Workshops and Demonstrations by Professional Artists
Professional artists are invited to give a art demonstration and mentoring session on a bimonthly basis to support the development of skills in the group.
Mellissa Read-Devine
Mellissa ran a plein air session. She explained the best 'system' for a palette box for managing the outdoors and weather and then took the group across the playing fields to a waterfall area.
She demonstrated a great use of brush techniques with the one brush and how to great depth in a painting.
Michael Herron
Michael began with a saying ‘ A confident bad mark is better than a good tight mark’. He began painting using a photo as a reference putting thin dark washes down in big sections first and then thicker lighter colours in a criss-cross 90 degree fashion. A hake brush was used to brush over colours.
Other Artists Workshops
Daphne Flax
Anna-Carien Goosen
Jan Cristaudo
Daphne in a workshop did a still-life exercise, covering all the basics from sketching on paper with drawing boards, composition, tonal work, and preparing canvas with different types of gesso, using a reduced colour palette and glazes. She brought along some interesting natural objects as a stimulus. Her preferred colours for tonal painting were burnt umber, sienna, indigo, ultramarine and white either with watercolour, acrylic or oil paints. In a following session Daphne gave a good talk on “ What makes a good painting “ and had artists bring in their unresolved paintings for mentoring and gave a demo on using palette knifes.
Jan Cristaudo
Anna-Carien Goosen
Jan Cristaudo
Jan is very much an abstract artist. She asked the group to bring in a photo reference of a landscape as a starting point. She very much uses colour to express a subject and first started with acrylics and then later uses oils. It was important keeping with the 'fat over thin', that is oils can't be painted over by acrylics for the longevity of a painting. She recommended 300gm paper for using gouche paints and with any dark colour adding a colour to white rather than white to a colour eg Burnt Umber.
Anna-Carien Goosen
Anna-Carien Goosen
Anna-Carien Goosen
Anna-Carien is an accomplished figurative artist and enjoys painting in oils over many layers. She has run evening classes at PPACCI on watercolours and portraiture. In the day workshops she mentored the group and provided individual assistance gently picking up what is needed in an artist's work whether a compositional fix or more a tonal range or glaze to highlight areas and more.
Fran Connelly
Debbie Mackinnon
Anna-Carien Goosen
Fran did a well-guided exercise in painting seascapes beginning with a good tip to measure and tape the canvas to get the horizon level. For the sea the colours recommended were Hookers Green, Paynes Grey, White, Phth Blue and Cerulean Blue. For the sky she recommended an underpainting of orange with Cerulean Blue, White and Burnt Sienna. A Gerhard Richter 'Seascape' painting was used as a reference
Anne Scott
Debbie Mackinnon
Debbie Mackinnon
Anne brought in a collection of coloured and patterned papers and lots of examples on the use of collage. The group took on the exercise to create a collage of a landscape which perhaps later could be used as a base for an abstract painting. It allowed for 'no part of the painting to be bland or subordinate'. She recommended the use of Mod Podge (Matt) glue. She finished the session with a excellent show of her travel sketch books.
Debbie Mackinnon
Debbie Mackinnon
Debbie Mackinnon
Debbie gave a excellent exercise in appreciating the use of complementary colours. She had the group do tonal exercises mixing colours of red and green together, blue and orange together and yellow and purple together. She gave a demo on using a paint in a medium to give a glaze over a painting to unify sections more.