Seasons Greetings!

Thank you to everyone who has been part of Art Circle this year; to the helpful & knowledgeable staff of St Annes Library who make the library the warm and friendly place it is; to all Art Circle participants who have listened to me with patience, have had a go with all my barmy approaches and have produced some amazing work.  

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in any of my projects and workshops this year (I still have a giant duck perched on a 7 foot pole in my very modest house!) - see below and thank you to everyone who has commissioned my work.

Thank you too to my arty friends and colleagues.  It's a treat when we get together. 

Finally, thank you to those who read this blog wherever you are.  I can see by the statistics some of you are on the other side of the world.

I wish you all a peaceful and Happy Christmas and all good things for 2020. 

trees & 'spoons

We started with a quick look at the colour wheel and the trees of van Gogh and Hockney.  

After determining the type of tree to make we used artists quality, coloured pencils to bring them to life.  Some trees were put into a context to give the drawing a narrative.  Some had magic corners used on them to tweak composition.  The lovely results are below.  

Notice the broken fence panel in one - brilliant!

Lovely mark making everyone - well done! 

Once finished, we headed off to Wetherspoons where we were joined by others, for our Christmas lunch.  What an excellent way to spend a day - thank you everyone.   

Arthur:  notice the lovely hits of colour within the tree

Margaret

Dorothy

Monica:  (Exactly what was needed - love it!)

John

Ian

Nag Stone & clay love stone

as part of a Big Drawing Session in Preston.  

Thank you Bernie for organising and everyone for your company.  We even had a brass band playing Christmas tunes and carol singers nearby.  Not to mention fish bites & chips for dinner!

Lovely day - thank you. x

from a nag stone

  

from a clay love stone made in the summer, front & reverse

Thank you Kim Graham for two of the images. x

Nag Stones & compressed charcoal on A3

Working twice the size of last week and remembering some composition devices, we used compressed charcoal to be looser and more expressive.  

We looked at different ways of; 

• masking & keeping areas light
• holding the media & mark making
• drawing with an eraser
• removing excess charcoal
• fixing   

Brilliant - well done everyone one!

Christine:  demo page

Margaret

Arthur

John

Will

Nag Stones & Nancy Holt: white on black

Prompted by a collection of Nag Stones, pebbles with a hole through them, we looked at artwork using holes as an integral part of the work and how viewfinders, in particular the Claude Glass, have been used by artists.

The collected stones were drawn on to black paper using white pens and in some cases, developed further.  The wonderful results follow below.

Well done everyone - some very lovely drawings were made!

Nancy Holt:  Sun Tunnels 1973 - 76 Great Basin Utah

Nancy Holt:  views through a sand dune 1972 

Claude Glass

James Turrell:  Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Dorothy:  a triptych

Will:  putting an object through the hole

Ian

Ian

John

Arthur

Margaret:  These brought Barbara Hepworth to mind.

Barbara Hepworth

Monica

Monica

Christine:  demo page

Nag Stones from South Sea

card design 2: gold leaf & egg tempera

or... how to make a rather large mess in a relatively small space.

Notice there are no images of making egg tempera, my stickiness had peaked by then.  I didn't record some of the work made either - apologies.  However, lots of learning took place! 

Well done everyone! 

[no Art Circle next week - we're back on 28 November]

Margaret

Will

Dorothy

Monica

Christine

card design 1: birds & boats

Developing the image using different approaches and thinking how it might be reproduced for more than one card.

Considering... subject, scale, colour & Christmasifying.

Dorothy

Monica

Will

Christine

gorgeous gourds...

Thank you Mike for remembering when I didn't!

We had a beautiful array of Lytham grown and dried gourds as the centre piece of our work.  The shapes, textures and colours were stunning.  

The beautiful coloured drawings are below.

Very well done everyone...

Mike

Dorothy

Will

Monica

Christine with demo