Term 1: 11 february – 2 april Term 2: 13 may- 2 july Term 3: 5 august – 24 september Term 4: 21 october-10 december  

What a term this has been. I feel as if the exercises we did this term shifted everyone’s process and turned us into real painters. Firstly we drew for about three days.Painting flowers is similar to doing portrait work.Each flower  has its different energy and form and they are excellent for good observation exercises, getting […]

    Here are a couple of Manet’s flowers and a contemporary floral work …floral arrangements are quite complex to tackle straight off so we will do single studies to start with and maybe move onto  several flowers in a vase like the Manets. Drawing Flowers is like portrait work really – very good for […]

This Term we used mixed media to make an abstract still life When you are not using realism to help make the composition, you must fall back on the formal abstract elements (point line shape tone texture etc ) They are your building blocks,and judiciously used, they create strength and structure, balance, movement, interest and […]

      These are all still life abstracts by Picasso It is the last painting called “Still Life with Pitcher” that I saw at new year at the Guggenheim in NYC and which bowled me over.It was as if I stood in front of it and saw right into Picasso’s process. Again ( at […]

This term we continued our work with relationships – Bronte our model posed with just a few “things” around her and we shuffled them round to see how her relationship with them  changed. Hammershoi  sat on our collective shoulders and we tried to be as judicious as he was in placing the elements in  his […]

Figure and thing I would like this term to focus on the relationship of the figure with her surroundings.. this can be 1: SIGHTING : relationship in proportion and scale( as in how big is she in relation to the table)  and how these change when viewed from different angles(ie from above and from below) […]

Next term hopefully we can have the lovely Victoria,our tango dancer model, back to pose for us.Fingers crossed she gets her visa extended. New Zealand needs more tango dancers. We will do some draped poses this time and put the model in relation to a chair, a table,- say three things…think Hammershoi   and Diebenkorn […]

We had a great trip to Western springs Park for some location sketching of figures in the landscape. Observing how figures relate to one another and to the environment. Also how important it is to do some good observation and drawing before you start to paint from reference photographs.Photographs are excellent “aide- memoires”but as the […]