mine. As I’ve said before…her book changed my attitude towards drawing and painting. Carol practices what she preaches and almost every day you can view her blog and see another wonderful painting. Her blog is a tremendous inspiration, as is her book ‘Daily Painting’ (Top 5 Art Books) and her 'DailyPaintWorks' website (Top 5 Websites).

Kimberley Santini's blog inspired me to paint dogs for my '3xWeekly' challenge. A painting of a dog painted by Kimberly was featured in Carol’s book ‘Daily Painting’ and it was absolutely gorgeous. When she started, in 2006, her dogs didn’t look as good as they do today. So, if Kimberly could improve...I could too. Thank you Kimberly for the inspiration :)

My Art Journal by Diane Salter is mostly for art journal craft and not painting but I love her beautiful artwork. Her colours are fabulous and imagination boundless. It’s worth reading just for the fun of it; even though she only posts around twice a month, it’s a nice distraction from my own artwork.

Art Biz Blog by Alyson Stanfield is for those interested in blogging and needing some help. Having not read most of the posts, I'm saving this blog for a rainy day. If anyone has any thoughts on Art Biz Blog blog, please let me know.

Joining the Society for All Artists (SAA)

While at ‘All About Art’ I joined the SAA; partly because I’ve been meaning to and partly because they had an extra bag of goodies if you joined on the day.

So what did I get?
4 water colour & 2 acrylic practice sheets of paper
1 picture finder
2 round, 1 flat & 1 filbert brush
1 fold-able water pot
1 of each SAA acrylic, oil & watercolour paint in French Ultramarine

With the standard membership I received:
'How to Paint–Drawing Techniques' by Quentin de la Bedoyere
Paint your own postcards
Membership card
SAA window sticker
SAA Catalogue

I started to read the Drawing book but haven’t tried any of the free product yet.
Some of the membership benefits I like are:
Free Paint magazine every two months.
Free shipping on art materials... once you learn to navigate the SAA website, ordering is easy and products come quickly & well packed, which is pretty nice.
Free entry to competitions... someday, hopefully soon.
Insurance at exhibitions... a standard membership is limited to £500 but only in the UK & Ireland. Can't wait for the day when I will have artwork worthy of an exhibition… fingers crossed.

All in all, not bad for £29.50 with direct debit…there are other art websites that give free shipping with membership but so far this one is my favourite.

SAA ‘All About Art’ Event, Islington

Went to London for the for the SAA’s ‘All About Art’ event on Friday, 23rd July. Didn’t really know what to expect and was initially disappointed. It was smaller than I imagined and products were dispersed all over the place. It was confusing because items were divided by paint type but some product had separate manufacturer stands. Wasted a lot of time looking for Atelier paints; they didn’t have the ones in the SAA catalog so that was a bummer.

After being late and getting distracted by the products, all of the workshops were already running. But a useful demonstration in making mounts was just starting. We got to take our double mount home with us, which was a big plus. The mount cutting machine, however, was way too expensive.

After the mount demo, there was an opening for a Marilyn Allis workshop in acrylics.  Luckily, I was there just in time...you have to be fast or lucky to get a seat.  This was a fantastic workshop and I was hooked; planning on taking a Marilyn Allis class as soon as possible. After that workshop, unfortunately, it was lunch and there were no more workshops till after the break.

With seating on the upper level, I bought a sandwich and sat down to plan my assault on the next three workshops. A lot of people brought their lunch and I found a table with a nice group of people from Gillingham. They had so much food, I don’t think they ate half of it. Anyway, one of the ladies told me the drawing session with Anita Pounder was good so that was on my short list.

Earlier, I spotted a great workshop on Pastels, but it was no longer running. By luck there were seats available for the wild animal pastels on velour with Vic Bearcroft. It was amazingly simple to create this gorilla; Vic gave us a template to trace and walked us through the steps in a slow and humorous manner. The drawing didn’t look like much up close, but from farther away the whole thing came together. Couldn't have done this on my own and would someday like to learn more about velour and pastel.

The Ink & Acrylic class looked different in the afternoon session, but I sat down to it anyway. There was a seat and if I spent too much time looking for another workshop I’d be SOL. The technique was interesting, the image…not so much. The inks were used like watercolour so it was a little familiar to me. The class seemed rushed and I was forever asking the person next to me what steps I missed, he by the way, had no clue. At home, my friend said she liked the painting except for the top.  The mountains, trees and reflection in the water look odd... so maybe some cropping is in order here.

My last workshop was drawing from a live model with instructor Anita Pounder; it was a great opportunity to draw a live subject and the techniques were interesting as well. In the first exercise, we drew with our left hand... it came out better than expected. The second method was drawing light on dark paper; this seemed even harder than working with my left hand. The third exercise was dark shapes on light paper. Might have been getting tired because it was the end of the day and the worst drawing of the three.

All in all the day was fantastic; with a £5 voucher I found myself buying £22 of art things I didn’t really need. If I wasn’t going away for the weekend I would have gone again on Saturday. Did anyone go on the weekend? Please let me know how crowded it was on Sat & Sun so I can plan for next year.

Art Class w/ Wendy - Pen & Coloured Pencil vs. Watercolour Pencil & Pastel

In this class we worked with colour pencils but most of my time was spent drawing the butterfly...should have traced it. Indelible ink pen was used for the dark bits and the colour pencils for the rest. I couldn't get the colours dark enough so this was one of my least favourite assignments... but it did give me ideas.

At home, I had a play with A2 watercolour paper, my watercolour pencils and a few oil pastels. Watercolour pencils, for me are nicer than colour pencils. With watercolour pencils you can wet the drawing and get all kinds of cool effects. Pastels were used to add more layers to the drawings; it was nice because those marks weren't affected when wet. I liked the overall effect much better and probably won’t be using colour pencils in the near future.

The watercolour pencils and oil pastels are a lot of fun and I’m going to try and use them more.

Drawing & Painting Class – Tone and Edges w/ Joel

In Joel’s next drawing & painting class we worked on tone and mark making techniques. Starting with the same exercise from last trimester's class, we then chose a type of mark and used it to draw a rose from a photo. The decision on the mark type was made before we were told what we were drawing. Of course, I chose a difficult circular motion... as you can imagine my drawing didn’t go well. 

Didn’t finish the rose but instead started to draw the bust of a woman… this portraiture stuff might be for me. Creativity can be fickle, a few weeks of torture and then voila.

In the following class we were to concentrate on edges. Joel likes to paint people so there were mainly street scenes in his photographs. I really liked my choice and later found out that Joel painted the same photo in colour.   Don’t know if it’s the charcoal and erasing technique or the subject matter, but I loved this exercise.

It would be ironic if I wind up drawing people as an artist; when taking photographs, I’m always waiting for folks to move out of the way.

Art Class w/ Wendy – Pencil Drawing & Landscapes

Instead of one class, now I'm taking two; Drawing & Painting with Joel and another art class with Wendy. With all my drawing practice I thought there would be improvement. But, in Wendy’s first drawing class, after a very intense negative space exercise… I'm not so sure. Not going to post a picture it was so bad. The subject matter was hard but that’s no excuse. I also drew a chair, the same from last year, and couldn’t even say that was better.

Oh well... in her second class we drew a landscape in pencil from a photo. Even though it's not finished; it’s better that the debacle from the negative space class. It's Alnwick Castle, the subject the artists painted in ‘The Big Painting Challenge’ on SkyArts.

In the third class we did a tonal painting of a landscape; I chose a picture from Paint My Photo by Dave Webb. Tonal paintings are much easier for me; in a later class I painted a colour version of the same subject... what a disaster. Somehow matching colours correctly to photos is not my forte; not sure if it’s the watercolour paint or me. I don't think I'm colour blind, but there is definitely something wrong.

Drawing & Painting Class - Line, Shape & Form w/ Joel

My last acrylic painting class at Surrey Adult Learning Centre was a success but the next class was cancelled due to low enrollment; so instead I took Drawing & Painting with the same instructor, Joel Wareing. This class turned out to be better suited to my needs because we had a lot more instruction on drawing. The first three sessions were dedicated to Line, Shape and Form.

In the first lesson, we did self-portraits concentrating on drawing lines combined with using the cross hatching technique. Mine came out much better than expected and even though I wasn’t originally interested in portraiture, it might suit me. I didn’t come out looking like a great beauty but the portrait closely resembled me. Now I know why self-portraits often look so sombre… it’s because the artist is trying to draw and concentrate.

For the second assignment we looked at breaking down objects into their basic shapes; we had multiple still life set ups to choose from. Still life drawing is very difficult for me. I can’t see a good composition and have a hard time fitting everything on a page when I do.

After class I did a few drawings at home; you would think it gets easier over time, but I didn’t find that. This one was the best out of about four...

Form was our topic for the third class and again we had still life settings to choose from. Form as described in ‘Draw like the Masters’ by Barrington Barber is “work to show us that two-dimensional marks can be read as three-dimensional things occupying space”. We used charcoal for the background and an eraser to build form, this was easier than drawing with graphite on white paper. Of course I had trouble with composition, but this time drawing a violin was fun. It’s such an awesome shape but very hard to draw; I would love to have a violin to observe and draw at home.

Acrylic Painting Class – Life Drawing with Joel

Instead of acrylic painting Joel was going to get a live model for us to draw; but Surrey Adult Education wouldn’t let him because it wasn’t outlined in his syllabus. So Joel modeled for us, but it was hard for him to come around and help. Not really proud and a little embarrassed to show my drawing; but here’s hoping there will be MUCH improvement next time.

We did warm ups before the live model and these were difficult for me, so in true AMS fashion, I bought a book. ‘Drawing Like the Masters - Be Inspired by Great Artists of the Past’ by Barrington Barber has many illustrations from famous artists and some of mine are below.

The female and male face's are by Leonardo da Vinci, the female nude by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and the male nude by Raphael Sanzio.

I would recommend this book, which outlines different types of drawing; Line, Tone, Texture, Form, Space and more chapters on style & composition. After writing this blog it’s clear I need to read the book in full and not just copy the drawings. Books are fantastic learning tools, but there is nothing like taking a class, so my next step is to look for a life drawing class.

Two Great Drawing Books

Wendy recommended two drawing books ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards and ‘The Fundamentals of Drawing a Complete Professional Course for Artists’ by Barrington Barber.

‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ is for people who are timid about drawing and explains how adults who are not artists tend to draw. There are plenty of amazing experiments that are worth trying; I recommend reading it. The exercise on drawing upside down and not thinking was cool; as was the contour drawing.

Drawing on the picture plane is also a great lesson and fun to do.

‘The Fundamentals of Drawing’ is the type of book that you can use as a reference guide; it has exercises on lines and circles, 3d shapes,ellipses, basic objects, methods of shading, human figure: proportions and more.

Both books are worth owning, but my lazy self needs the structure of a class to force me to practice. Also, it's nice to have the critique of an instructor and to be around like minded people.

Drawing with Wendy

While surfing the net for art classes close to home I found ‘The Society for All Artists’ www.saa.co.uk. Click on tuition in the menu bar then search by map; enter a post code and a list of classes nearby comes up.

One class that looked interesting was with Wendy Crozier in Dorking, so I signed up. The class was for a ten week period and began with drawing, which was scary but nothing endeavoured is nothing learned. To my delight the drawing part was better than expected. In the next four classes we drew fruits, negative spaces, loo rolls, eyes, noses, mouths and faces. All you need for this is a kneadable eraser and HB, 2B, 4B & 9B pencils; for my first attempt ever… it was fantastic!

Guess who the famous actor is in the drawing?