AWS News, March 2015, Page 1

Next meeting

The next meeting is Monday 13th April 1pm at the Glenfield Memorial Hall, Hall Road, Glenfield.
Our guest speaker will be Richard Thompson, Director of the International Art Centre Parnell, the leading auction house in Auckland for historical paintings. He will present New Zealand historical watercolour painters. This is the first time we have a gallery presenter and this presentation will be of great relevance and interest to all members.
The next challenge topics are:

April:

A storm

May:

Flight (a bird or aeroplane or something suggesting flight)

Report from the February Meeting

Dennis Clark was our speaker this month. Dennis gave the critique and had again lots of good advice. Dennis discussed perspective, light and shadow and aspects of composition. Overall Dennis noted the strong showing and the high quality of the work. Indeed we had a very good turnout for the meeting. Afterwards Dennis gave us first a brief outline of his many decades of practice as an artist and a teacher. Then Dennis gave a demonstration how to create a great picture with basic materials. Working from a photograph, he explained how this must be interpreted in order to give a good watercolour: some things have to be added, some removed, certain incidences have to be corrected. It was amazing to see in what short time Dennis turned an inconspicuous, poorly lit photo from a public domain website into a sunny countryside. It surely helped though that Dennis excels in drawings as well. -gw

Report from Jacky Pearson's Workshop

Jacky's Workshop was a great experience for all participants. It paid off that we had ample of time, and we got a lot of things done without any rush. The topic was boats this time, but Jacky let us train lot of important general watercolor skills as well. One focus was shadows; Jacky explained that there are eight distinct steps of shadows, not to mention the lit areas. Another focus was on shapes; Jacky introduced a transition from basic shapes such as boxes and cylinders to curved forms, plus elements of exaggeration and shortening owed to perspective. Then there were numerous other details such as reflections, color temperature etc. The afternoon was reserved for a single painting, and in the end it was impressive that, without exaggeration, every participants had a wholly presentable work. -gw