Most clubs and associations in France close down for the summer holidays, the painting club included. At the end of June we went to the atelier (workshop), armed with an array of cleaning materials and spent the morning scrubbing tables, easels, windows and the floor, till the place was as near to spotless as possible. Once the cleaning was done, we all sat down to lunch; everybody had brought a dish to share, along with wine, cheese and a selection of desserts. Lunch was meant to be outside, but it was too hot.
We always meet up occasionally over the summer, in the library gardens, where I help Annie with a drawing and painting workshop for children, or at the “cabanon” on the edge of the lake, but this year it was suggested that we have a one day course as well.
I wasn’t sure if I’d go; if the theme was portraiture or watercolours, I wouldn’t be interested. I suggested painting with a knife as the theme, something I’d tried, but with less than great results, and was delighted when that was what was chosen.
We were a group of ten, including some much more accomplished artists than me, but all keen to learn.
We spent the morning learning the various techniques; blocks, curves, mixing and grading colours, straight lines using the edge of the knife, scraping off; some people’s work looked quite good at this stage – mine looked like the daubings of a five year old.
Again lunch was “auberge espagnole”, where everyone takes a dish to share and once again it was too hot to eat out, even in the shade, so we pushed stuff aside and made space to eat amongst the paper and paints.
After lunch we all chose one of several posters brought along by Dominique, the teacher. They were all paintings of vases of flowers, done by a well known painter, whose name I’ve forgotten, and painted using a knife.
We roughly sketched out the basic shapes, then started on the actual painting. The time just flew by and I only just finished (I didn’t even have time to take photos of other people’s work); it’s hardly a masterpiece, but I think it’s ok for a first attempt. I’ll just have to practice.
