THE visiting speaker for the September meeting was Paul Hardy, who spoke about landscape painting in pastels.

Before starting his demonstration, Paul briefly described his background and artistic development.

Even though he trained as an architect, the major part of his working life was spent as a minister of religion.

On retirement, he devoted himself full time to painting and now demonstrates and writes on painting as well as exhibiting his work widely.

He paints in a wide range of media but has a particular enthusiasm for pastel painting.

For his demonstration Paul chose a landscape subject that had been used on the cover of one of his books.

This was a sunlit summer scene, but for the demonstration he decided to change the season and paint it as a snowy winter landscape.

He started with the sky, explaining that this set the tone of the picture and was the logical starting point.

Having applied the strokes of pastel colour, he showed how these could be blended using the fingertips or the heel of the hand to obtain the desired graduation of colour.

He continued the painting using the same technique, applying and mixing new layers of colour where he needed to modify the tint or tone.

The picture featured an expanse of water in the foreground and here he showed how a vertical blending added to the realism of the reflected rocks, trees and hills.

The demonstration painting was successfully completed with some time to spare so a discussion of pastel techniques and materials ensued. Topics ranged from the choice of paper and pastels to the use and misuse of fixative sprays and this informal session rounded off a very enjoyable and informative evening.

The next meeting will be at St Luke's Memorial Hall, Evesham Road, Headless Cross on Wednesday, October 1, at 7.30pm when Michael Warr will demonstrate the possibilities of combining wax and oil pastels with water colour.