2024 AGM Featuring Craig Penny

The 2024 AGM was an emotional affair with tears and stories shared about our much loved outgoing President Gaye Pereira-Jackson and Vice President Brendan Lovelock. Our wonderful Workshop Coordinator Kris Love has also stepped down from that role. We thank them all for their energy, effort and leadership during their time on the committee.

After formalities were wrapped up, members were treated to an inspiring demonstration by renowned acrylic artist, Craig Penny. Using a big canvas, big brushes, big tubs of paint and big gestures, Craig quickly rendered the base colours of his river landscape. He explained his choice of various blues for parts of the sky and river, and his choice of various brushes for blending.

We were introduced to a whole range of exciting new acrylic colours which he used deftly to create the near and far vegetation in sunlight and shadow. For nearly 2 hours we were mesmerised as we watched a beautiful impressionist landscape emerge, while enjoying Craig's energy and humour. Thanks Craig for a lively, inspiring demonstration, and for managing to keep your paint-laden shorts from falling down while you did so!

Seabrook Community Centre Panels

Six talented artists from HBAS volunteered to paint 5 large panels for the newly renovated Seabrook Community Centre. Led by the President, Gaye Pereira-Jackson, these artists used the local flora and fauna to complete these vibrant and fun panels!

Seabrook Panel Artists

Gaye PJ, Marie Long, Geraldine Phelan, Sonia Trainor, Sue Groen and Sally Bilbao.

They planned a cohesive and delightful scene that were linked together by branches of an old gum tree as well as some wattles fronds. Then they added our iconic birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, and included Bull Ants, spiders, frogs and even worms! This was to entice the young folk visiting the centre to count the insects and see who got the correct number!

What a wonderful collaboration of ideas, talent and fun to complete these over 4 weeks! Come visit the panels and check it out yourselves!

Landscape Painting with Lana Daubermann

Can you complete 4 paintings in 2 hours and be totally engaged in each step of the process? A definite YES from 14 enthusiastic participants who exercised their artistic muscles in a fast-paced series of learning exercises, expertly led by Lana Daubermann. It was also a night of sevens! Using our preferred mediums (some used acrylics, some oils, some pastels, some pencils), we started by representing our allocated landscape in 7 minutes, making speedy decisions about features like colour, line/brush work and focus.

Next, we were challenged to break the same composition down in to 7 shapes, with some surprising abstract landscapes emerging. Our next challenge was to undertake the same landscape in 7 brush strokes, ensuring that our brushes were sufficiently well loaded. Finally, we infused a particular mood or feeling into the same landscape, selecting colours, strokes, blending techniques or line work to fit the emotion. A lot of fun was had afterwards guessing the mood of each other’s renditions!

Our efforts were gently guided by Lana, who demonstrated each of these approaches before letting us power through our own and shared our accomplishments with lovely encouragement. The landscape painters in the group commented that these techniques will be invaluable in their plein air painting, where speed is of the essence.

Thanks Lana for a fun and thoroughly educational evening!

Lana will be running a 2 day weekend workshop for HBAS members at Woods Street Art Space on 10th and 11th August, so watch this space for more information.

Check out more of Lana’s work on her website: https://www.lanadaubermann.com/

Autumn Life Drawing with David Payne

A group of enthusiastic HBAS artists met on Thursday nights for a month to attend David's 'Autumn Life Drawing’ sessions. David, accompanied by his dog Lucie, warmly welcomed everyone to his studio in Altona. Artists of various skill levels, from beginners to seasoned professionals, shared their time and expertise generously. The atmosphere was social, educational, friendly, and incredibly relaxed.

It was wonderful to have many different models with dynamic and varied poses. This challenged and inspired us to new heights, learning from one another. This is the best Life Drawing sessions in the local area, and we eagerly anticipate more sessions in the future.

Thank you, David, for organising the ‘Autumn Life Drawing’!

Check out more of David’s work from the life drawing sessions on Insta: davidpayne_art