Hello and welcome to our news. We can forget everything else, the only important news is, it rained.
Now when this weather started, we had no idea it would be such a dry summer so we didn’t keep track, but I estimate it’s not rained here for at least eight weeks. There have been short showers nearby but nothing here. Until two nights ago when it gently rained for a maybe an hour or two. Not enough, but I’m sure I heard the plants in the garden sigh with relief.
Nearly everything I’ve grown is on its last legs. Even the sunflowers are finding it a bit gruelling and the fruit will be early I think this year. Our apples are tiny. Most of them have been jettisoned in desperation by the trees and are now on the floor. The stone fruit seems happier, we have plums and the damsons are nearly ready and plentiful. I don't much care for eating the damsons, but I did think they would make a lovely subject for a painting…
I forgot to tell you about the exhibition that I popped into last week. One of my paintings was on display in St Mary’s in Shrewsbury as part of the Shropshire Art Society exhibition for the Shrewsbury Art Trail. Here it is…
I’m going to collect this one later today. She’s still available if anyone would like to make a purchase! It’s called The Cat who Walks by Herself, here’s a link. If you’re wondering what it’s all about, the young girl is holding up a mask of Charlie Chaplin. I made a short series (there might have to be more) with other masks. The idea is that when you’re young, you have the world at your feet and you can be anything you want to be, maybe a movie star, whatever! The work is all about your creative potential.
Here’s a glimpse of other work by Society members…
On at the same time was an exhibition of basketry called Entwined by Weave Only a Trace.
Look at this fantastic sculpture across the aisle. It’s hard to convey scale here, but the church is very large and these towered over my head!
There were lots of beautiful pieces of work on display. Some were sculptural, some more functional. The exhibition is finished now, but they have a website where you can link through to the makers, here’s a link.
I have some new work available on my website. First up are some tiny paintings, these are ACEOs so they measure 2.5” x3.5” and are all inspired by my recent visit to Cornwall…
They are £6 each and are all mixed media on paper with machine stitch. They’d look lovely popped in a mount in a simple frame.
I also have this new poppy painting for sale. It’s called Skeleton Pyrrole Poppies and it’s a mixed media piece on wood panel. This one is approximately 14.5”. x 11” and is £160.
As always, if you are outside the UK and would like to buy something please just get in touch and I can check on postage for you. I’ve recently sent items to Australia and Canada and they’ve arrived nice and quickly (and not been too expensive).
Don’t forget, we’ve also got those greetings cards on special offer of just £1 each. 😊 Here’s a link to them.
Let me show you a closer look at some of the paintings I enjoyed in St Ives. First up, some of the work at Connections by artists from the Society of St Ives and the New English Art Club.
Swayed of course by being charmed staying in a cute Cornish cottage, I thought this one was lovely.
I am enjoying landscapes that are really abstracted and allow the paint to be interesting. These two were lovely examples. They weren’t stitched, but I’m sure the stitchers reading this can appreciate the surface and how easily they could be a stitched textile. I really liked the colour and the marks.
This one struck me for its beautiful composition. Don’t you love how the space is divided to provide homes for all the objects? Simple, but clever. And what’s going on in that top right hand corner? I’m not sure, but I like it.
This one (detail below) was interesting. I’m not sure if you can make out in the photo, but the component parts are all painted on separate sections that are raised in low relief from the main surface.
Every week I join in with Laura’s live stream studio session from the comfort of my own home. I watch what she’s doing and chip in with comments or give answers to questions that pop up in the live chat. The live streams are included with the posts we offer to paid subscribers so if you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription I hope you’ll consider it now. I think you’ll love the relaxed and informal way Laura chats about her work and explains her approach to her art. I never leave the session without feeling inspired to have a go at whatever technique she’s been working with. I hope that’s the same for all of you who watch too!
The live video session is streamed each week from Laura’s studio and it’s just like dropping into the studio while she’s working. Each one lasts about an hour and if you want to, you can post questions and join in with the conversation. Afterwards, the recording is posted onto our Substack page where you can watch it at your convenience, great if you can’t tune in to the live stream.
This week she was adding colour to some of her Gelli plate prints. What I loved about her prints was the bold lines of the drawing. Now, I didn’t have any prints ready for the same treatment and being the impatient soul that I am I reached for paper, sticks of charcoal and soft pastels.
The image in the photo above is a soft pastel painting I made a while ago. Using that as my reference, I made another drawing with charcoal onto some watercolour paper…
Next I added colour with soft pastels. As you can see the watercolour paper is quite textured. The dry pastel sits on the raised bumps of the paper.
In the live sessions we’ve been seeing Laura use her watersoluble Neocolor II a lot lately. Inspired by that I found out my tin of the same and experimented with layering the Neocolor onto the soft pastel. Always fun to experiment isn’t it?
I blended the colours with a soft brush loaded with water.
And when that was dry I dragged a little more soft pastel to pick up on the texture of the paper. As you can see, I didn’t copy her work or techniques, - just picked up on the idea of layering colour and combining different mediums.
We hope you find the live sessions encourage you to try out the different media that you have, and to experiment with what you can achieve with them. Laura never really plans the content for the live sessions, they really are just what she’s working on each week, but I know she’s keen to test out some screenprinting ideas and some more work with gel plate printing so it’s likely that next week will feature one or the other or maybe even both!
Laura -
If you missed my live session this week, here’s the recording:
As Linda mentioned, I worked on some prints I’d made using my Gelli plate, adding more colour with painted acrylic glazes. I also talked about some tiny art I’d made and flicked through some of my August sketchbook pages. There was also a demo of using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II to draw onto photos. So quite a lot packed into a little over an hour!
Finally before I sign off for this week, can I just link you to Linda’s article. If you’ve not seen it, she’s written about rediscovering a collection of work called Family Album that we both worked on…
Thanks for reading our news this week.
We’ll be back next Thursday with another update. In the meantime, don’t forget about the live session on Tuesday. See you then 😊
Bye for now,
Linda and Laura x
Thank you for creating with us. For more please visit our online video workshops.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.