Pop Art Painting: 22/23/24 August at Aston on Clun
We started the course by looking at the work of a number of Pop Art painters especially, Robert Rauchenberg, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. The first day was spent working out ideas and painting around the theme of repetition. Repetitio
n can be found in lots of Pop Art works, primarily because this was the ‘60’s when supermarkets and mass production began to take off. The idea that the design of a can of soup can look quite impressive when stacked together on shelves was taken as a starting point for our paintings, together with the idea of basing the painting around a very ordinary everyday object. So we had impressive paintings of cars and light bulbs in all their repetitive glory.
n can be found in lots of Pop Art works, primarily because this was the ‘60’s when supermarkets and mass production began to take off. The idea that the design of a can of soup can look quite impressive when stacked together on shelves was taken as a starting point for our paintings, together with the idea of basing the painting around a very ordinary everyday object. So we had impressive paintings of cars and light bulbs in all their repetitive glory. The second day we took Andy Warhol’s paintings of famous people as our starting point. Using his methods we photographed each individual and projected their images onto large boards. With colours very reminiscent of Warhol’s some fantastic paintings were produced. It was important here to use the methods of Warhol – he was very much into the use of the camera – which is not ‘cheating’ as some might believe. His methods did give us all an insight into how Warhol worked when he set up his Factory to produce his own art works.
On the last day we took Jasper Johns paintings as our inspiration – this meant that the painting would have a life of its own and not be based around any traditional compositional plan. The idea was to base the painting on a mundane aspect of live, like waking up or preparing a meal. Objects associated with this were collected overnight and became part of the painting, so it ended up as a truly multimedia image. Due to illness and absences only a few people were on the course, but they produced some marvellous paintings on large boards. Congratulations to: Sue Pauli and Maria Broughton
Forthcoming Art Courses
• September Course
Starting Drawing at Aston on Clun on 27/28 September – This course is designed for complete beginners and those who don’t feel that confident with their drawing. There will be lots of simple and easy methods to achieve great drawings – you’ll be producing masterpieces by the end of the weekend.
• October Courses
Starting with Watercolour at Hampton Bishop on 4/5 October – This course is designed for those with little or no experience with watercolour, but want to learn how to handle the medium in such a way to create lovely paintings.
Creative Drawing(1) at Hampton Bishop on 26 October – This course is for those who wish to develop their drawing either by ‘freeing it up’ or using different media. We shall be experimenting and pushing at the boundaries.
• SPECIAL OFFER – book Starting Drawing and Starting Watercolour for a combined price of £160 a saving of £20 on the discounted price of booking both. If you are already booked on one of these courses and have paid full price you can book the other for the balance i.e. £60. If you want to take up this offer please let me know by replying to this email and then pop a cheque (made out to Filbert Splosh Ltd) in the post to me. You can book other courses online, for details click here
Art courses in the evening This will not happen in the near future as only a very few people showed interest. However, I shall investigate the idea of running some evening courses after Christmas.
Children’s Party Events Some of you may be aware that I run party events for adults– Christmas, anniversaries, birthdays etc. Essentially, this involves an artist such as Salvador Dali or Picasso turning up to your party as a surprise guest. It’s quite an experience watching the reaction of everyone as the artist’s bizarre life unfolds and your guests become the characters that occupy the artist’s world. It is great fun. If you are interested in a crazy artist coming to your party please call me on 01568 617433 I have been asked on many occasions about doing something similar for children, so I now have organised children’s party events combined with a practical element. Details of children’s party events can be found by clicking this link.
Kind regards
Paul Priestley
