By Chris Crosby Good composition in a painting is vital, and using negative space can be a way of balancing elements, helping to add interest to the whole work, as well as improving the accuracy of drawing. Negative space is the space around and between the subject of the image, whereas the subject of the artwork occupies the positive space. Negative drawing is also useful for adding outlines and colours where you might otherwise struggle to find a way. I use this method in my work with coloured pencil; it is not possible to colour white over darker colours, and saves having to pre-think which areas I need to colour white first. Here are some examples of my work to show what I mean Looking at the black and white Schnauzer, you can see that I’ve made the shape of the eyebrows and beard by working back into the space with a black pencil. With the Westie, I have gone into the edges of Alfie’s fur with the rust pencil, to outline him. There are many examples of negative drawing and positive/negative space available on the internet (of course!), some of which I’ll share here: UK artist Rebecca Mills Negative space is used in photography and design and there are examples everywhere we can see in everyday life. Negative space is used a great deal in logo design as we see in the FedEx logo and the white arrow that is created in the negative space. Once you sharpen your eye to negative spaces you might find yourself spotting the hidden shapes in them everywhere. You can read more about this on Rebecca’s website. UK Artist Mike Sibley What do you see when you look at this picture below? Do you see an ancient black drinking cup? Maybe an ebony candlestick holder? These are the positive images. Or do you see two white faces both looking at each other? Think of these faces as the negative areas or what I call White Space. Imagine yourself seeing these two faces on white paper and filling in the space between them in black so the faces are revealed. This is Negative Drawing - seeing the space and not the line. Teaching yourself to see White Space is one of the best lessons you will ever learn. If you want more tips and to practice negative drawing take a look at “An introduction to negative drawing with Mike Sibley” published on the Art Instruction website. You can also find some articles and videos on the topic (pay to download) on Mike Sibley’s website. Other links to useful articles about negative drawing/space:
https://emilysnotebook.co.uk/all-posts/negative-space-drawing/ https://theartyteacher.com/what-is-negative-space-in-art/ The renowned graphic design artist, Escher, is known for using negative space in his art – read all about it here. You can also deploy negative space to great effect in paintings, as explained in this post on Draw Paint Academy. I hope you find this post informative - thank you for reading.
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Lawrence Art Society's exhibition returns to Devizes Town Hall 29 September to 1 October 2022 At the end of this month the major, three-day, annual exhibition held by our friends at the Lawrence Art Society takes place. Last year 250 artworks were exhibited with a total 'display' value of £50,000 which demonstrates how significant an undertaking it is to stage such an event. This year's exhibition will feature an extensive range of paintings in various styles, media and subject matter. Please do your best to support this exhibition by visiting it and/or telling your family and friends about it! Entry to the exhibition in Devizes is free; it's open from 9.30am-5.30pm each day, from Thursday 29 September to Saturday 1 October. Details are on the poster below, or more information is available on the Society's website. Calling all artists ... the 14th Annual Pound Arts Open is back! Corsham-based Pound Arts has announced the submission dates for entries to its forthcoming exhibition as 9am on Friday 16 September until midday on Friday 4 November, 2022. This is the largest exhibition of the year at Pound Arts and exhibitors have the chance to win one of three fantastic cash prizes (including £250 from Corsham Town Council and £200 from Right Angle Picture Framing, as well as the opportunity to win a solo exhibition at Pound Arts! Brief details are below with more information about criteria and how to enter available on the Pound Arts website here. Dates of the exhibition itself are yet to be announced. Good luck to everyone who submits an entry, especially members of Lacock Art Group! Please let the Committee know how you get on. Attention oil painters: limited opportunity to obtain free PDF of Ted Spurgeon's book "The Living Craft" If you are an oil painter who enjoys making your own mediums this book is a 'must have'. The current edition of Ted's book (edition 14), which is all about the creative process associated with oil painting, has now completely sold out so he is offering the PDF for free. He has spent many years exploring historic oil painting materials and methods and his book documents his exploration of ways of refining oil and creating mediums that are based on Old Master techniques. For a limited period - until the end of October - you can download a free PDF of the 500-page book. Given the size it may take some time to download! It comes highly recommended by one of our members who has followed its guidance and already made her own cold wax and will be having a go at making 'putty'! Take a look at Ted Spurgeon's website to find out more about the artist and his book which can be downloaded here. Finally, to find out about future exhibitions and demonstrations held by Lacock Art Group please visit our events page.
Thank you. A sunny, successful exhibition weekendIt was great to see, and welcome, so many visitors to our annual three-day, August Bank Holiday exhibition. The lovely, sunny, warm, dry weather helped visitor numbers return to somewhere close to pre-Covid levels, both to Lacock village itself and, as a consequence, to our exhibition. We'd like to say a huge 'thank you' to everyone who visited our exhibition over the weekend, including local people, those on a day out with their families, and visitors from further afield in the UK and abroad. As ever, in addition to human visitors, it was a pleasure to also welcome a variety of well-behaved four legged friends! A fun, friendly atmosphere prevailed and we are most appreciative of the many compliments we received about the standard of art on display. Thanks to all members who supported the exhibition, whether by exhibiting and/or assisting in its set-up and close-down. SerendipityOne serendipitous moment stands out from the exhibition. Fred Taylor, one of our member artists, often paints superb, highly detailed, realistic paintings of locomotives and his painting of the 'Penrice Castle' train was on display at our August exhibition. This train was built in June 1949 by the Swindon Works (GWR/British Railways) and retired from service in February 1965. By co-incidence, Graham Cripps and his daughter visited our exhibition on Sunday, out on a day-trip from Swindon. It transpires that not only did Graham recognise the Penrice Castle straight away, he actually worked on the train as a fireman for seven years in the 1950s! It was touching to see how moved Graham was by the memories that Fred's painting evoked for him and was a tribute to the quality of Fred's work. He then saw one of Fred's prints of another train - and he had also worked on that one too! Special thanks to Graham for letting us include this in our report. Photo of Graham Cripps courtesy of Greame McFaull. It's great to report that £2,283 worth of artworks were bought over the three day exhibition, just over double the amount of sales achieved from recent exhibitions earlier this year and in 2021. We sold a total of 39 pieces of art and 94 greetings cards, also a significant increase. Our thanks to everyone by so generously bought a painting or card in support of our art group. Visitors' voteOur fun 'visitors' vote' again featured throughout the exhibition and proved popular. Visitors voted for their favourite painting on display; this is just for fun, there is no prize, however, the artist whose painting receives the highest number of votes always appreciates the accolade. In total, 241 visitors cast a vote, and 106 paintings received a vote. And the winner, with 11 votes, is ... "Summer Evening Breeze" (shown below) by Kay Smith (acrylics). Congratulations Kay! A close runner up with 10 votes was "Bluebell Woods" by Maggie (aka Tracy Warne), followed by Mike Wilson's "Sorting the Catch" , in hot pursuit with nine votes. Tip for art group members on artwork transportation Large, framed paintings can be heavy to transport to exhibitions and may be vulnerable to damage if they are not wrapped and packed carefully. Karen Road, a LAG member, highly recommends using "Stiffy Bags" (please, no jokes people), a lightweight, bag designed specifically to protect art during transportation. You can find out all about them here. And finally ...
As one Lacock Art Group exhibition closes, the next one looms on the horizon. To find out when our next exhibition takes place, please visit our events page; we will release more information about it nearer the time. Thank you. Lacock Art Group's August exhibition
MELKSHAM FOOD & RIVER FESTIVAL - 3rd & 4th September 2022 This annual festival follows swiftly after our exhibition. Organised by the Festival Committee with support from the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and the Wiltshire Youth Canoe Club, this is the 7th year of the Food and River Festival. The 2-day late summer event takes place in the heart of Melksham, Wiltshire.
The Festival seeks to provide a platform for local food and drink producers, community groups, local entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. A range of activities, stalls and attractions take place in the park and on the river that will appeal to visitors of all ages on both Festival days. One of Lacock Art Group’s members, Chris Crosby, has a stall at the Festival where her own art will be on sale, together with some beautiful stained glass pieces created by her daughter-in-law. If you’re in the area over the Festival weekend please drop in and say hello to Chris and her team. Entry is FREE! After browsing the stalls and indulging in some retail therapy, you can relax and enjoy al fresco locally produced food and drink, while listening to live music and watching the boats on the river. To find out more about the festival: Email the organisers at info@melkshamfoodandriverfestival.co.uk. Alternatively look them up on Facebook or Instagram. Insightful demo delivered by Colin Brown for Lacock Art GroupBy Elspeth Wales Acrylic fine artist, Colin Brown, gave an insightful demonstration of his artistic process and technique to members of Lacock Art Group and visiting guests towards the end of July. He told the audience about his professional background and how, after completing a four year art course at Canterbury College of Art, he worked for 24 years as an illustrator-visualiser for advertising, design, and 3D agencies in Bath, Bristol, London and Europe. He draws a great deal on his visualization experience to inform the painting technique he uses today. Colin mainly paints street scenes from locations around the world, although has also branched out into painting racehorses for commissions from Cheltenham Racecourse. Whatever the subject, he always focuses on creating atmosphere and light, and bringing movement into his paintings, achieved through his dynamic style. You can see the influence of the Impressionist movement in his own style – free and loose, and unconstrained by detail. Claude Monet is one of Colin’s biggest inspirations, particularly the way Monet applied paint in single strokes of colour. Colin uses photos as the base reference for his paintings but explained that he makes up a lot of the content too – another nod to his past experience as a visualiser. It was interesting to see how he paints upside down, which is a technique that helps the brain to simplify the image in front of you by focusing on looking at the shapes and angles. Colin paints upside down from start to finish but at the demonstration he turned the painting the right way up for the benefit of the audience! Useful tips One of the tips he gave was to apply a pink ground to the canvas, which helps to exaggerate the brush strokes painted on top of the ground. The placement and direction of his brush strokes are random, decided in the moment. For the most part Colin uses synthetic flat brushes, switching to round brushes for more detailed sections of a painting, as shown in the image above. It’s important to keep the paint fresh while you paint and he finds that synthetic brushes cope better with the paint. He uses a metal ruler as a guide for painting straight lines, which worked well. There is never a focal point in his paintings; he believes it’s the overall value that’s important. To create darks he uses dark purple or dark green instead of black, and always puts some green into a sky to achieve a more realistic turquoise sky colour. And he paints the canvas going round in circles, layer upon layer. People attending were fully engaged in the demonstration and several asked some great questions, which Colin was happy to answer. It was also good to see a couple of prospective members, who are on our membership waiting list, attend the event. On the night we revived the use of a projector and big screen, placed on the stage, so that people at the back of the room could see. After a couple of false starts this worked very well in the end! Excellent feedback We received some great feedback afterwards from attendees about Colin’s demonstration, who found it highly informative as well as good fun. Our thanks go to Colin for making it so interesting and also for taking the time to chat to people in the interval. Above all, it was fascinating to watch Colin’s painting evolve in stages on the canvas, from upside down blocks of shape and angles, the emergence of more detail as he applied colour, to the finished painting that evokes the hustle, bustle and movement of a busy street market in Norwich. You can find out more about Colin and his work on the Buckingham Fine Art website. And finally, please take a look at our events page to find out about future demonstrations planned by Lacock Art Group. Lacock Art Group hosts acrylic specialist, Colin BrownIt's July already and we have a great demo by artist Colin Brown coming up on Thursday the 28th. If you're not aware of Colin, he works in acrylic and his paintings are very dynamic in style. All the details about the event are below. Shout out to LAG members: please help to promote the demo to people you know on your own social media, if you haven't already, by sharing the post about it published in our Lacock Art Group Facebook group. On the night please remember to arrive in good time so that the demo can start at 7pm prompt. Non-members of Lacock Art Group are welcome to attend, To help us monitor attendance numbers we ask that they email us at lacockartgroup21@gmail.com to let us know they are coming. Thank you. To find out more about our forthcoming activities, please visit our events page.
A note from Mark Peskett about his time as ChairDear Members, This will be the last blog/newsletter I write as Chair of your Committee. Joy and I have set an official handover date of 7 July, from then on she will assume the chairmanship and I know she will do a great job for you. I may or may not take a role in the new Committee; that is a decision for Joy. I took over chairmanship of the LAG Committee from Paul Fisher in March 2020, when the first wave of COVID was reaching a critical phase. Shortly after, COVID infection mitigations were imposed. These included restrictions on gatherings of people, which meant our Thursday evening meetings were suspended. During the lockdowns, the heartbeat of LAG was kept going by Zoom meetings. It was not easy to keep the impetus up, but I do feel that having that weekly video call gave those who wanted it a chance to talk to other members, not always about art, often everything except art! I really enjoyed some of those calls! So if you did participate regularly …. THANK YOU. Where we are today After several false starts due to ever-changing COVID rules, we are now back at our regular meetings. Natural and healthy attrition has allowed the intake of new members. Our Thursday evenings are now well attended and a real sense of dynamism pervades the hall. I really appreciate the enthusiasm. So here’s a special nod to new members! Moving forward, as confidence grows, I am sure we can get back to life drawing, more socialising and generally getting back to the ‘new normal’ – not sure I ever fit into that place! Setting priorities When I took over from Paul, who did a fantastic job, it was very unclear in my mind what our membership really wanted, with several events not being very well attended. Therefore, we sent out a questionnaire to all members to seek their views. The response was clear; members valued Thursday meetings, demonstrations and exhibitions. We therefore took the decision to focus on those priorities and spend less time on peripheral items. Your responses to the questionnaire naturally led to where your Committee should focus their time and resources. Several Committee changes were implemented in the interim, strengthening certain functions. In summary, your Committee has:
Special thanks to:
Website
A specific comment on our website. I am very pleased to say that following its launch in November last year the LAG website looks fresh, modern and is fit for purpose. I am very grateful to Elspeth for what was practically a full time job for a lot of 2021! However, as with any website it is a continual work in progress and requires members to submit paintings for their gallery pages on a regular basis. Remember, this is YOUR website for you, so please do use it to its full advantage. I am certain with the arrival of our new members and the ‘new normal’ that the priorities will evolve and change. That’s completely normal. I look forward to remaining a member of the LAG family under its new chair, whom I have committed to offering my support throughout the handover period. I firmly believe that for the Chair Thursday evening attendance is very important, leading from the front, so to speak. By stepping down I am looking forward to allowing myself more freedom to spend time with loved ones and with family, who seem to be producing offspring at an alarming rate! Many thanks to you all for your support throughout my time as Chair of LAG – it has been a pleasure. Mark On Sunday 12th June Biddestone was the location of LAGs first plein air event of 2022. The duck pond was particularly busy early in the morning as young children and their parents fed the ducks. Good for practicing the painting of water and reflections, it's an idyllic spot to take in some warm summer rays and lose oneself in painting. I was joined by Elspeth, who chose to paint a group of nearby buildings, honing her understanding of single point perspective, all good practice!
Some people are hesitant about plein air, for various reasons; lack of confidence, prying eyes, don't have the kit etc etc . My experience has always been positive and even if people do come over to look and chat, any comments are usually positive, and the fact is very little kit is needed. Getting out in the good weather is very enjoyable and can teach you a lot about your painting. Due to limited time, it forces you to paint more loosely, choose your materials carefully (no one wants to be transporting more than is necessary) and actually makes you realise how little is needed to get out and paint. I use these sessions to complete a sketch in my sketchbook, rarely do I use them as material for a larger painting, and of course sharing a couple of hours with fellow members makes it even more enjoyable. If you are interested in joining or suggesting plein air events, just broadcast it on the LAG WhatsApp group. If you are not a member of that group, contact Chris Crosby, who will add you. By Mark Peskett, Lacock Art Group Chair Dear Members, Natural attrition of our membership has meant a number of new members have joined LAG in the first half of 2022; I believe this small turnover is healthy and keeps our group dynamic. A warm welcome to those of you who have joined us recently and I hope you enjoy being part of the group! If you haven’t already done so do make sure you familiarise yourself with our website, which was completely re-vamped last autumn and re-launched in November 2021. As a member you have your own gallery space to use on our website so please take advantage of this facility if you haven’t already. Please send up to six photos initially (remember to give each one a title) of the paintings you want to display in your personal online gallery to Elspeth Wales at lacockartgroup21@gmail.com You will have noticed the absence of a newsletter recently, which is because your committee decided that a monthly newsletter was too frequent. We agreed to publish a newsletter on roughly a quarterly basis, after a demo and/or an exhibition. A less frequent newsletter will allow for more and improved content, and we’re mindful that people can quickly suffer email overload with content dropping into their inboxes on a daily basis. Additionally, Elspeth has been configuring the email marketing tool, Mailchimp, to distribute news items automatically (including newsletters) that we post on our website blog page. We can also use Mailchimp to email out other content relevant to LAG. The overall goal is to communicate to members from the Lacock Art Group email address, creating a consistent approach, rather than sending emails from various personal email addresses. Using Mailchimp also allows us to create GDPR compliant mailing lists easily. Subscribers will receive news updates from LAG, and we are aiming to broaden our audience of non-members who may be interested in signing up to our mailing list to receive news about upcoming demos, exhibitions and other activities. You will notice there is now a ‘subscribe’ button on our news/blog website page – if you know of anyone who might like to subscribe to receive our news please point them to that page. June exhibition in Lacock Our second exhibition of the year took place over the Jubilee weekend on 4-5 June. The weather was not particularly kind to us and, with Thursday and Friday being holidays, the village seemed eerily quiet. That said, over £1,000 of sales were achieved, so proceeds easily covered our costs. My thanks go to those who volunteered their time to help set up, man the desk, steward and take down the stands. Many thanks in particular to Linda Ridler who provided the van to take the boards to Ken Baldy’s house ready for a professional painter to give them a fresh coat of paint. We received numerous suggestions for improvements to the exhibition from members, which we’ll be assessing. The re-instatement of “vote for your favourite painting” slips and the striking floral voting box were well received by visitors. Children in particular took part and offered a welcome distraction to their parents. I know you’ve all been waiting to know the results so here they are: 190 votes were cast in total. 82 different paintings received a vote. And the winning painting, with eight votes, was ‘Bengal Kitty’ by Karen McGreevy. Congratulations Karen! Demonstration by Mike Skidmore On 19 May Mike Skidmore demonstrated his technique of painting a portrait using oils. Mike’s delivery was amusing and informative and made it look easy! He gave us numerous good tips on equipment, one particularly good example that I liked was the use of foil “Lazy Susan plates” to organise your oil paints, with the base flesh tone being in the middle well and the other tones in the wells around it. A big 'thank you' to Mike for such an enjoyable evening. Several non-members, mostly from Box Art Group, attended the demo, and it was great to welcome them. Overall the feedback was very positive. There were some comments about visibility, so we are reviewing our decision to stop the use of the cameras/projector for demos and work is in progress. We will not make recordings of demos, however, because the quality of the end product is simply not something we would be happy to post online; the skills or time to perform editing do not exist within the membership. Additionally, some artists now do not want their demos to be recorded unless they are paid a higher fee. Here are a few images taken at the demo: Mike Skidmore; his finished oil painting; and the audience. Finally, a reminder for you to check out forthcoming activities on the events page of our website.
Thank you. Come and see Lacock Art Group's next exhibition and art saleOriginal art work, prints and cards by more than 30 locally based amateur and semi-professional artists on display. Where: Lacock Village Hall When: Saturday 4 June and Sunday 5 June 2022. Doors open at 10.00am daily and close at 5.00pm. Free entry. Everyone's welcome - adults, children and pets! Image credit: Zebra by Karen McGreevy, a Lacock Art Group member
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