Cambridge Drawing Society Annual Exhibition

Last week the Annual Exhibition of the Cambridge Drawing Society was held in the Guildhall, Cambridge. Over 280 works were on display. 26 candidates applied for membership, of whom 11 were accepted.
After the initial hand in day, the work really begins.
The selection procedure is first with nine members sitting on the committee, including myself as President. It is a totally democratic and ,of course,highly subjective  process. A different panel would come up with a totally different set of choices.

 
Selected work is laid out.

Later, screens are erected ready for the following day when everything is hung.
It can be somewhat daunting when faced with 280 works and an array of blank screens. Will we have enough, will we have too many? How to best balance them all colour wise , subject wise. It's rather like trying to do a large jig saw puzzle without the picture.

But I had a marvelous team  and the whole exhibition was hanging by lunchtime.

But then comes the fine tuning. Straightening pictures, labelling, cataloguing and , of course, preparing for the Private View.

The Private View was a great success with over 150 in attendance including the Mayor and Mayoress of Cambridge. A large number of paintings were sold and unfortunately , one was stolen. However, the police recovered it quickly after a tip off from a member of the public that a drunken man was lying on the ground at the bus station clutching a work of art. For the second year in a row we hit the headlines in the local press. Last year, a picture of a fish was stolen. This year, it was an owl. Perhaps a pattern is emerging?

The exhibition contained a huge range of styles, subject matter and mediums, from oils to acrylics, watercolours,etchings, wood engravings, mono prints and sculpture. Below, are just a few.

        Karen Stamper     Essaouria 1         Collage

      Stephen Roberts       " Dog Walkers, Grantchester"  oils

       Suzanne Parsonson   "Catching Up"   Graphite and Fabric

        Mohammed Djazmi      " Fallen"    Pencil


It was a great success as an exhibition with over 300 visitors per day, 89 works sold and sales of over £13,000.

The Cambridge Drawing Society's next exhibition will be at St. Faith's School in Cambridge from October 27th - November 3rd

Success at the Cambridge Drawing Society Exhibition

Last week, the Cambridge Drawing Society held its Autumn exhibition at St. Faith's School in Cambridge. It was a large display, with over 200 paintings on show. There was a huge diversity of techniques and subject matter. They ranged from watercolours to pastels , oils, acrylics, etchings and sculpture. There was something for all tastes whether it be landscape, portrait, life, or abstract.

The public were asked to vote for their favourite work and I am delighted to say that two of my paintings were in the top three.

" Paul" came first.






"Michael" was second equal.

Portrait workshop in Grantchester

Yesterday, I ran my first Portrait workshop in Grantchester, near Cambridge. I am pleased to say it was both successful and enjoyable. Ten students attended from various art clubs and societies bringing a whole range of skills and techniques . Some worked in oils, others in acrylic, watercolour or pastel producing a huge variety of work.


I began by talking about the basics. How to draw a head and get a likeness. I explained about proportion and tone before moving on to do two 20 minute practical demonstrations. The idea was to show a couple of different approaches to painting a portrait in oils. The first was a fairly traditional method establishing the drawing first ( on this occasion in paint.) before moving on to add the colour.




Here the canvas has been pre-stained with raw umber. The drawing was done with diluted burnt sienna. As I do this, I am measuring proportions , angles and running verticals and horizontals to fix the features. Only when happy that everything is in the right place would I begin to add colour. It is a safe approach.

My second quick demonstration was the high risk method. No preliminary drawing . Straight in with the palette knife going for colour and large tonal masses. My audience was fairly stunned at the initial, apparently, child-like daubs. I then move on to applying thick paint with brushes. Rich, juicy impasto. Some wonderful accidental effects on which I try to capitalize. Now is the time I start to panic. Will anything emerge from this chaos? Will this be my Waterloo? Time to impose a certain control, to begin to position features and establish a likeness. To my relief, a human face gradually begins to emerge. I have now managed to capture my audience. I am encouraged by their responses and by the excitement that is being engendered by the process.


I should hastily add that neither of my 25 minute demos did justice to the model, poor girl!


At the beginning of this blog, I indicated the range of students attending. Below. I show a few samples of the work they produced.











As is clear from these few paintings, none of them were painting "in the style of" John Glover. Nothing is more depressing than to see a group of students slavishly copying /imitating the tutor and my aim is to encourage everyone to develop their own "vision."



I will be running the following workshops in Grantchester.

Saturday 12 February. Life Drawing/Painting

Saturday 12th March. Portrait

For full details e-mail john@gloverart.co.uk or tel. 01284 810 460

West Norfolk Arts Centre

This week I was invited to teach two courses next year at West Norfolk Arts Centre.

The Centre is situated in the delightful conservation village of Castle Rising , close to the Sandringham estate, nature reserves, woodlands and the north Norfolk Coast.

Established in 1993 by Ros and Richard Cartwright, it enjoys an excellent reputation as a quality Painting Course provider both in the U.K. and abroad. Each year, approximately forty painting courses are held in West Norfolk and four structured painting courses abroad. This year, Egypt, Venice, Tuscany and Skiathos were on the itinerary.

The range of courses on offer is huge, from pen and wash to acrylics, oils, pastels, wildlife , abstraction, botanical painting etc.

In 2011, I will be teaching the following. " The art of Gouache Painting" July 23/24 and "Portraiture" October 28, 29, 30th.

For information on the west Norfolk Arts Centre and all the courses it runs go to www.westnorfolkartscentre.co.uk

An artist’s journal from John Glover

Now it is time to concentrate on various portrait painting commissions. I have commisions to paint four children. A six year old in oils and three others , ranging in age from four to ten, in charcoal.

I also have a large double portrait in oils of the Sheriff of Huntingdon and her husband to complete.

Teaching continues also. I teach three classes a week at the Lothbury centre near Newmarket. Portrait painting, oils and acrylics, and of course my own paintings for pleasure. I also run day schools on portraits or life drawing and painting, at Grantchester and Barrow. These are held on a Saturday or Sunday and last from 10-4

Something else which is proving popular is one to one tuition whereby I ask any student to bring along samples of their work for review. We then work on a project together and I set ‘homework’ for the following session.

Bookings for me to demonstrate to art groups continue to come in for next year. The latest are for a landscape demo to the Comberton art group and a watercolour portrait demo to the Bury Art Society.

Next September, 3-10 th, I will be teaching during the Art Holiday for Inspiration Holidays in Menorca.

If you are interested in any of the above art holidays, art classes, painting workshops or art demonstrations please contact me on 01284 810 460 or e-mail me at john@gloverart.co.uk

A traditional method of painting a portrait

In this blog, I will demonstrate a much more traditional method of creating a portrait. In my previous one, it was the “alla prima” method. i.e. painting direct and tackling both tone and colour at the same time. Here the idea is to focus on the drawing and tone, before considering the use of colour.
To speed the process up, I will use acrylics as an underpainting and will be working on board primed with acrylic gesso.

I use titanium white, raw umber, viridian green and Paynes grey. The aim is to produce an almost ghostly image, with the depth of tone lighter than in the finished work. If I make it too dark I will be unable to apply my coloured glazes successfully.
The image shown is after about an hour’s work. I am getting the tilt of the head, the basic proportions and have begun to establish the features. Because acrylics dry so rapidly, it is easy to obliterate mistakes and move things around.