EVERYONE'S WORK - HAY'S GALLERIA etc. 19/05/15

What a cold and miserable day - I was thinking of you all!  Well done for sticking it out.
I've started off with Penny and Elizabeth put together, for reasons which will become clear.

PENNY :-  "Following your comments from last time I decided to spend some of my time trying to do gestural drawings of people that I might be able to incorporate into the paintings.  Very difficult!  Children especially just move too damn fast!  So have taken some snaps on my iPhone to work from as well.  

First drawing is taken sitting outside in the external “amphitheatre” looking at reflections on the outside of the building.  

Second and third drawings are people outside, seen from inside the building sitting on the ramp.

Fourth drawing is sitting on the 2nd floor viewing platform looking at reflections in the building. (Like last time.)"

Penny no. 1

Penny no. 2

Penny no. 3

Penny no. 4

ELIZABETH  :-  "I am sorry   some of these have not scanned very well so I hope you can see them. I started off outdoors but it began to rain so had to go indoors so there are some of the children on the steps and then turned to doing figures in the café. A bit less frustrating than last time and may be able to make something   from   them.  I was going to do charcoal but it seemed a bit too messy for inside."

Elizabeth no. 1

Elizabeth no. 2

Elizabeth no. 3

Elizabeth no. 4

Elizabeth no. 6

Elizabeth no. 5

The reason why I've put Penny and Elizabeth together is (fairly obviously) that they are both looking at figures.  Penny's drawings nos. 2 and 3 show her moving figures, and I like them very much. Penny - you've really thought of the figure as w whole, and felt the differences in weight distribution etc.  there is still a tendency to do lollipop heads, but they are well placed, and work as part of the whole weight-thing. In each of them, we can read the energy of the movement - fast, slow, etc.  Really good.

Elizabeth - thinking about the last session - do you see how Penny has drawn the whole thing?  there was a tendency for you to do legs, then bodies, then heads and so the thing becomes more difficult to capture as an instantaneous thing, and you got very frustrated.  This time, you have your two little moving figures at the bottom of sheet no. 2, and the rest of your studies are more close-up.  I especially like nos. 3, 4, and 5.  They have that touch of yours, that lets us in on intimate conversations, and unguarded moments - you are very good at those!  No. 6 is intriguing with it's people apparently 'floating' behind.  Keep practising the moving figures!

When you work up the more close-up drawings, remember what we said about the spontaneous  quality - don't get too caught up in them being 'real' paintings.

Penny - your other two pieces.... they are very exciting in their composition, with lots of opportunities for extrapolating planes and bits of perspective, and muddling up the sense of space.  Your figures are not as convincing as your sheets of studies, but that's something you can work on.  You need to very carefully place the figures though.  I know they were in those spots, but you need to think of them very much as a rhythm, points of accent across the paper.  The eye is going to go to them first, so maybe you need to think carefully about their tonal qualities (very strongly contrasting at the moment)  I really like the ghostly image of (you?) in no. 4.  Lovely.

This is followed neatly by STEPHANIE, who joined the group after a long absence, and said "Very much a question of warming up after doing no drawing at all for since last summer.  Started off with blind drawing, and then quick looks at people — I was heartened by kind comments from the group, and that these look rather better as snaps."

Stephanie no. 1

Stephanie no. 2

Stephanie no. 3

Stephanie no. 4

Stephanie no. 5

Stephanie no. 6

Stephanie no. 7

Stephanie no. 8

Stephanie no. 9

Stephanie no. 10

Stephanie no. 11

Stephanie no. 12

Stephanie,  it's really tough getting back into it after a break, so well done you.  It's appropriate having you at this point, after the comments I've just offered to Penny and Elizabeth.  The trick with figures is not to think of them as made up of all their component limbs etc.  Penny had this very well sorted, and Elizabeth struggled with it last time especially.  this shows particularly in your no. 6 and no.9.  Interestingly, when you've drawn a group of people (as in no. 2 and no. 10), they are far more convincing.  I think this is because you were looking at their collective shapes more than you were the individuals - and it worked.  No. 2 has a lovely feel to it - the way some are leaning forwards and some leaning back - really nice.  No. 10 is also really good because it is so gestural.  We know it's a group of people, even though that is not spelled out.

Then, your blind drawings are great, especially the view across the river (no. 1) - you've got the essence of those wacky buildings!  How about doing your figures 'blind' - then you forget about their arms etc.  Try doing some off the TV.

JANE had a patchy day, and worked on her ipad again, which is an exciting development.

Jane no. 1

Jane no. 2

These have a very confident feel.  However, they do look a little like architects' visualisations.  It's very difficult.  I think the scale of the ipad screen might have something to do with it?  It's easy for the materials (or, in this case, the technology) to take over, and forget the 'why' of the image you are creating.  I'm not quite sure what you were after.  Was it to do with the pattern/rhythm of all the windows and lines?  Was it blocks of colour/shape?  Was it the extreme perspective?  

Sorry Jane - this sounds negative, but you need to let your tools serve YOU, and not dictate what you end up with.  Have a good think what you can extract from these in the next step, and rein them back in!

PAT K. says "The aim is to simplify the drawings".

Pat K.

Pat, I'll tell you what you've done - - you've made a really good decision to zoom in, and fill the paper with a dense concentration of information, which is really good.  This means that you can see the pattern possibilities, and the deign options, to work from.  The drawings become a sourcebook for you to pluck from - areas of colour, areas of texture, areas of pattern.  The crisscross on the Gherkin, and the rhythm of the windows will all be very valuable.  Think of the trees in the same manner - they are not trees, they are a layer of texture and rhythm, for you to select from.
Really nice.  I think you'll find these much more useful to work from.  I can't wait.

EVERYONE'S WORK - HAY'S GALLERIA, CITY HALL AND THE THAMES 28/4/15

Well, the weather could have been SO much worse, so we were lucky.  Everyone struggled to keep out of the cold wind, but found various decent spots.

Starting with GERALD, we have the following:-

Gerald no. 2

Gerald no. 1

Gerald no. 3

We started off the day with a discussion about how difficult a subject like this was, surrounded by iconic buildings and vistas.  It is a very easy slip to make to 'draw the view', and feel that rendering the buildings in a recognisable way is enough. This is especially a trap for someone who has the great facility with drawing that Gerald has.

So, the jaws of the trap opened up, and Gerald stepped in!
In sheet no. 1 above, we can see 3 out of the four drawings (top right, and both bottom drawings) are doing exactly that.  The fourth drawing steered clear of this, because he had a moment of thinking what the drawing was about (and that was light falling onto this strange glass building).  So, you immediately get a drawing which doesn't just represent a view, it has elements to it that make you wonder and question.  It was interesting how others picked out this drawing, too, at the session at the end.

So, the key is to have that moment of consideration and thought, and awareness, before starting to draw.  Drawing no. 2 was done from within City Hall.

Drawing no. 3 was done after we had a chat, and he looked across the river and pondered, and then turned away and did this drawing from memory.  Firstly, what a drawing!  Also, the elements within it which accompany the church are very simple and beautiful - memory helps to weed out the clutter, and simplify the idea.

Gerald - a lot more of this, please.  Look; think/question; draw from memory; and THEN do another, observed drawing if you feel it is necessary, incorporating the realisations from the memory drawing - but you may well find that is enough.


PAT K. and I had had a long chat during the day, about how to keep her freshness of seeing, and her desire to extrapolate away from what she was seeing, but at the same time, to think about the individual component parts of a painting, and how they go together.

Pat no.1

Pat no. 2

Pat chose a really difficult subject, looking across the river at piles of buildings, all stacked oabove each other.
She made studies which really explored the rhythms of the various layers of buildings, with subtle colour shifts.

Pat, remember - elegant and simple divisions of space, with your lovely wet washes.  Almost as if you were just taking a small section of a painting.













Next we have PENNY, who spent most of her time in City Hall, and produced the following pieces :-

Penny no. 1

Penny no. 2

Penny no. 3

Penny no. 4

Penny's brief was to keep experimenting with her distortion of space ideas.  She takes a line from the foreground into something in the background, or inside/outside, and creates a new reality - very interesting.

She was looking at all the weird distortions in the glass layers within City Hall, and came up with these excellent pieces. Figures in different contexts, and spaces linking up with each other in strange ways.
Her final piece has the addition of the blue, which makes it a very striking and complete piece, just as it stands. So clever, with the use of line, pattern, rhythm, colour AND tone, all at the same time.  Spot on Penny!

I think the thing you need to pay more attention to next time, is your inclusion of figures - make them work better, and draw them a bit better, as gestural living beings, and less of the lollipop people (!).  Make it so they add poetry to the composition.



JANE brought in some very interesting work she had been doing on her i-pad, using it as a sketching tool.  She had also done some very useful colour experiments with paint.  What her i-pad had offered her was a tool to make drawings with a lot more textural marks, rather than just blocks of colour which she was used to doing with the paint.  It would be really good to explore this further, Jane, alongside what you are discovering about the use of muted colours.

Jane no. 1

Jane no. 2

Jane no. 3

It was really great to have PAT W. back with us.  Pat's brief was really just to spend the day getting her eye back in, and to 'play' with ideas.  This is when the best comes out for Pat, not when she's taking things too seriously.  She did a whole series of studies around the area, and I very much hope some of these can be worked up, Pat, maybe even from memory and imagination!



ELIZABETH spent the day sitting in Hay's Galleria, drawing people.  It was a very frustrating day for her because she was pushing herself to explore a different aspect of people - movement.  As we all know, she is brilliant at capturing the essence of people in more static situations, such as sitting and talking.  However, people striding about is quite a different thing.  One needs to just get the quickest gesture down, a summary of the movement of the whole being.  This has nothing to do with individual legs, arms, head etc.  It is to do with the flow, weight and counterbalance of that person moving, and forgetting they have all these bits and bobs to worry about.  Within that, the position of the head, or the shift in weight, is really important, but only as an integral part of the whole.  It was suggested that doing a drawing comprising many drawings one on top of another, of repeated studies of the same movement (made by different people) might be good, reinforcing the gesture each time.
Elizabeth, it's hard.  You just have to keep doing it.

So, next time, I will endeavour to get permission for City Hall again (hopefully it will be better weather!).  Gerald will be on holiday.  Other than that, if people could let me know nearer the time if the can come, I'd be grateful.

RFH work - notes

As ever, we had a day of fascinating discussion, and much by way of really exciting work was revealed.  I am constantly humbled by the work, and by everyone's openness and honesty to talk about it and share it - thank you.

ELIZABETH stepped up first.  She showed us the work from the sessions at the NMM, as well as some work which has evolved from it. Two things really came to the surface.  One was her sensitivity to the human condition; to observing people individually or in groups; to briefly and succinctly capturing their conversation through an elegant gestural line.  The second thing was some work which has popped up every now and then, where she uses the device of a window, or some sort of frame, to divide up the picture into little mini pictures.  Each one works as a magic window, and the whole thing works as a complete piece as well - clever.
The main thing we went on to discuss was how she can, on occasions, get stuck with the concept of 'watercolour' and the 'techniques' which need to go with it.  We all agreed, as did she, that she should use watercolour as a vehicle for colouring areas in her work, not for overall sloshing!
She needs to use all sorts of tools, watercolour included, to get her idea across - she even had one piece using a mascara brush!!  This led on to discussions about the continuum which is drawing and painting.  There is no absolute divide between them - they are both part of a whole, and go together to express.  When is a mark 'drawn' as opposed to 'painted'?  Impossible to define.
Elizabeth's challenge now is to really explore further this capturing of the human condition.

Then we had GERALD's work.  His paintings now have such confidence and maturity.  the thing he said which was most telling was that he was really enjoying carving with the paint, modelling the image and getting it to reveal itself through the process, rather than having a preconceived idea beforehand of how it should end up looking, and just rather superficially plopping the paint down.
He had one piece where the movement of the blades of a huge propeller (see his drawings below) were just indicated with an elegant scored circle. He was really concentrating on the composition and balance, and more than anything, the potential rhythmic qualities.
Pat W. (who hasn't been for 6 months) really noticed the difference in his work.

MAGGIE had had a rather frustrated day at the NMM, but boy, did she come up with the goods this time.  She laid out a sequence of paintings which had all evolved one from another.  The start was the collection of figureheads (see below).  She then got really interested in the eyes, and especially the Pierrot with a mask, and the eyes being highlighted or shielded by the mask.  So, she then produced a series of paintings of a Pierrot character, some done in a 'Maggie style' (her conclusion), and ending up with two masked heads painted very realistically, or were they????  In Maggie's usual way, they had an uncomfortable edge to them, a feeling that not all was quite as it should be.  Really great.  She is going to concentrate on this stream of thought for a while.

PENNY sadly has been very unwell, so didn't have any work to show, but was a great contributor in other ways.

PAT W. has been out of the picture for a while, and has bounced back looking great, and had work to show!!  They were all invented pieces, or pieces where she'd 'played' - always successful in Pat's case.  The star of the group was a great piece of painting and collage, of 3 pots on a collaged shelf.  we all loved it.  It played with representations of space and flatness, painted textures against plain, colour against greys, symmetry against assymetry.  Probably one of those things that cannot be reproduced, but well done Pat.

JANE brought in loads of work based on Dr. J's house.  She had tried many different colourways, working with more mixed colours against more saturated areas.  These worked very well, and I was delighted to see how her range of colours was expanding.  She had looked at De Hooch's work.  The problem with many of her pieces was that she had her main area of saturated colour (red) against her area of maximum tonal contrast, which was not ideal.  Penny brilliantly brought up a De Hooch interior on her tablet, and there it was - bright red skirt and a very light doorway, BUT with an neutral strip of colour between them to separate them.  I suggested to Jane that she should try and copy a De Hooch, and learn from it.

PAT K. laid out two blocks of work.  The first lot were based on some trees she'd drawn in Greenwich park.  Her drawings were raw and expressive - winter branches and trunks.  her paintings had become more sanitised, and 'lollipop' trees (her word) had appeared.  We had a long chat about where these images come from, and the need to stick to the drawing.
The second batch were based on some interior drawings from the Queen's House.  Again, her drawings had clear definition of colours and planes, and the paintings had become a bit 'all-over'.  Each painting had some beautiful bits, little intimate conversations.  However, these were rather drowned out by the cacophany of other things going on in the painting.  So, maybe it's an issue of scale, or brush size, or just getting carried away, as we all do at times.
The main thing is to be conscious of what you have in your drawing, and build on that, not dismiss it.

So, a bit of a struggle at the end there, but we've all been there, and we know that Pat will use this as a springboard for moving onwards and upwards.

Thank you all very much.

EVERYONE'S WORK - NAT. MARITIME MUS. 17.2.15

I had hoped that half term would be quieter, without school groups trawling around.  I was wrong, and I apologise for that.
The four people who turned up were brilliant just to stick with it, and get something out of the day - well done.

ELIZABETH said :- "We had lovely weather again so were very lucky.
The only problem being half term it was very busy so I  was not able to sit
where I planned.  I tried to be big and bold as you asked. The last one is
how I felt at the end of the afternoon with everyone standing in my way and
moving while I tried to draw! It was nice to meet up with the others and
exchange ideas and gossip. It was also encouraging to get comments from
them."

Elizabeth - Greenwich Cafe

Elizabeth - Greenwich Cafe - Choas

Greenwich View

Oh Elizabeth, you are brilliant!   Each of these stands on its own, and need no further expansion.  These are not 'initial studies' - they are statements in their own right.

The blue one is fabulous, mainly due to its very, very clever use of counterchange.  The lights against darks, and darks against lights - even down to the one dark blue dot in a row of light dots.  THIS IS WHERE YOUR NATURAL STRENGTHS LIE.  The black and white one has similar skills, with a fascinating rhythm of light and dark across the paper.  The difference in the line qulaity is a joy, and terribly clever.

What both of these do is offer a really refreshing statement about human interaction, what happens when people come together - as couples or as groups.  I want you to think about why this can or cannot be 'IT' - the voice of Elizabeth Court.  Does it need to be painted?  Does it need to be 'more finished'?  To be discussed.  What do other people think?

Having said all this, I also really like the view across the park, with the very expressive long shadows, and the soft, runny foreground trees.  I KNOW what struck you, and that's what counts.  Agaian, i'm not sure what more you could do to this.

However, the main joy are your two figure studies.  They are a unique voice, and very accessible.

GERALD then said :-  "Not a very productive or creative day I'm afraid, too much wandering around looking for inspiration and not enough drawing.

No 1 The propeller looks particularly lame, like Mickey Mouse ears! So I took on board comments and have done a further thumb-nail to just suggest the turning blades.

No 2 The view across the park to the Observatory. I was attracted by the rhythm of the tree trunks and will try to work this further into a painting.

No 3 The hanging lanterns. Possibly most successful drawing of the day. I was attracted by the points of light in an otherwise dark passageway and hope this can be developed. "

Gerald  no. 1

Gerald no. 2

Gerald no. 3

The propeller is particularly tricky, and last time Penny struggled with it.  The blades are such bulbous shapes, it's very difficult to do anything much with them.
You seem to be quite hooked on the strong dark shape of the horizontal beam, and the blades are almost embarrassed to show themselves against it.  What if you added some of the blades, or a portion of blade, to the black and white patterning.  Just because we all know that the blades were all made of the same material, and belonged to the same machine, doesn't mean that they HAVE to all be treated the same way.  That single black line across the picture doesn't help very much, as it is at the moment.

The landscape piece has promise.  as you say, and the rhythm of the trunks is indeed interesting (with subtle changes of rhythm across the span of them).  Consider also the rhythm of horizontals - grass, hill, trees, sky.  Could they enter into the rhythmic options? I can see you've toyed with the possibilities of what to do with the stretch of open grass - a rectangular block, or a diagonal lead-in - hmmm - so much to consider!

Your no. 3 has great promise, too.  Again, rhythm will be the main motivating influence on what you do with it.  Isn't that interesting

Why not think of the 3 pieces as being a set, all about rhythmic possibilities.  So your subject is not the 'thing', per se.  It is RHYTHM, and what you can do with it.  Up to you.

Well done though, in those tricky conditions.

Jane - staircase drawings

Next we have JANE, who wasn't there last time.  She said :-
"Here are my sketches. I was rather taken by the spiral staircase and shadows.
I took photos from Observatory Hill. Too many people there to feel comfortable sketching.
Lovely sunny day."

Well done Jane.  I'm glad you found somewhere to hide in the Queen's House, at least.
Very interesting set.  What is so good is the transition through the studies.  the first one is fairly obviously stairs, and shadows on the wall.  As we go through the drawings, the two things (one hard and tangible, and the other transient and insubstantial) morph together.  It all comes down to the quality of the curves, in the end, and no. 6 shows them off to great advantage.  No. 5 is different, because the stair-pattern has become a central rectangular block.  Clever.
One thing though.  The main compositional motifs are the curves against the rectangles.  I worry about the diagonal nature of the shadowed 'grid' in the top right quarter.  Diagonals don't really come in anywhere else, and it strikes a rather jarring note against the elegance of everything else.  What can you do - square them off? reduce them?
When you move into colour, remember what we were saying last time.  I'd like you to do some in colours mixed as neutral as possible.  Try mixing 5 versions of grey, all from different starting colours - you'll get lovely blue-greys, yellow-greys, pink-greys etc. which will blossom when placed against each other.  Once you feel comfortable with these, inject a bit of purer colour into one of them - and remember your tones - keep to your drawings.  Good luck.

Pat 1

Finally, we have PAT, who said :-  "Yesterday was sunny and warmer than our  first visit I decided to work on the interior space of the Queen's House this time. Working from the new drawings I aim to loose much of the detail and hope to find the sense of place-using colour to reflect the grandeur of the house."

Pat, I really like this set.  You've really thought about the SPACE - both the real space, and the space within your frame.  I like the fact that you can go into the picture space, and enjoy jumping across the surface, too.  2D and 3D in perfect harmony, different layers of looking.  Really good.  So, consider that when you are working them up.  That play on space can still happen, however abstract the piece.  I can't wait to see what you produce!  No pressure!!

Well done the 4 of you.  Lots of ideas.  

EVERYONE'S WORK - NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM

What a bright and shimmering day we had - the sun looked so inviting, only to confront those brave souls with bitter cold!

5 people turned up, and here's what they produced for those of you who weren't there..............

PENNY

Penny's drawings

Her first drawing (lower left) concentrated on the huge and slowly-turning propeller.  She wanted to give it the feel of moving, and tried things like overlapping the window, breaking the edges etc.  The comment was that the propeller looked quite organic compared to the hard diagonals around it, and maybe there was room to play with that idea.

then her next drawing (top left) was done in th Queen's House, and we all loved clever touches like the shard of black and white tiling on the floor, and the way she'd imported bits of paintings on display (old war ships) into the more formal space.

Then she did her 3rd drawing, which tackled the tricky issue of clouds and nature.  The formalised texturing of the trees etc. is very effective, but we all felt that the overlapping clouds looked a bit alien to the rest of the drawing.  Maybe they need handling in the same manner?

PAT

Pat no. 3

Pat no. 2

Pat no 1

Pat spent some time looking out at the trees in Greenwich Park, which were strongly back-lit to create dramatic darks (sheet no. 1).  I was a bit concerned that she might not have enough information on 'tree-ness-, but we'll see what she pulls out of the bag!  Then she went and sat in the cold, and did the drawings on sheet 2, again looking across the park.  Sheet no. 3 was a bigger drawing, containling lots of ideas to be played with, and whittled down.  

We talked about thumbnail drawings, and how they need to be different QUICK compositional ideas as to the possibilities of each drawing, not just smaller 'complete' drawings.

GERALD

Gerald 6

Gerald 5

Gerald 4

Gerald 3

Gerald 2

Gerald 1

Gerald produced some fine drawings (sorry - all of these seem to be coming out in reverse this time!)

No. 2, with the Royal Barge and its upright oars creating a rhythmic tension was a beauty, and very much reflected the ideas in no. 1, with the pattern of trees outside.  Isn't it interesting how two completely different subjects give the same visual stimulus?

Sheets no. 3 and no. 4 were all looking at the business-end of some big machine shaft.  we all felt that the one on the bottom half of sheet no. 3 was wonderful, where the description of the shaft has been reduced right down to just a circle, echoed by the subtle curve above it.

He hopes to somehow combine this with the squating figure drawn on sheets nos 5 & 6, so make a composite painting of some sort - good luck Gerald!

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth 6

Elizabeth 5

Elizabeth 4

Elizabeth 3

Elizabeth 2

Elizabeth 1

I think Elizabeth had a very useful day.  She devoted herself to exploring the opposites of tone and colour.  The tonal drawings were done with just b&w media, creating some very strong statements, again looking at the back-lit trees.

We all especially liked no. 1, with its Paul Nash-esque power, and the strip of light cutting across the dark - lovely.

Then, she used some coloured brush-pens which gave her no option but to use very direct colour to make here drawings.  The colours felt a bit shocking to her at first, but I think its a great thing to do for a while, and just see what strong statements emerge - there's no room for fiddling about in the middle!

MAGGIE

Maggie no. 1

Maggie no. 2

Maggie no. 3

Maggie had a more indecisive day - not really sure what she wanted.  She started off (no.1 - bottom) in the Queen's House, doing a very powerful tonal piece, looking through from one dark room to another space.  however, it didn't really fulfill her need to 'tell another story'.  Her next drawing (no. 1 - top) was very inventive, looking at a group of statues, and rearranging their relative positions to create this striking and strange drawing with the pointing finger.  No. 2 was something she explored briefly, but it wasn't hitting the spot for her.  Then, no 3 was based on a wall-mounted display of ship figureheads, and she has again played with the narrative, and created something which provokes questions - and I love the space they're looking into.

She is hopeful that ideas will evolve over the next couple of months!

Well done everyone.  Next time (Feb 17th) will be without me, so let's see how these ideas develop onwards.

RFH WORK - notes

The thing that stood out particularly for me this time was the fact that everyone was letting their work grow FROM the drawings done on site, and not just doing colour versions of the drawings they'd done on the day.  This sounds so simple, but actually I think it's the first time when everything on show was this kind of development of an idea, not just a rehashing of it. Hurrah!

PENNY has kindly sent me her work, to remind me, as I'd not written notes!  Sorry again.

Penny no. 1

Penny no. 2

Penny no. 3

Penny no. 3, cropped

No. 1 has some of Dr. Johnson's writings embedded into it.  The thing I love about nos. 1 and 2 is the fascinating play with space and perspective.  It works very well in both.  No. 2 is a more 'conventional' statement, but with this special handling, it becomes something very special.
No. 3 is to do with reflections in the wobbly old glass of the bookcase, and we all felt it didn't need the extra bit on the far left, hence the cropped version.  Thanks for sharing those, Penny.














PAT K. really struck out for something new this time, in the form of using figures, really quite recognisable figures, in her work.  This might not seem so radical, but there has always been a difficulty in how to use figurative elements in combination with the more abstract nature of Pat's usual way of representing a space (or rather, the FEELING of a space).

Pat no. 1

Pat no. 2

Pat no. 3

Pat no. 4

The thing that really made these work is the way that the figures GROW out of the space.  They are not superimposed on a space, nor somehow seperate from it.  They belong to the space, and breath the same air!  This is particularly true of image no. 2 above.

Much discussion was had, and I think this needs to be explored further next time - play with the simplicity of the context, with suggested figures/objects growing out from it.  Very exciting Pat!



GERALD  doesn't stop developing!  He brought a fabulous set of rich paintings, where the paint (gouache against a dark ground) was really working to define the subject, and as with Pat's, the painting was not just plonked on the paper - it grew out of the paper.  Really great, Gerald.  This was combined with lovely areas of paint and drawing combined, to suggest heads/areas of detailing.  More please.

MAGGIE came up with two very simple (deceptively so) pieces.  They were glimpses through into other spaces, and she'd created a fascinating surface pattern with all the fragments that you could guess at through the doorways.  That surface pattern was a great counterbalance to the 3-D depth implied by the 'looking-through' description.  Very clever.

ELIZABETH had a great selection of different experiments - we can always rely on Elizabeth for pushing her ideas on.  Interestingly, the two that worked best were at opposite ends of the tone/colour debate.
One was a symphony of blues and golds as an overall colour chord, with areas of specifically TONAL definition, and fragments of light.
The other was a piece where she'd used lots of colour very cleverly, really understanding that the tones of those colours needed to be fairly even to make the colours really speak.
Then there were other pieces which tended to fall somewhere in between, so those two were the most successful, really.  It's totally OK to make paintings using each of these languages, but you just need to be aware of which one you're ending up with in each painting, so you don't get them all muddled, and have both contradicting each other in a painting.  Using predominantly tone doesn't mean you can't have lovely colours (such a s blue and gold) - it just means you can't use lots and lots of different colours and expect them to work at their best.

STEPHANIE re-surfaced from her book, and it was really good to see her.  She brought some landscape work she'd been working on.  My main comment was that she was trying to say everything there possibly was to say about her landscape all in one painting.  It's not possible to cram everything in, and make it still readable.  My suggestion was that she should us no more than 5 words to describe her subject (landscape in this case), and then paint that.  Then she could use another set of words to describe another aspect of the same landscape, and do another painting......and then another etc. - all from the same landscape, but all exploring different, simple aspects.

MANFRED had come to visit, and he brought several sets of photographs and paintings.  His paintings were delicious and simple evocations really, essences of a remembered landscape, but really strong and emotionally charged.  All they were really were arrangements of horizontal bands of colour and texture, but they were immediately about remembered landscapes in all our minds.  Very wonderful, and absolutely what I was saying to Stephanie, who was very struck by them.
LESS IS MORE - FOR SURE!

PENNY. I am really sorry, but for some reason I didn't make notes on you on the day - why??? I can picture some of the work in my mind, but not enough to remember my comments.  Oh dear.  You can send them through if you wish, or I'll add the comments next time.