Brian Smith Workshop

Thank you to all the members who supported the watercolour workshop with Brian Smith, held on Friday 4th October at the Tearooms in the Manor Farm Craft Centre, Seale. This was a different venue for us, and I hope that everyone attending on the day enjoyed the workshop, glorious weather for the time of year and the bright comfortable venue. This was our first all day workshop this year, presented by Brian Smith from Eastbourne. Brian has been an artist/illustrator for over twenty five years and his style captures light and mood in his paintings. After a short introduction to eye lines, paper types and paint mixing methods, we then began the day's painting by working on the figure, and how to introduce it into our landscapes, moving on to the effect of light and dark tones on a single figure. Then after a tea break for a selection of beverages and home made bakery on sale at the tearooms, we cracked on with the painting and Brian showed us how to use items such as a penknife and credit card to move the paint around the paper giving us several interesting effects. Using these techniques we divided our paper into three sections with masking tape and produced three small paintings under our own steam, practicing fence posts, dry stone walls and grasses, remove the tape and we had three minature landscapes/scenes! After lunch we produced another couple of masterpieces on a larger scale than before. We painted a coastal cliff scene (moody and wet), followed by a sunset scene using earthy, warm colours. Well most of us did! My attempt at the latter has been relegated to the "must try harder next time pile" to be used as colour testing paper, after painting the Captain Pugwash Ship in the foreground of the scene!  This was a very full day, and were all kept busy producing masterpieces of one description or another, and I am sure everyone left with another little tip to try next time we pick up the brushes! Thank you again to Brian for a very good workshop, and to Janice and the staff at the tearooms for allowing us to use the venue and for good food and service on the day. It was certainly different, as the regulars at the tearoom were milling around while the workshop was in progress however this did not distract us on the day, and it made for a good social day out too. We also had a couple of visitors from Germany. Annette and Birgit who are both artists exhibiting at the Visitor Centre in Aldershot. They came along to try their hand at watercolour as part of the week they had planned to spend in Hampshire. And, hello to Marie and Beryl, (non members), who also joined us for the day. And to Mary Warner who managed to attend for the afternoon session. Should anyone have an idea for future workshops, please let me know. We are not restricted by numbers at the Farnborough Community Centre for the half day workshops, however should we arrange more day long workshops at the Tearooms we will be restricted to twelve people for the day due to the size of the venue, as Janice has regular customers she has to cater for so space is at a premium there. We also need to cover the cost of the artist on workshop days, so the cost of future workshops will vary depending on our outgoings. We also need people to support workshops to enable us to have them so please pass on the word when we do organise something, if there are limited spaces on future events, members of the BVGA will have priority over non-members for places. Sandra