After some brief announcements, Frank Collier was introduced to give his presentation "Oils using palette knife". Frank explained that he gathered his picture information with on-site sketches and produced the finished paintings in his studio. He works in watercolour as well as oils and finds that the loose approach of palette knife painting carries over to his watercolours, encouraging him to avoid excessive detail. For his demonstration he had sketched a mountain landscape onto his primed MDF board, and would use a reference image of the Tryfan range in Snowdonia. Working with a limited palette, he mixed his sky colour and blocked in the unclouded area of sky, following his practise of working from top to bottom and distance to foreground. The neat oil paint was applied with his trowel-shaped palette knife with no attempt to smooth out the knife marks on the paint surface. The distant and middle distant mountains and grassy slopes were painted in with areas of grey, brown and green, the colours becoming stronger as they neared the foreground.

The foreground cottage and other features like hedges, trees, walls and rocks were completed before returning to the sky area where the main mass of cloud and the wispy clouds around the mountain peaks, were painted in. Some final details completed a very successful painting.

The next meeting will be at St Luke’s Memorial Hall, Evesham Road, Headless Cross on September 7 at 7.30pm when Marylin Allis will give her presentation "Mixed media". Depending on the program for the planned refurbishment work, visitors may be re-directed to the nearby Bridge Methodist Church.

Supported by Redditch School of Art through Redditch Arts Council