Calligraphy and Painting Classes in Sunderland and South Shields

New sessions start after Easter:
Monday 10-12 at Sunderland Museum (starting 9 May) and Thursday 10-12 at St Bede's, South Shields (starting 5 May).
Scribes will be looking at alphabet designs and creating their own original alphabets and using them to make a design rather than write a text. Written, drawn, painted or printed - the choice is yours. The cost is £40 for ten classes.

Wednesday 10-12 at Age UK, Sunderland starting 4 May.
This session will focus on illuminated letters, while still doing some calligraphy, and there will be a visit to the library at Durham Cathedral to look at some originals. Cost is £35 for ten sessions, please contact Age UK on 0191 514 1131 to enrol.

If you would like to learn more about watercolours then there are two classes at Age UK, Sunderland. One is on Monday afternoon, 2-4 (starting 9 May) in which the focus will be on painting textures with watercolour. The other is on Thursday afternoon from 2-4 (starting 5 May) in which working with watercolours, coloured pencils, gouache, pastels and pencil will be covered. Both courses cost £35 for ten weeks, and again contact Age UK on 0191 514 1131.

All the above classes are taught by Susan Moor. If you would like further information about them please contact her at Susan.Moor (at) givemail.co.uk.

Snap, snap, grin, grin ...

The theme of our March meeting was cameras and calligraphy and Robert Cooper talked to us about how photographs could be used to create imaginative layouts or to stimulate layout ideas for pieces of calligraphy. He showed us a slide show of some photographs he had taken to demonstrate what we were to look out for.

He then set us snapping in the grounds of Sunderland's riverside campus with a list of features to try and include as a guide for observations. Examples we were to look out for included 'pictures with lines to lead the eye around the composition' and 'a picture in which a particular shape is echoed a number of times' or 'a picture in which there is a contrast of texture'. The modern campus of the Business School at Sunderland is full of interesting lines and angles and once you got your eye in for particular features you could find interesting visual images to match Robert's criteria. Some folks wandered over to St. Peter's Church to find more classic images to work with.

The photographs above show how a photograph of an air vent in the wall was taken through to a draft via a thumbnail sketch and below there are pictures of some of the ideas developed from photographs taken during the workshop ... say no more!