The Box Art Group also has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Boxartgroup .
Art material suppliers
- Pegasus Art Pegasus Art are a local art supplier based at Griffin Mill at Thrupp on the London Road. (Griffin Mill also hosts artists studios and art workshops.) They offer a small discount to Box Art Group members on presentation of their membership card.
- Pulp Stationary and Art: George Street Nailsworth
- Jackson's Art Supplies Mail order and a Gloucester shop. Especially good if you want to buy in bulk.
Local Gallery and Exhibition Spaces
- The Box Art Group mounts its own exhibition each October in Box Village Hall.
- The Lansdown Gallery in Stroud is available for hire by local artists and art groups that wish to mount exhibitions.
- The Gardens Gallery Cheltenham is available for exhibition hire. Their hire prices vary throughout the year to reflect the expected variation of footfall.
Members' art-focussed Websites, Instagram and Facebook pages
Ask the Web Master (via
- Michael McEllin:
- Personal Website - dealing mainly with techniques in digital art.
- Instagram Page (mainly for conventional art, including portraits, life drawing and landscape painting.
Colour Theory and Mixing
- This version of Colour Wheel shows where the most commonly available pigments lie on the standard wheel. You may notice that very few actually lie towards the outside (i.e. highly saturated) and they are mainly reds and yellows. Note that you cannot get a more saturated colour by mixing two less saturated colours (it normally goes the other way). See the Handprint website for the fine details.
- Handprint - Watercolours has an extensive set of pretty authoritative material on the science behind watercolour paints and the way they mix. If you really dig in here, it will tell you exactly how pigments work why it is so easy to create "muddy" colours with mixing. If you really want to understand the "why" of colour mixing, there is a lot of interesting stuff here, but it takes time and some effort to get there, and the bits that are of real practical use are scattered amongst a mass of fascinating material which however is difficult to apply when you are actually holding a paintbrush. Ultimately it all leads to the conclusion that much commonly taught colour theory is at least somewhat misleading, paints from different suppliers can behave quite differently, and the practicing artist just needs to start with a limited palette of familiar pigments and really learn by experiment what they can do for them.
- Along the lines of that advice, Getting Started in Watercolour (Jane Blundell) has more practically useful information on the way watercolours behave.
- The "Color of Art" Pigment Database will tell you more than you will ever want to know about what paints are made from. You will, for example learn that Cotman (student colour) "Cerulean Blue Hue" is actually pigment PB15 - a type of pthalocyanine blue pigment not the PB35 (Cobalt Tin Oxide) found in the "professional" Cerulean Blue. In pure form they do look remarkably similar in colour, and pthalo colours are typically very light-fast, but they will mix differently with other pigments for complex reasons that you would find discussed on the Handprint website.
Local art instruction
- Stroud Life Drawing was established some years ago by Keith Symons - formerly an art teacher at a local school - to provide "drop in" sessions with a nude model. ("Drop-in" means that you do not have to register for a set number of sessions - you just turn up. Although most of the regulars bring their own favourite materials, you can also just turn up and use those provided by Keith.) Session take place at the the Lansdown Centre for Science and Art in Stroud from 2pm to 5pm on most Saturdays during school term times. Tuesday evening sessions, with more formal tutoring, also take place from 7pm-9pm at Raw Umber Studios at Nelson Street in Stroud. A very popular portrait session usually occurs once per month on a Sunday. Check the Stroud Life Drawing Events page for dates and availability.
- Raw Umber Studios is a not-for-profit art school offering a variety of tuition in traditional art techniques, both on-line and as in-person intensive short courses. Once a month, usually the last Sunday of the month between 4-5pm, they offer a free on-line on-hour portraiture tutorial, which is well worth joining. ("Free" means they get your email address in exchange and send occasional - certainly not excessive - marketing material about their paid-for course.)
- Paul Fowler offers various art courses at Pegasus Art, such as "extreme life poses" (i.e. models in unusual positions - often supported by ropes). You normally book in a block of six sessions.
- Other workshops also take place at Pegasus Art.
If you have suggestions for additional links that would be useful to members, please send an email to boxartwork (at) gmail.com.