Patchings Art Festival

Last Saturday I was at the Patchings Art Festival, near Nottingham. It was such a great experience and how I missed this annual art event in the past! It is a 4 day festival but I could manage to be there on only one day. I carefully selected Saturday when most of my favourite painters demonstrated their skills and shared their knowledge. I had a chance to speak with David Curtis, disappointed though that he was working on an oil painting at that time. Met my teacher and friend Peter Woolley who was kind enough to give me some tips on foliage. (Use very little of Prussian blue in the mix and pass the cadmium yellow for green most of the time.)Attended 2 of the demos of Charles Evans which were very lively. He uses only 8 colours and 4 brushes! It was shocking to know one of the colours is Hooker's Green, (which he admitted as the same as admitting oneself to be alcoholic, but he says he can make myriad greens mixing it with the other colours in his palette). See his picture below:

 David Bellamy painted a coastal scene with rocks and mountains. I learnt how Yellow Ochre pushes out the other colours but gives a lively variation to the mountains. I saw Fiona Peart doing 2 landscapes, the place was jam packed and I could only stand and watch. She showed how to represent a misty background with clever use of gouache with a slight blue  tinge. Peter Woolley and me admired the way David Curtis paints his architectural subjects so well. One other artist I liked very much was Trevor Lingard, I saw him  do his wet in wet dark toned landscape. For me the find of the Festival was Robert Newcombe, it was a revelation talking to him and watching him do his what he calls 'impressonistic line and wash' using a sharpened match stick in place of a drawing pen. I admired his work greatly and he presented me with one of his sharpened match sticks! I tried  line and wash watercolours using his match stick just to test how good it could be, here are my attempts. Though I did these in a hurry to recapture his style, I plan to use this method in a few paintings. I always had a few reservations about line and wash but my mental block is gone. It is a really new rewarding experience.