A good way to start the new year

The January issue of Paint, the SAA magazine, arrived today complete with an article about Ledbury Art Society on page 44.

New Year Resolution No. 1 - join Ledbury Art Society if your not yet a member. Go to the Membership page on this blog and download an enrolment form.

Paint also introduces the SAA Challenge 2017 and you can find lots more about it online here. I'm sure many LAS members do draw with confidence but some of us need a bit more practice. You may remember I set myself a challenge to learn to draw in 2017 - see Painting/Drawing Challenge which I put on this blog in November. You'll see another challenge in the post immediately prior to this, though that is probably better done as a painting.

New Year Resolution No. 2 - take up at least one of these challenges.

Val Briggs at work

New Year Resolution No. 3 - come an watch our demonstration on Tuesday 10 January when Val Briggs will demonstrate Atmospheric Landscape with Wildlife in Pastel

There's more information on the Coming Soon page, including a poster that you can download. Val's website is http://www.valeriebriggs.co.uk/

But don't just come in January. Take a look at our 2017 Programme

Painting Challenge

Here's a new challenge for you. Create a painting or drawing inspired by the photographic image and send a jpeg image to LAS Challenge.

The photo was taken at Bosham on a cold January day in 2013 a few days after snow had fallen.

The copyright of the photographic images used as a LAS Challenge remains that of the originator but you may use them as a basis for your own art work.

Pete the Street

Probably the best one person exhibition I've seen anywhere! This one happens to be in my favourite gallery, the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. Pete Brown paints en plein air, mostly in Bath where he lives. He is so well known there that he is known as Pete the Street. The exhibition has 140 oil paintings done over a two year period and some charcoal drawings. As well as the expected paintings of Bath, there are some from the Glastonbury Festival, from London, Dublin and Arles. All his works seem to give a great sense of light and space. While most of his paintings have been done in the street in all sorts of weather, he has a couple on show that he has also painted again in his studio on a very large scale.

The Artist has a feature on his work and this exhibition in their current edition. If you want to see more of his work and his publications then visit his website. Here's a preview of his oil sketches video

This is a must see exhibition and it continues until 19 February 2017.

December meeting

Our meeting on 6 December, the day that St Nicholas brings gifts for children in much of Europe, was a social occasion with mince pies and some rather yummy biscuits to accompany our tea or coffee. Many members had brought along sketch books or paintings for our show & tell. We don't stand up in front of everyone for this but sit in small groups around tables. Some had also brought reference photographs for discussion about how they might be interpreted. To add to the festive fun we had a free raffle with five prizes - each person was given a raffle ticket when they arrived and the draw took place shortly after our refreshment break.

We were able to learn from each other in the show & tell and we also looked at a YouTube video in which a Canadian artist, Grant Fuller, demonstrated painting fishing boats in watercolour. You can watch it here.

Grant has published a lot of other short videos on YouTube so do take a look at what else is available. Another artists with lots of water colour demonstrations is Umberto Rossini. You don't get to hear his voice only an accompanying music track but he does provide some English subtitles. Here's one of his videos