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 :).

Art Materials Live – Birmingham NEC

Art Materials Live on Friday the 6th of November was worth the trip. It was interesting because the event was combined with craft and gift items, which seemed larger than the art section. Although small, the Art section took most of my time and I participated in four hands on art demonstrations.

The SAA had the biggest area with two sections for art talks, two for hands on demos and the middle area for products sales. It was a much smaller version of ‘All About Art’ in London.

At this event, I painted a snow scene in watercolour with Matthew Palmer, then of course bought two lift out brushes.  Next was a session on pastel painting with Jeremy Ford where I proceeded to buy a pastel kit :).

Linda Matthews had her own small demonstration area and I tried my hand at using permanent ink and watercolour; it was my favourite painting of the day. Linda has a variety of classes teaching different mediums both in the U.K. and abroad.  She is very easy going and personable and I want to take a painting class with her; hopefully sometime this summer.

Finally, the Chinese Brush Painting Society gave a small hands on lesson; it was very useful to learn how to  mix the ink, hold the brush and remove excess liquid properly. We also were able to practice making marks on cartridge paper and just for fun how to draw a cat and mouse. I was really impressed and bought a brush at the stall and ink from the SAA.

‘3xWeekly’ A Pastel Dog Image from PMP

Didn’t quite make three acrylic pet paintings this week, but did do a pastel dog portrait. After watching a great YouTube video explaining the different pastels, I decided to buy a set of 64 Inscribe soft pastels. A dog image seemed like the perfect subject to practice with, especially since I didn't have time to do a painting. The results were pretty good, even though there could have been more refinement.  I’d like to take a course working with pastels to learn how to get a cleaner image.

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.