Skyscapes in oil - Nelly van Hijfte, Tuesday mornings



In Nellie’s class, a week ago, students were given a photocopy of a cloudy sky and a large sheet of canvas.  Using wet on wet techniques they made their own cloudy skies and allowed them to dry.   This week they were invited to ‘decorate’ the skies by painting on top of the dry skyscapes, giving fun and very different results.  Some examples of both before and after are shown here in the blog.

Jenny

Jacqueline

Claudine

Nan

 Eugène



Vanessa

Françoise

by Charmian Murley

Valentine variety in aquarelle

We took a break from the "Roses without Thorns", and dedicated last week's aquarelle session to valentine's day - as our theme du jour. And lots of interesting work came out of that, as different personalities think different thoughts with a theme like this! Angels, cupids, hearts - and yes, roses...

 Angel by Cathie van der Stel - note the peaceful wise expression

 Cupid by Bibbi Isaksson. This is just a try out, he doesn't even have his wings - but look at the light, his expression and the softness of his skin...

 Cupid, hearts and roses by Edith Alborni - done with humor as a kind of cartoon and that worked out well!!

 We had Rhoda Seymour-Dale visiting who hadn't been drawing or painting for a long time. She started out carefully with a still life and then couldn't stop! I think she's ready for a bit of paint now...we look forward to seeing her approach to watercolours...

Bibbi's little girl with ancient eyes (and roses)

Not finished but developing into a gorgeous painting, these roses by Sandra Seymour-Dale

And the next version of Anna-Karin Fast's Roses without thorns, the christmas roses... she's not quite happy with them but I think they are wonderful. Anna-Karin has a certain, recognizeable spontaneous style... More about that in coming posts...

There was much more work done, projects like the white still life and the trainer were finished...

The white still life, finished and stronger than ever - by Ann Edwards

The white still life by Edith Alborni - completed!

 The trainer by Edith Alborni - Completed!

...and other projects are still ongoing:

Marina Teding van Berhout's hands - still going on...

Saturday painting group with Pim de Jong

For those who cannot easily join the Hangar groups during work days, Pim de Jongh has a painting class on Saturday. Starting around 9.30 and finishes in the afternoon. It is an atelier libre, everybody brings their own subject and inspiration and Pim helps out and gives tailored advice. The attendees usually work with acrylic paint, the atmosphere is wonderful and the work very interesting!!

Here are some examples

Rose-Marie's mysterious still life

Edith's wonderful sunny houses

Flo with a composition of poetic flowers and threatening thorns

The painting of the first picture in theis post, now finished - by Julia

and another artwork by Julia

Pim is on his way to the coffeemachine I bet

by Edith Alborni

A dozen aquarellista's on a Tuesday afternoon

big fun at the 'outcast' table

Twelve aquarellistas, three levels, two subjects and one (slightly) chaotic afternoon last Tuesday. Yet the company (combined with Marina's famous tea) made everybody feel comfortable - and some great work was achieved! The starters and Edith did a "washing" exercise which will in the coming weeks be finished, with the suggestion of volume...

4 exercises, washed and already beginning to look voluminous

The other part of the group was working on the Grand Prix, in other words, thinking, experimenting, researching and creating around the theme "Roses without thorns"... Shall we take it literally, have peonies or Christmas roses as subjects? Or use the symbolic value and express total innocence? Or paint regular roses with a twist... or something else... It is an inspiring subject, so much is clear - and it will give us many weeks of fun... Here's an overview...

Edith Alborni covered her two roses with masking fluid, added a dark background and behold the stunning result!

Anna-Karin Fast worked on Christmas roses - with her broken brush, now repaired!!

Cathie was doodling a bit and ended up with these wonderfully fragile -eh- little flowers... you can almost smell them...

Marina Teding van Berkhout is purely researching for a perfect, wet-in-wet 'handwriting' and she's getting there

Sandra Seymour-Dale's half-finished delicate rose (no thorns)

Lies Timmermans, just visiting for 1 week from Switzerland (luckily returning within 2 months) started a brilliant rose - that she is going to finish at home

Bibbi Isaksson just returned from Sweden - she was thinking in the direction of innocence last week... but with her creative mind that may change! More than once even...

And I painted a rose as a tribute to the boy David, son of a friend, who went missing and after 3 weeks of frantic searching by his family and friends was found dead. We'll dearly miss him.

Live Model drawing - Marina Kulik - 31/01/2011

Meet last week's model drawing crew:

Click on the picture to enlarge

As you can see, there's deep concentration during the live model class... we had a great time last Monday, with one of our favourite models, Carolyn, who sat beautifully for 2 hours! But as always we started with a couple of quick poses - it's a good warming up and becuase there is no time to think, the drawings are always spontaneous and often surprisingly accurate!

...five short poses...

...and two longer ones... 

Hangar visit to the Hans Hartung Foundation

On Tuesday this week Anne-Marie Viborel had organized a visit to the Hans Hartung Foundation. About 20 members found their way to Antibes. The tour started with a presentation of the buildings and the property. We then moved on to see the section devoted to Anna-Eva Bergman. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and answers all our questions. We were shown some of her artwork – both illustrations for books and magazines and the abstracts she did later on in her life. They were stunning to say the least.

Hangar members looking at abstract versions of the coast of Finmark (Norway)

Inside the treasury – literally hundreds of her paintings and thousands of her illustrations.

Here we see “Silver Mountain”

The next part of the visit was to the Hans Hartung Section. We got to see his atelier. What really impressed us was the large selections of tools he used to create his masterpieces. We were also impressed by his productivity – and in the “exhibition” area, we go to see an example of what he was capable of producing in one day. We were shown many examples of his work from early days where everything was well planned and worked out – up until the last part of his life where his work was more spontaneous.

A selection of Hans Hartung’s painting tools

The result of a day’s work

Not only did Hans Hartung uses brushes – but a wide range of building materials.

by Celina Schou

An Abstract Marathon Session

A fairly good marathon runner will complete the distance in 3 hours. This is the same amount of time as we have on the Monday evenings to do our abstract painting. This Monday everyone was really energic and worked on their canvases as you can see from the paintings below. Everyone is preparing for the upcoming exhibition this summer in Theoule-sur-Mer. So far everyone has completed at least one painting – and the really fast painters are now on their fourth or fifth.

Merete Frickman, Marie Hélène Butet and Anne-Marie Viborel hard at work

Irene Olkkonen and Michele de Laat hard at work

Pim suggesting to Tatiana Koltchine what painting technique to use

by Celina Schou