CASA's summer events 2023

CASA's programme of summer events has now come to an end, and we will be back with a programme for 2024.

We started in May with a demonstration by Amanda Jackson of a painting of gondolas in oils, with light reflecting from the water. This was in preparation for her workshop, at which we were taken through the process and produced our own works.

In June, Charles Bezzina demonstrated a portrait in a medium not many of us have used before, gouache. It was interesting to see how gouache differs from watercolour, and the bright, vibrant colours it can produce. Charles was kind enough to send us the finished picture, and it will be at next year's exhibition in 2024.

In July we had our summer exhibition at the Castor village fete. As ever, we had many members providing art works for the exhibition, including paintings, drawings, greetings cards, textiles and ceramics. The video above shows some of the exhibits.

July also saw James Power visit to show us equestrian paintings. This is not a subject matter many of us had tackled before, and it was fascinating to see how the proportions of horses can be broken down to produce a convincing animal.

In August it was watercolours, always popular with our members, and Phil Biggs demonstrated a landscape capturing summer light.

In September our demonstrator unfortunately couldn't make it, so instead we held an evening painting session, with the challenge of producing a completed work of art in the two hours usually allowed to our professionals. This is one of the things our demonstrators tell us repeatedly - get on with it, and don't fiddle about! Fuelled by some cheese and wine, we had an enjoyable evening.

Finally, in October, Denise Allen showed us the bullseye watercolour technique. This involves using watercolours to create a couloured centre to the page, and then painting the details of the scene over it. This can be used for sunrises and sunsets, to colour water or snow, or even largely painted over to give a painting a colour theme. Again, it was something we had not seen before, and had people planning their own versions.