This month's Activity night was by Artist It Hao Pheh and conducted remotely via zoom. Please enjoy Judith Jones and Kristina Love's write up about the night as taken from the October edition of the Pelican's Palette.
The inaugural Seeing Our Home event kicked off on the 18th of September with the Altona Laverton Historical Society. A big thanks to Brendan for putting this all together and managing to pivot the experience to online so successfully when Covid restrictions made on site sketching impossible. Please enjoy the below write up by Judith Jones taken from the October edition of the Pelicans Palette.
The following write up and photos have been supplied by Kristina Love, it sounds like the Hans Van Weerd class on Wednesdays has been great and it certainly looks like everyone is really enjoying it: Wednesday Drawing Classes with Hans Van Weerd Hans Van Weerd, an experienced artist who has recently joined HBAS, has offered a new class which runs from 12.30-2.30 on Wednesdays at Louis Joel. The 10 - week program, entitled ‘Dynamic Drawing in Mixed Media’, was certainly dynamic as participants enthusiastically explored how to make fluid, unselfconscious marks with implements we never thought ourselves capable of using. We found out that ink can be applied with sticks, feathers, and cotton buds to capture the essence of ordinary household objects; we learnt to be speedy as we passed our painting subjects on after 5 minute sketches; and we learnt to embrace our ‘mistakes’ and see our drawings as ‘pentimento’, works which preserve the traces of all our marks. And that was just Week 1! In week 2, our focus shifted to the human figure and face. Hans demonstrated how to sketch in the proportions of the human body, using ink and his favourite stick. He modelled how to ‘embrace mistakes’ and we followed suit, unconcerned about approximations as we worked towards accurate proportions and perspectives. Hans drew on selections from an impressive collection of photos of character-filled male and female models, allowing us to capture something of the essence of old and young faces and bodies in interesting (and sometimes challenging) poses. Sadly, Covid lockdown meant that our scheduled class for week 2 was postponed and numbers were restricted to 10 for subsequent classes, though Hans will plan for make-up classes later on. In our third week, we experienced the enormous value of drawing images upside down. This was thoroughly counterintuitive for many of us, but we all agreed that this disciplined us to focus on the bigger shapes of a composition and concentrate on what we actually perceive, rather than what we think we see. Putting aside our visual preconceptions was harder for some than for others as we grappled with foreshortening in some wonderfully selected images: a young man looking imperiously down at the viewer and a woman bungee jumping towards us! This really was dynamism in action! Hans’ class is now fully subscribed for term 3 but watch this space for the Term 4 program! In the meantime, check out Hans’ web site and Instagram: Website: https://www.artonyourwall.com.au Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hansvanweerd/ PS. An addendum from Hans: “All participants rose to the challenge and clearly demonstrated their willingness to explore new avenues. very rewarding; the best that can happen to any tutor! “ Our July Activity night was a wonderful colour mixing presentation by Brendan Lovelock - he very kindly adapted his presentation to be done as a on line meeting after we entered yet another lockdown. The write up below was taken from the August edition of the Pelican's Palette and written by Debbie Kavanagh.
The opening of the Through the Artist's eyes exhibition was a wonderful night! I was lovely to be able to exhibit once again in the foyer of the Hobson's Bay council offices and fantastic to be able to catch up with all the other members who attended the opening. Gaye gave a lovely speech dotted with her wonderful sense of humour while opening the exhibition, unfortunately the mayor or a representative from the council was unable to be there. Please go and check out the exhibition it is open until the 28th of July. In the meantime please click here to enjoy more photos from opening night and also some photos from the day spent setting up. Thank you to all the members who entered works.
The June activity night with Richard Impey sounds like it was very informative and fun; the below write up was taken from the July Pelicans Palette.
The wonderful write up of this workshop has kindly been provided by Kristina Love, attached gallery photos provided by Gaye Pereira-Jackson and Kristina Love: Ten avid artists gathered enthusiastically (if somewhat nervously) at the Woods Street Art Space in Laverton over two full weekend days to learn more about painting portraits. On Saturday, Ben guided us through the big darks and big lights, encouraging us to be brave as we tackled the chiaroscuro method of portrait painting. We learnt about the proportions of the human face, and even “tested” on our knowledge before being let loose with paintbrushes. How many eye widths are there across the head? How do you estimate the distance from the chin to the bottom of the nose? Thus did we learn about the first holy grail of painting, FORM. Ben had then used Charlie, the plaster - cast head, to demonstrate the various planes of the face, teaching us about the second holy grail of painting, TONE. We heard the story about how Ben had rescued Charlie and other castes from the wreckage caused by University Art students in the1960’s overturning ‘establishment’ traditions of drawing, a sad throwing out of the baby with the bathwater, we all thought. Once we’d been introduced to the basics of the third holy grail, COLOUR (with its three dimensions of Tone, Chroma and Hue) we were ready to put brush to canvas and render our own version of John Singer Sargent’s self-portrait. After lunch, you could have heard a pin drop as we applied our paint (oil or acrylic) to our canvases. The only sounds were (in descending order of frequency): groans of frustration from us; commands from Ben of “Darker!”, ‘More paint!” or “Use Bigger Brushes!”; encouragement from Ben as he showed us how to “rescue paintings from the ditch”; little whines from Toby (Ben’s dog) as he begged to be let outside; and even the odd sigh of satisfaction as we mastered one little chiaroscuro technique. The next morning, troops replenished, we gathered again to tackle portraits in watercolour. Ben demonstrated various watercolour techniques and offered valuable advice on types of paper, paint and brushes appropriate for various tasks. We extended our knowledge of colour and tone and practiced “turning the form” of a series of spheres in watercolour. We worked out where to place the darkest tone, the mid-tone, the ‘bedbug’ line separating them (look up the fascinating origins of the term ‘bedbug line’!), the cast shadow, the reflected light and the highlight. At this point we learnt a little more about EDGE, the fourth of the holy grails of painting, as we decided how hard or soft to make the edges between each tone. As with the Saturday, in the afternoon we worked on our portraits of either Rembrandt or Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (one of Sargent’s models). Pretty much the same groans, commands and encouragement ensued as on the previous day, though perhaps there were fewer sighs of satisfaction as we tackled this tricky medium. By Sunday evening, we were exhausted, exhilarated and challenged in turn, but well-equipped to head off in new painterly directions, armed with deeper knowledge of important fundamentals of painting, and canvases to continue to work on. Thanks Ben for your patience and support – you must have been utterly exhausted! The below write up of the activity night has been taken from the June edition of the Pelicans Palette and was written by Debbie Kavanagh, photos in gallery below of David's work taken by Kathryn Price: It was an absolute pleasure to meet David Hourigan for the May Activity Night as he talked us through his process and allowed us a close-up look at some of his incredible artworks. Having worked as a graphic designer for 20 years, which David found creative but not necessarily satisfying, he jumped at the opportunity to be a full time dad and turn his attention to something he was passionate about. He had always loved overlooked or unloved architecture; the weathered, griminess of it and the nostalgia of old signage. “Basically anything old and falling down” as opposed to big, grand buildings with a saccharine finish. Putting to use the skills he’d practised building models as a child, he began recreating the old, often derelict buildings of his local Yarraville and the Inner West. He has now branched out to other areas as well as commission based work. David explained his process of choosing his subjects then performing a site inspection: photographing, sketching and taking exact measurements of the site. In his models, he tries to capture buildings as they are when he visits them: a “snapshot”, as he put it. He has also built miniatures of sites that are no longer there though, like the iconic Olympic Doughnut Van in Footscray. There is a huge amount of research involved in accurately representing a site that he cannot document himself. For this, David explained the benefits of Google Maps Historical Imagery which allows you to see how a site has changed over time. He also finds Heritage Victoria and Facebooks groups such as ‘Old Shops Victoria’ useful for sourcing old photographs. Many of the materials David uses are common to the model-making hobbyist ... Paints and glues, blue modelling foam, plastic sheeting/strips & tubing etc can all be found at your local hobby store but David tries to recycle as much as possible and to use found materials where he can. He explained the possibilities of sushi containers, BBQ trays, tin cans, presentation folders and even teabags! While David endeavours to create as much of his builds by hand, he has at times had small or repeated items 3d printed, like the stools in Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar. The incredible neon sign was twisted by hand though! For David, it’s all about the details. Each nick in the weatherboard, or broken brick is recreated as closely to his photographs as possible. He likes to include elements of life in his work too ... a little can of VB, a bird or bird’s nest give his work another dimension. Creating something so realistic can present its problems when being photographed as you can lose the sense of scale. David cleverly combats this in three different ways: first, his signature matchstick propped against his model; the second: himself: holding the model to make its size clear; and the third: having a comparison picture with both the real building and his model side-by-side. He says he has an enormous ‘To Do’ list of buildings he would like to recreate, which just makes me excited to see what’s next! If you would like to see more of David’s work, you can find him at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidhouriganartist Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavesModelWorkshop - Debbie Kavanagh The 5x7 Art Prize is a very popular event held by the Hobsons Bay Art Society Annually. There is a lot of work that goes into setting up the exhibition by members each year including helping out on registration days, mounting the entries on to the panels for display, volunteering to sit in the gallery plus many other behind the scenes jobs that make it possible. Thank you to all members for your time and support that make this wonderful exhibition possible. And of course thanks to all the artists that contributed their work. Please see some photos in the slideshow below showing some of the set up and some people enjoying viewing the exhibition. In March members were treated to an Origami activity night with Chieko Hester - check out the write up about it from our Pelicans Pallet April edition.
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June 2023
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