April 2007 Newsletter

Sorry that the newsletters are a bit sporadic. It’s been a busy and interesting time for us since the last newsletter, with two demonstrations, an exhibition and a new web site!

Demonstrations.

NSAS member John Dyer gave us a fascinating demonstration entitled “Digital Art” on March 27th. John showed us how he generates characters and illustrations for his customers, who include Walt Disney, Warner Bros. and Tomy amongst others. He showed us how he starts off with a rough drawing of a character, which is then subject to approval by the client. After this approval he has to submit a cleaned up drawing for approval. This is followed by an ink, again submitted for approval. Once this has been approved it is scanned onto his computer. He demonstrated his fascinating and rapid use of Adobe photoshop by creating a colour image of Winnie The Pooh which he dropped into a background and which was used to generate the printing layout for a Winnie The Pooh mug sold in Walt Disney shops.

In the second half of his demonstration John showed his use of Adobe Photoshop in a more traditional way by electronically "painting" a portrait of fellow NSAS member Tom Pike, using as a base a candid photograph of Tom taken at the previous week's NSAS meeting. Unfortunately (or fortunately, John said) Tom was not at the demo to see the portrait being done, however John has since presented him with an A3 colour laser print of the finished image.

See the images here



On April 10th Joe Hush gave us an inspiring demonstration on the use of acrylics when he painted a Scottish landscape for us. The painting was done on watercolour paper primed with gesso. Joe explained that this prevented the acrylic paint from soaking in and allowed him to make "adjustments" as he was going on or to remove paint to show a lighter background. Joe says "I tell my students that I have never made a mistake but I have made hundreds of 'adjustments'!". He showed us how he used reservoir paper in his palette to keep his paint soft and workable, and he also demonstrated how, rather than just mixing a colour to use, he kept the two colours adjacent to each other on the palette so that he could continue to blend the colours together and achieve small variations easily. Joe explained how his technique was to draw a pencil sketch from a photograph that he had taken at the scene. This allowed him to get a better feel for the tonal variation that he wanted to achieve in the painting. He demonstrated his use of a merely "damp" brush which allowed him to vary considerably the amount of paint he wished to apply to the painting.

see the images here


Exhibition

From all accounts our exhibition at St. Andrew’s on Saturday 14th April was successful. Detailed information on sales is yet to be made available, but the general consensus is that this was an excellent venue.

see the images here