Our first meeting back at the refurbished St. Luke's Memorial Hall opened with some announcements in connection with our forthcoming exhibition in the Kingfisher Centre. Our speaker, Vic Bearcroft, was introduced to give his presentation, 'Wildlife on Velour', and started by explaining why velour was the support of choice for his pastel paintings of wildlife. Conventional pastel paper carries the applied pastel on its surface and, consequently, is easily smudged. This risk can be reduced by applying a fixative but this can slightly reduce the brilliance of the painting. With velour, each application of pastel can be rubbed into the fine surface pile where it is safe from smudging and can accept further applications of pastel.

With his velour paper and reference photograph ready, Vic started his painting of the head of a lion, he sketched the outline and then rendered the tones with varying densities of grey. Areas were darkened by lightly adding layers of pastel and rubbing each successive layer in. When satisfied with the tonal sketch, he chose a limited range of colours to finish his painting; these were influenced by the subjects' environment which was the harsh African sunlight. As he worked on the colours, he explained his treatment of the various shapes and textures, the different densities of the fur, and how simple features like the pattern of the whiskers defined the underlying shape of the head. Refinement of the features and work on the shadows and highlights were the finishing touches to a striking, atmospheric, wild life pastel painting.

The next meeting will be at St. Luke’s Memorial Hall, Evesham Road, Headless Cross on Wednesday, October 4 at 7.30pm when Joe Dowden will demonstrate “Easy watercolour”.

Supported by Redditch School of Art through Redditch Arts Council.