ENTRANCE TO THE LAVENDAR FARM

 BE CAREFUL!  The road is very busy. The turning is to the right just over the brow of a hill past the turning to Nomansland on the left.

MORE PICTURES FROM THE EXHIBITION - ARTISTS WITH THEIR WORK

Ali McShea with her pots

Claire Palmer

Jean Kirby

Glenys Courtney

ADVENTUROUS ARTISTS AT THE LAVENDAR FARM

ADVENTUROUS ARTISTS SKETCHING GROUP

Our next outing is on:
Friday 9th September 10.15 am at NEW FOREST LAVENDER at Landford off the A36 road to Salisbury.
It is around 7 miles from Totton.
http://www.newforestlavender.com/.
New Forest Lavender,
Giles Lane, Landford, SP5 2BG
Tel. 01794 323314
There is a plant nursery, gift shop and tea-room.

After the Shoe Inn look for Giles Lane - the turning for Romwy Power Machinery and New Forest Lavendar on the right-hand side. It is a small country lane and the dark signs are easy to miss. Travel a few hundred yards along the lane and turn into the car park or park carefully in the lane.
Meet at 10.15 am at the entrance to the tea-rooms. I suggest bringing a stool so that you can get the best position to sketch. We will break for refreshments at 11.30 a.m.

Di Alexander Programme Co-ordinator Tel.07979905192

CLOSE-UP COMPETITION

TOTTON ART SOCIETY

‘CLOSE-UP’ COMPETITION ENTRY FORM 2016


NAME OF ARTIST
EMAIL ADDRESS



TELEPHONE NUMBER


MEDIUM
TITLE





PLEASE GIVE THE TOP SECTION OF THIS FORM TO DI ALEXANDER
on or before Wed 28TH September 2016. Entries may also be sent via email.




……………………………………………………………………………………………



TOTTON ART SOCIETY CLOSE-UP COMPETITION

ARTIST TO RETAIN THIS SECTION


NAME OF ARTIST





MEDIUM
TITLE





KEEP THIS SECTION OF FORM.
HAND IN ARTWORK BY 7-20 p.m. ON 26TH OCTOBER at the Three Score Club, Totton



T.A.S. ‘CLOSE-UP’ COMPETITION: GUIDANCE NOTES

1. Entry is limited to Totton Art Society members. The top section of the entry form to each Di Alexander Programme Co-ordinator on or before Wed 28TH September 2016

2. You may enter up to 2 works in any 2-dimensional medium.

3 Your entry/entries should represent an object or living thing
viewed from close-up for example: From a distance of around
25 cms (10 inches). You should use your own sketch or
photograph as a reference, not a photograph obtained without
permission.

4 The dimensions of your work may be any size.

5 Pease DO NOT SIGN YOUR WORK. Your name and telephone number should be on a LABEL ON THE BACK.

6 To give yourself the best chance of winning your work should be well-presented (e.g. in a frame, mount or on a deep-edged canvas), but it does not have to be finished and sealed for hanging.

7 Entries should be submitted for display at the T.A.S. meeting before 7.20 p.m. on Wednesday 26th October at the Three Score Club.

8 The winning entry will be announced at the same meeting.

9 Once the artist has signed the work and taken a photograph it will be sent to the Programme Co-ordinator after the meeting to order the prize.

10 The prize will be a set of 4 coasters featuring a photograph of the winning entry. This will be produced by Branding Worx (Eling Lane Totton Tel. 023 80869248.)

11 All competition entries may also be featured on the society’s website and blog.

12 There may be an opportunity to show all of the (now signed) entries at the Totton Art Society One Day Sale on Saturday 12th November for publicity purposes.

This is a new event for Totton Art Society, inspired by the Claire
Harrison’s artwork. There is no entry fee. Please support us by
entering!¬¬¬¬


Organiser: Di Alexander on behalf of Totton Art Society
Address: 4 Arundel Road. Totton,, Southampton, SO40 3BH
Tel. 07979905192 Email: dga@dialexander.co.uk

COLLECTION OF EXHIBITS

DON'T FORGET! COLLECT YOUR PAINTINGS ETC ON SATURDAY AT 5PM!

OCTOBER 1ST WORKSHOPS

Ruth's workshop is full but there are some places on Pat's card making workshop. The price is £5 with all materials supplied by Pat. Claire will be taking bookings at the Demo evening on 28th September.

BEST EXHIBITION PICTURE

On the Pre-view evening everyone voted for the best painting in the Exhibition. The result was Di Alexander's painting "Finger-lickin.!"  A beautiful picture - congratulations and well done Di!

Di with painting

"Finger-lickin !"

MORE PICTURES FROM THE EXHIBITION PREVIEW EVENING

Kate and Alison

Viewers

EXHIBITION OPENING

At 9am everything was ready for the handing in of our pictures for the Exhibition. The Hanging Team work hard preparing for this day and it is thanks to their hard work that we have an exhibition. At 7-30 pm our chairman Kate introduced Alison Board who had kindly agreed to officially open the exhibition and we could see all the results of a year's work on the stands. A big "thank you" is due to all members who attended and made the evening such a success and to all those involved in organising the exhibition and helping during the coming week.  



 



A crowded room

Open!

 

Introduction

I declare the Exhibition.....

 

DIGITAL ART

At the meeting on 24th August Caroline Rackham will talk on Digital Art and do a demonstration picture.
See website for full details.

EXHIBITION OPENING

A MESSAGE FROM DI ALEXANDER RE. EXHIBITION OPENING

"The Committee are delighted to be able to inform you that ALISON BOARD, the Dorset professional artist who gave us such a wonderful and entertaining demonstration several months ago, has very kindly agreed to come and open our Summer Exhibition at the PREVIEW EVENING on 

FRIDAY, 19TH AUGUST at 7.30 p.m.  It would therefore be wonderful if members could show their appreciation of her interest in seeing our work by coming along and supporting the occasion.  She commented at the demonstration evening what a great group we were and how she had enjoyed herself.  This is our chance to prove to her how right she was!

 

Check out her website again   www.alisoncboard-fineart.co.uk  There are also several great video demonstrations on Youtube

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AUlmyvJR0A

 

BEST PAINTING AWARD

There will be an award for the best painting chosen by everyone present at the Preview. The winning painting will be displayed with a rosettte  for the duration of the exhibition.

 

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible there, plus any guest you might like to invite.  Don't forget there will be wine and nibbles to help the evening along!"

 

 

 

At the workshop on October 1st. Ruth will be painting "Poppies" not a posy.

HANDING IN for the Exhibition is August 19th from 9-10 am. in the Palm Room. The private view is in the evening 7-30 to 9-30 pm. also in the Palm Room.

 

The next DEMONSTRATION EVENING is on August 24th when Caroline Rackham will talk about different types of digital art and do a demonstration picture.

OCTOBER WORKSHOP DAY

 

 On October 1st there will be a workshop day when Ruth Edwards will help with painting a posy in watercolour and Pat Garvey will run a card making workshop.

Claire will be taking names and giving further details at the next Demo evening.

Painting with Claire Harrison

 

Claire started painting at the early age of three and as, she was also very interested in natural history, gravitated towards the natural world for her subjects. She started her career by hiring a hall for an exhibition in six months time and then worked on producing the paintings to fill it!  These early works were produced using photographs and Photoshop to obtain manipulated images as a basis for her paintings.

 Now Claire spends longer on sketching than painting . She first draws in ink with a Rotring pen and produces photocopies of the drawing and then experiments with different colours on the copies.  She does a careful colour study for each painting using colour pencils as well as paint.

Pattern ideas come from an intensive study of Islamic Art. Also ideas based on  Fibonacci numbers and fractal patterns form a starting point for much of her work. Fractals are complex patterns repeated constantly and in diminishing size eg snowflakes or the chambers in a Nautilus shell. She repeats the main image in a pattern within it eg a daisy repeated as a pattern making the spirals on the daisy's centre. If the spirals on a daisy centre or pine cone are counted in one direction a Fibonacci number is arrived at. If counted in the other direction the result is the neighbouring number in the series. Each Fibonacci number is formed by adding the two numbers before it:-

                       0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 etc 

Claire then showed us some pictures of dragonfly wings, foxgloves, snail shells, dandelion heads and violas to illustrate the above points before demonstrating her working method for her daisy painting.

Gesso is not used on a base but she uses MDF board soaked with water and painted with a thin layer of acrylic allowing the colours to mix such as red, yellow or white.

This process is continued by putting on firstly thin layers of oil paint and then finally thick layers. This produces a translucency to the final painting as the lower layers shine through. The medium she uses for the first layers is Spectagel which is fast drying. Other layers are painted using Liquin as the medium and this allows the paint to run. Impasto medium is used for the final layers. Colours are mixed on the board.

Claire traces her daisy drawing onto the canvas and paints the daisies with thin watercolour and a fine brush. The petals are then sketched in. She then goes over the whole with oil paint with linseed oil and uses linseed oil to blend in the tonal areas where the petals join the disc.  The painting takes a week to dry in hot weather but normally 2 to 3 weeks. Claire usually allows a month for drying for an exhibition painting. As it usually takes 6 months to complete one painting it means that Claire is multi-tasking with a few paintings being produced at any one time.

This was a fascinating evening and hopefully inspired everyone to try to produce a close-up painting for the competition in September.