Themed nights, Events and Outings

We aim to arrange several outings and to bring expert tutors in several times each year to help our members to improve their work.  Although members will have priority - on a first come first served basis - we can offer places to non-members provided they are willing to be put on a reserved list.  So, if you see something you fancy and are not already a member then feel free to get in touch via the contacts page and we will put your name down.   

Another great workshop from Peter Woolley in April 2022.  We all learned a lot from this deomstration which focussed on trees, rocks and water - all difficult to accomplish in watercolour. 

Fingers crossed, our annual exhibition will go ahead as normal this October. We intend to create a Covid-safe environment where visitors can enjoy our pictures and refreshments without to much disruption.

Our Annual Exhibition, due on 3rd and 4th October this year has had to be cancelled because of the Covid 19 virus. We are still painting during the lockdown periods which you can see on the lockdown pages.  

We have an opportunity to display our work in the Land of Oak and Iron Heritage centre at Winlaton Mill for the whole of May 2020.

We have invited John Harrison back again this year following his successful workshop last year. 

A Saturday workshop has been arranged with Peter Woolley on 1st August 2020.  He is a watercolour artist whose focus on 'a light touch and building layers' helps budding watercolourists achieve much better results.  He lives in Yorkshire  and many of his pictures reflect his passion for the area - stone buildings, modest streams, trees and sheep.  You can see his pictures at www.peterwoolley.co.uk

This workshop was spread over 2 days to cater for the Covid issue and social distancing.  It went really well and Peter was informative, funny and helpful. He broke each session down into a drawing first, followed by a very rough light underpainting, starting with the trees and sky using phalo blue and cadmium yellow in a wet in wet process. He then used the same colours but mixed together on the palette to  put some blobs and dots into the trees, taking care not to paint every leaf.  He then used a mixture of ultramarine and burnt umber to put the undercoat on the walls, taking care to leave highlights on the tops of the stones, and when this was dry, followed it up with another stronger coat of the same mixture.  He took care not to cover all the undercoat but to leave lots of it as lighter areas.  The same mixture again was used to produce some darker tones in the walls. The road was a thinnish coat of burnt umber leaving a few highlight spots to represent small stones.  His sheep were done with a dirty wash of cadmium and burnt umber.  He used the same colours for the walls to do the tree trunks, branches.  This mixture of ultramarine and burnt umber was used to produce a wide variety of tones - adding more blue to cool it down and a tiny touch of alizarin crimson to warm it up. His final session was to put in some cool shadows, following the contours of the verges and road and a few darks in the trees and in the cracks of the wall.  The big thing here was he waited until each layer dried before doing any more. 

There is a 'you tube' video showing him painting his alternative picture the 'Falls of Dochart' which looks well worth a visit. This is the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSoKJmFswx4&t=12s

just copy and paste it into your browser's search box. 

This is the original picture painted by Peter Woolley.  Below are our attempts to follow his tuition. Brilliant to see the variations. All are gorgeous. If you want your picture to be more like Peter's, you can check your picture against his to see what you might want to improve for example - my tree leaves are not clumped enough !

The Annual General Meeting will be held on 19th February.  All subs must be paid before this date.  Unless hall hire fees go up significantly, it is quite likely that we will still charge only £20 per year per member.  

We are preparing to hold an exhibition on the second floor of Newcastle Library from 9th January to the 6th February.

About once a month members are invited to participate in a themed night where they can try out something different.  These nights are organised by members who volunteer to provide the ideas and perhaps also reference material.  The latest one was to have a go at painting on velvet.  The reference material was animals because with velvet it's possible to get a very nice impression of fur as you can see from the picture by Carole Moore and Ann Flint below.