Meopham Green Artists

The temporary home for our little group during the Coronavirus crisis.
Please send photos of your work - paintings and any other creations - to brendapaternoster@icloud.com

We are now well into the third lockdown and many of us have been finding it difficult to get motivated or to find inspiration.

Here are some paintings and drawings from Kathleen to get us kick-started again.

Kathleen's Still life together with two preliminary sketches.

Three studies of a head. Is this Raymond?

Still Life on Blue

Rooftops painting and a geometric abstract. Are the two connected?

A watercolour from Steve. He says:
"These are some roses in our garden.    I painted the picture in watercolour  in small bites and almost gave up.  
I  painted the roses first  on their own they looked a bit drab.  
Painting the background made such a difference although  I don't think I'll be rushing back to do roses again.

A still life in the style of Matisse by Andrea. Very different from her usual work.

Two freestyle embroidered pictures from Kathleen, a seascape and some Devon trees.

A counted thread embroidery from Kathleen

More from Kathleen, a poppy card for her daughter and a needlelace flower

My personal favourite from Kathleen's embroideries; a goldwork cat

Norman's painting of a spotted Woodpecker. It'really good. Painting a realistic bird is quite a challenge.

Another lovely watercolour by Andrea. She tells me that those poppies have now been flattened by foxcubs.
As she says little vandals but delightful to watch.

Two lovely animal paintings from Mary, a charcoal image of an elepephant and an acrylic of a family of foxes.

This is another textile picture. I started with an image from a book and then made an acrylic sketch to get a better feel for it. The finished picture is a mixture of applique and free machine embroidery techniques and the top layer is colour graded organza which really makes the colours of the fabrics glow. Something I will use again.

This is Steve's watercolour taken from a photo he took near Quiberon, Brittany

Norman has been working on the At Deco/Clarice Cliff theme.

An excellent self portrait from Steve using oils. I have taken the liberty of darkening it slightly around the edges -
if you don't like it Steve let me know and I'll revert it to the original.

Kathleen has been busy. The first painting is from a holiday photo, the next from a picture of my daughter'sat and then a couple of drawings of an ornament.

This is Andrea's watercolour portrait of a magnificent Kingfisher.

This is Jean's watercolour landscape, with a bit of pen and ink too I think.

In a departure from her usual style Jean has done two lovely Art Deco paintings

Another Art Deco painitng from Jean

Another from Jean, her tryptic on the theme of Three.

More spring flowers from Kathleen, but on the theme of 'Three'

Andrea's painting of Durdle Door, Dorset.
There was a bad storm about three years ago and the arch fell down. They say it will all be gone in about one hundred years.

Tracy has been working on the theme of Three. Three poppies, three chickens and three groups of three trees.

This is Janet's sketch of her hero, Captain Tom Moore, 100 years old this week who has raised a staggering amount of money for the NHS.
A different subject for Janet, but a very worthy one.

Steve has been painting more spring flowers, this time t's blubells painted from a photo taken on one of his walks around Chalk.

My afternoon walk with the dog passes this lovely cherry blossom tree which was the inspiration for my textile picture, a mix of hand and machine embroidery and applique. I'm not sure if it's properly finished yet. I knew it needed something in the lower right corner so I added the rainbow, and then looked at the photo again and you can see a chalked rainbow on the footpath. Yesterday when I walked past it was windy and the blossom was falling like confett and covered the ground, today the rainbow has been washed away.

Steve has just finished this painting of blossom which took him four sessions.
He worked from a photo he took in Rochester Road a couple of weeks ago when the blossom was at it's best.

This is Andrea's Art Deco watercolour. A very elegant lady based on a photo of her own mother.

Tracy has moved on to the next section of the ideas printed out, which is about the number three, and I decided to do a trinity of Easter egg pictures.  " I enjoyed being bold with the Easter eggs, drawing all the lines with a black Sharpie. The large Easter egg I painting with pure watercolour paints, the bright pink being W&N Opera Rose, which is a rather tasty colour. The smaller eggs were meant to be all swirly, but I obviously still have Art Deco in my brain as the patterns turned out very angular!  The pictures are in our front window now, so children walking around the estate can spot pictures in the window, to make walking around more fun."

I confess that I haven't had time to get the paints out; I've been very busy sewing scrubs for Medway hospital.
Like most hospitals they have a shortage of PPE, many doctors who normally wear 'civvies' are currently opting for scrubs
and they have a 100 former staff returning on short term contracts from Monday most of whom have no uniform other than scrubs.
The Facebook group Medway Scrubbers is currently quite active. I have found time to make a rainbow for my porch window.

Andrea has moved on to Spring Flowers and this is her wonderful watercolour of a magnilia blossom.

Tracy painted this on Tuesday morning.She said
 "It had been bright blue, so it's taken a few coats to cover. I probably should have rubbed it down, but I CBA.
That's 'couldn't be arsed', according to my 14 year old son and his teen-speak :o)"

In the afternoon she settled down to paint a few more Clarice Cliff designs, but then I remembered an Art Deco colouring book I'd bought about 3 weeks ago in the Barnardo's charity shop here on Riverview Park in Gravesend. It was only 50p, a bargain! I also bought an Art Nouveau book at the same time, so I will look at that soon. There was a page on tea sets, so I'm afraid I was a bit lazy and did some colouring in with pencils and watercolours, but at least it was relaxing and enjoyable.

Denise has finished her stunning silk painting of the Art Deco Lady

This is Steve's watercolour of Scotney Castle.

Tracy has been taking her inspiration from Clarice Cliff. Here is a closer look at her own paintings.

This is Kathleen's painting, some lovely fresh spring tulips.

It's Tuesday today, so I spent the afternoon painting - as I did on Sunday, so two pictures to show. Still on the Art Deco theme I've been looking at the work of Robert and Sonia Delauney and came up with these two, very loosely based on their work. Circles and Rythm. Both are acrylic on paper and although I think the accuracy of the brushwork is poor when you look at a close-up of their work it's very similar.

I have been busy making several of these!

bit.ly/3d8npdA