Our VSC Winter schedule 2021 continues with a variety of activities until April 20th (AGM). We are keeping the VSC alive and vibrant by creating our art in the safety of our homes and meeting via Zoom online on Tuesdays to share work, ideas and maintain vital social connections during this isolating COVID-19 quarantine period.
Please send images of your work to share to Amy at amyartist58@gmail.com. Many thanks to you, Amy, for hosting the zoom sessions, and to everyone for your participation and contribution to the program.
Upcoming:
Mar 2 Still Life
Mar 9 Presentation ‘Rocky Mountains" with Rand Harrison ; a
watercolour paint-along with Val Lawton
Mar 16 Perspective, from our point of view.
Mar 23 Figure studies
Mar 30 Still Life-- Springtime theme
Apr 13 Critique with Andy Wooldridge
Apr 20 AGM
Be safe, stay well!
Nirmala Greenwell
Program Director
Still life and model convenors: Ann Nolte and Vicki Turner
ZOOM convenor: Amy Nohales-Kezes |
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Thanks to the efforts of our intrepid tech star, Laura Brackenbury, the club now has an Instagram account! Our handle is @victoriasketchclub.
If you're even thinking about getting onto this social media platform, either for business or just enjoyment, considering watching this little 5-min help-video to get you started. It runs through the basics of getting set-up and how to navigate Instagram (a.k.a., IG).
A number of sketch club members are currently on IG, so you won't be alone! |
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 | | Here's a shot of the new gym the club has secured for our next five art shows. The complex is superbly designed with coat rooms and washrooms behind the darker wall and a kitchen attached, etc. Agnes has tested the lighting and believes it's significantly higher than the norm found in galleries. |
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Art Connections is still a going concern! Do you have anything you'd like feedback on? If so, consider including some of your work in an upcoming issue!
To submit, please forward the following to Rand Harrison1) your image in .jpg format (sorry, we can't work with .pdfs)
2) painting details, including title, dimensions, media, date
3) any artist commentary
4) the email address at which you'd like to receive comments
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Scenes from February 2nd
Indoor-at-home program |
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This week's colourful topic was a challenging one -- Go Abstract!, in any style or medium. Some beautiful examples here include work by Sharon Stone, Larry Gollner, Joan Head, Myra Baynton, Agnes Oosterhof, Rand Harrison, and Ruth Beninger.
We also touched briefly again on the topic of linear perspective, this time as applied to objects without straight edges, like Geoff's boat sketch. Here're a few links to useful YouTube studies on using linear perspective to render the human form.
MyDrawingTutorial 1
MyDrawingTutorial 2 |
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Scenes from February 9th
Indoor-at-home program |
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| This week, members were asked to paint from inspiration derived from a poem, song or piece of music. Lots of lovely works were submitted, including those below by Myra Baynton, Christine Gollner, Caroline Hunter, Larry Gollner, Mike Pipes, Pat Hindmarch-Watson, Nirmala Greenwell, and John Lover. |
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Scenes from February 16th
Indoor-at-home program |
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| This week is a classic Bring Your Own! and we had a great response. Over 20 items were submitted. Below are just a few wonderful examples... John Lover, Liz Milton, Maureen Ness, Vicky Turner and Myra Baynton. |
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Scenes from February 23rd
Indoor-at-home program |
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| Here's another opportunity to paint people around us (hope they don't mind!), in a do-it-yourself Portrait Studies session. There were many wonderfully executed portraits submitted, and here are but a few of the day's contributing artists... Nirmala Greenwell, Sharon Stone, Ann Nolte, Agnes Osterhoof, Joan Head and Debbie Hartwick. |
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History Corner
by John Lover |
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Just after World War II, a young grade school pupil who liked to paint was set up by her mother to take private oil painting lessons with a well-established Victoria artist. She travelled from home in Oak Bay to Tolmie Avenue, off Quadra Street, on Saturday mornings in the summer where instruction took place in a back yard studio.
This was all a big adventure for a shy young girl who recalls her teacher as a quiet, studious and conscientious gentleman who methodically taught the basic approach to oil painting. She was shown the various colours, their place in order on the palette, the use of oil in mixing the paint and turpentine for cleaning the brushes, and introduced to still life subjects such as fruit and jars. Though initially feeling somewhat intimidated by this rather reserved individual, the young pupil came to like him and appreciate his abilities as artist and teacher. She also got the impression that he was of modest means and made to struggle hard to make a comfortable living.
The young student was our own Ann Nolte, and her teacher was a Scotsman of some repute by the name of William (Will) Menelaws. The experience, along with the later influence of such luminaries as Ina Uhthoff and Arthur Lismer, laid the basis for Anne’s development into a distinguished painter of landscapes and portraits.
Menelaws, born in Edinburgh Scotland in 1883, was a product of the Edinburgh College of Art, and a gold-medal winner at the Royal Scottish Academy. He also spent several years studying architecture. Moving to Canada, he joined the Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS) and  contributed to its annual exhibition every year, with one exception, from 1912 to 1940. During these years he also exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum and the BC Society of Fine Arts.
A key member of the Society’s Sketch Club component, Menelaws was a prolific and versatile artist in pen and ink, watercolour, oils and tempera. He even ventured into impressionism during the 1920s, but he is perhaps best remembered for his fine portraiture and his landscapes. He became well known and highly respected as a teacher, both from his studio and in Victoria area schools, notably at Glenlyon from 1938 to 1954 and for thirty years at Oak Bay Senior High, to which the Victoria Sketch Club later donated an annual art prize in his name.
In the 1940s Menelaws became part of the group, which included several other IASC artists, seeking to sponsor an art gallery in Victoria, an ambition which came to fulfilment in 1951.
Although maintaining his links with the Victoria Sketch Club, his teaching duties limited his exhibition time after WWII. However, his one-man show at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1962, prompted Colin Graham, Director of the Gallery, to dub him “Dean of Victoria artists.”
He was awarded life membership of the Victoria Sketch Club in 1964, the year he departed to live with relatives in Port Angeles, Washington. He died there two years later. |
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Sooke Art Show
The Sooke Art Show 2021 online show will take place from July 23 - August 2, on the website sookefinearts.com. They have developed a new and more robust website to improve the quality of the event, and will be open for submissions starting March 17 - May 25. Check out their website for more detail.
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Home away from home...Marty and I are enjoying a winter long stay in a favorite place, at Forest Cottage at Beach Acres. There is still a bit of snow in the shady places and all the views carry the light of a different  season compared to VSC September Paint Outs. The resort is very quiet and sparsely inhabited but with the same cheerful helpful staff as always. Covid protocols are excellently but unobtrusively managed.
We encountered the turkey and other birds at the Wildlife Rescue Centre. The grazing swans were pausing in a field during their migration. We are able to watch for the herring spawn soon to take place at French Creek, and Marty overlooks the view at the Little Mountain lookout. Cute black beach bunnies are everywhere digging their trip trap holes!
I’ve managed a little painting though know I’d do more if Marty and I were not taking daily excursions! Companions are so distracting!
It might be polite to say that I am missing all my usual Victoria activities, but truthfully, this is an escape I wish could go on forever.
See my new address:
Janice Graham
Forest Cottage
Beach Acres
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Happy birthday, Joan!VSC member Joan Eldridge turned 95 years young this past February 28. Joan was born in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. Her days start with tidying up her art room and preparing watercolours for a few hours of painting.
Joan received a BA in Fine Arts in 1981 at the University of Victoria and a diploma in Chinese brush painting from the Chinese College of Art in Victoria. Joan's late husband, Lt. Commander Richard's career in the Navy took the family to Halifax, Shelburne, Grimsby, Ottawa and Victoria. Joan painted in each of these places quite often as a member of local art clubs, and raised three brilliant children.
Joan joined the Victoria Sketch Club in 1995 where she switched from oils to watercolours. "It was much easier to carry a few watercolours than to haul all the oil paraphanalia to VSC venues." After retiring from the navy, her husband Richard became an apple tester and soon was recognized as a world authority on 500 varieties of apples. This explains Joan's superb talent in painting fruits and flowers. Her garden has 45 varieties of miniature apple trees. On paint-outs, we all enjoyed Joan's stories of her great grandmother, Susannah Moodie, "Roughing it in the Bush." |
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Do you have an arts-related story you'd like to share? Have you heard about something interesting that you think fellow VSC members would delight in hearing about? Then consider pitching your idea to the editor of the VSC newsletter.
I can be reached at valerielawton@icloud.com
Looking forward to hearing your stories! |
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Beach Acres, Parksville, is the venue for 2021, September 7-14, 2021. There are lots of painting sites in and around Parksville and Qualicum Beach.
For more information, please go to the website at www.beachacresresort.com. If you are interested in joining us, please make your booking ASAP.
Guest Services and Sales, call 1-800-663-7309 |
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Do you have news or fun things to share?
Forward your news and relevant pictures or links to the newsletter editor. |
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