Where: Maenclochog Community Hall

When: Friday May 11th at 7pm

With an exhibition of new  paintings (open from 5pm).

Tickets for talk £5

These exciting workshops are designed both to hone drawing skills by learning to look in different ways, and to challenge and re-animate ways of using water-based paint media. . . . → Read More: Workshops with Elizabeth Haines 2012]]> Experimenting with mixed media – and other things

Workshops with Elizabeth Haines 2012

Venue – Bryn Morris studio and barn

Fee £40 per day,  £45 for the Feltmaking, to include materials.  10 – 4.30pm.  Bring own lunch.   Tea and coffee provided.    6-8 people.

These exciting workshops are designed both to hone drawing skills by learning to look in different ways, and to challenge and re-animate ways of using water-based paint media. We always start by drawing –  with the left hand (if normally right handed), looking at the shapes in between objects (‘negative shapes’), taking a line for a walk, drawing with eyes shut, anything to both loosen up and refine habitual ways of seeing. We start with simple line, move on to tone and finally to colour. For the two printing workshops, these drawings are used as images for making prints.

Working from initial marks, the painted image is allowed to evolve, disintegrate and re-emerge, rather than having a particular idea or motif in mind from the outset. Through sabotaging our habitual ways of working we allow the subconscious to surprise us, and the medium itself to shine without being constrained by what the picture is ‘supposed to be’. We learn to watch the unpredictable image as it emerges, and to respond to it. By experimenting like this we can really free ourselves up, and these techniques can be incorporated later into any genre such as landscape, still life or figure painting. Watercolour and gouache can be used as a precursor to the mixed media, including collage, collograph and monoprint, where this same approach is still relevant.

If there are people who have already been to one of these workshops, and need to develop their previous work, or want to do something slightly different, then the programme can be adjusted to individual needs. The negative shape drawing is, however, an essential ‘warmer up’ to any kind of painting.

I’m again doing some ‘special interest’ workshops again, (see below) where we will start with drawing and then move on to a specific project. No previous experience is necessary.

NEW for this year are Feltmaking with Carolyn Young, and Monoprinting and Collograph, both of which I have been experimenting with over the winter.

Dates for 2012:

May  Tuesday 15^th  Mixed media and COLLOGRAPH. Collographic plates are made by creating a low relief surface with all manner of materials – card, string, cork, natural fibres and materials. These are stuck onto card, varnished and then used as the printing plate.

May   31^st Thursday Mixed media painting

June  Saturday 16^th  Mixed media and MONOPRINT Monoprinting is one of the simplest and most effective printing techniques: ink up the plate and then draw on the back of the printing paper, which is placed face down onto the plate. A marvellous range of effects can be explored.

July   Sunday 1^st Watercolour Just transparent paint on white paper, but there is so much more to it than that. This most subtle of mediums requires above all a fluency achieved through constant practice, a mixture of panache and control.  As last year, we look at some of the early masters, Turner, Girtin, Bonnington, as well as contemporary practitioners. The day includes simple colour mixing, washes, glazes, resists (masking fluid, wax etc.) – and using lots of water!

July  Wendesday 18^th  FELTMAKING with Carolyn Young

Carolyn has exhibited with the Pembrokeshire Craft Makers and Newport Collective, and created privately commissioned pieces. In this workshop she will demonstrate basic felt making techniques, to be developed creatively. You will take at least two pieces home and all felt making equipment and materials will be provided. Please do bring along other art materials e.g. threads, silk chiffon, textile crayons or inks.

August 31st Friday  Drawing   Some perspective drawing. Developing the ‘negative shapes’ by observing cows, sheep, trees, or the plethora of interesting objects in the barn.  5 minute drawings and longer studies, using line and tone. Using different drawing implements. Discussing the differences between drawing and painting, and looking at master drawings, old and new. Some copying if you wish.

September Wednesday 12^th  COMPOSITION, including the use of collage. Composing a picture entails shape, proportion, interval, scale and the principles of composition remain the same whatever the subject. Collage allows us to move the elements around freely.

MATERIALS TO BRING Acrylic paints, brushes and coloured inks, (not too many different colours) as well as rubber ‘colour shapers’ (these can be bought from art shops) For drawing, good quality cartridge paper and SOFT pencils; for painting, offcuts of mounting card, coloured paper for gouache, canvas boards or canvases, and primed paper .White gouache for impasto; old kitchen pump sprays can be filled with diluted ink for interesting effects. For printmaking please bring sharp knife and usual paints and paper. To whet your appetite, a quick google search  will reveal many sites about monoprints and collographs.

Please contact me if you need advice.
Elizabeth Haines 01437 532 498 or haines_studio@hotmail.com

I gave a talk on why I love David Jones at Tenby Museum on Friday 16th September. This was a personal reflection: I have loved his essays, poetry, paintings and lettering for many years, and he has had a profound influence on my work.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and to those who commented appreciatively on the night and and afterwards by email.

One painting of mine which was clearly influenced by his . . . → Read More: Why I Love David Jones – A Talk at Tenby Museum]]>

I gave a talk on why I love David Jones at Tenby Museum on Friday 16th September. This was a personal reflection: I have loved his essays, poetry, paintings and lettering for many years, and he has had a profound influence on my work.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and to those who commented appreciatively on the night and and afterwards by email.

One painting of mine which was clearly influenced by his work is the card I made for Llandovery College on the occasion of the re-dedication of the chapel organ in 1991.

For anyone interested in David Jones’ work, a quick Google search will return a number of useful sites.

I would love to do this talk again! If anyone would like the text, please email me. 

We then explored how the different drawing tools not only affected the marks you made but the way you thought. After line drawing (negative spaces again) we . . . → Read More: August Drawing Workshop]]> We started by looking at what drawing – as opposed to painting – really means. I loved Michael Ayrton’s quote “…an artist may draw to give order to his thoughts, whereas he may paint to give ease to his heart”. And Baudelaire’s “the draughtsman is the philosopher of art”.

We then explored how the different drawing tools not only affected the marks you made but the way you thought. After line drawing (negative spaces again) we went on to tonal drawing. Then several people got really stuck in to copying reproductions of drawings they liked. Others tried drawing without looking at their page, with their left hand, with their eyes shut and even drawing things you couldn’t really see…

After so many years of drawing and painting the sea this seemed a fitting subject for an exhibition at Tenby.

Until I started to prepare for this show, I had not realised for how long I had been seeing the sea, and for how long it has been an undercurrent in my work.

‘How frail our craft, how great yon sea’ is a telling metaphor for the human condition. Afloat on this fierce . . . → Read More: ‘Seeing the Sea’ at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery]]>

After so many years of drawing and painting the sea this seemed a fitting subject for an exhibition at Tenby.

Until I started to prepare for this show, I had not realised for how long I had been seeing the sea, and for how long it has been an undercurrent in my work.

‘How frail our craft, how great yon sea’ is a telling metaphor for the human condition. Afloat on this fierce and fragile sea, safe harbours sometimes turn out not to be as safe as we had hoped; a prospect of the sea from a curtained window, a tiny sail on the horizon, all these can be rich in association and meaning.

I extend warm thanks to everyone at Tenby Museum; they have all been so helpful and efficient in preparing for the show and the hang was faultless. Also to my aunt Mollie, who, at 101 years of age, suggested the title Seeing the Sea.

Seeing the Sea continues until 4th September at Tenby Museum and Gallery

Claudia Myatt said (http://www.claudiamyatt.co.uk/blog/)

” …a watercolour workshop with Elizabeth Haines, who has an inspirational studio in the Preseli hills, and a profound understanding of how art works. She is particularly good at getting students to try new ways of working, experiment and see where the painting wants to go. I had a thoroughly enjoyable . . . → Read More: Watercolour Workshop June 14th]]>

Claudia Myatt said (http://www.claudiamyatt.co.uk/blog/)

” …a watercolour workshop with Elizabeth Haines, who has an inspirational studio in the Preseli hills, and a profound understanding of how art works. She is particularly good at getting students to try new ways of working, experiment and see where the painting wants to go. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day…………”

12 versions of Tallis’ ordinal were played in different keys, and everyone wrote down what they thought was . . . → Read More: Art & Music Workshop at BrynMorris May 14th 2011]]> It was a marvellous day: Seimon Morris played various chords and sequences which we listened to carefully, and then visualised in colour the character and intervals in each one; this included the unresolved dominant 7th at the end of Messiaen’s L’Ascension. (During this some swallows were chirping in the barn – wouldn’t Messiaen have loved that!)

12 versions of Tallis’ ordinal were played in different keys, and everyone wrote down what they thought was the character of each, having briefly discussed aspects of tonality, and then did a coloured image of their reaction to one of them; some amazing similarities here.

We visualised a journey through Bach’s strictly tonal 1st 2 part Invention, then listened to Birtwistle’s Imaginary Landscape and each did paintings which expressed their understanding of this very different journey. My friend the composer Erika Fox was here, she knows Birtwistle and loves his work, and gave us some salient insights into the music. Even people who never usually listen to contemporary music made a great effort to engage with it. Jim included the call of the cuckoo in one of his pictures.
We ended up with a home made version of Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique using some metronomes and various clocks, all ticking slightly at odds with each other.

I am very much hoping to do this again, and especially with children: there are still a lot of things we didn’t have time for – a 19^th century Credo where the words are intoned on one note while a succession of chords play around it. (Seimon had suggested that this was like a single transparent colour moving against a changing landscape of other colours.) Also the contrasts in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Piccolo and basso continuo, Fratres by Arvo Pärt, and perhaps one of Schenker’s Graphic Analyses.

People really enjoyed the day, and came up with an amazing variety of individual responses.

Jim wrote:

From Bach to Birtwistle

“From fixed view, or familiar- to unexpected surprise
From sleep or habit
- to awake.
From sitting in one place
- to moving around.
Fragments – unrelated to each other
- seemingly.
Details, parts, seen on a background
-  yet not seen as a whole.”

Thanks, Elizabeth-  A brilliant day

Erika said
“I found it wonderfully liberating to try and express something in a (for me) new medium. I feel I have learnt something about spacing, colour and texture. Doing is not at all the same as observing. A cliché, but one needs reminding.”

Catherine
Such fun! Really interesting exercises. It makes you think again about art and music, and puts the fun back into it. I would love part 2!

More workshops at BrynMorris are coming.