THE meeting opened with some brief announcements before Cheryl introduced Sonia Bacchus to speak and demonstrate on Still Life in the Style of the Old Masters.

Sonia explained that, although oil paint was the main medium of the old masters, they would often use a faster drying underpainting, allowing their painting to be developed quickly before the lengthier finishing with oils.

They would have used watercolour or tempera but Sonia would use acrylics, which are ideal for this purpose.

Using a viewing grid as a composition aid, Sonia sketched her still life group onto her canvas and started her acrylic underpainting.

The group comprised of a wine bottle, coffee grinder and lemon which, when drawing; she visualised as simple geometrical shapes.

Although she often uses photographs and similar references, Sonia believes that still life drawing and painting is good practice for the rendering of 3D subjects.

Using a limited palette, her underpainting progressed rapidly with tonal and drawing corrections being applied until she was satisfied with the group. At this point the background was blocked in and the underpainting allowed to dry.

Working now in oil paint, Sonia explained how colours interacted, the concept of warm and cool colours and how colour temperature can be modified with thin colour glazes. With the application of highlights, shadows and reflected colours, a richly coloured painting emerged.

Sonia judged that it now required further drying and brought this most enjoyable and informative demonstration to an end.

The next meeting will be at St. Luke’s Memorial Hall, Evesham Road, Headless Cross, on Wednesday, November 5, at 7.30pm when John Davenport will demonstrate Portraits in Acrylics.