KEIGHLEY Art Club members had wanted a workshop-type session where they could paint alongside the demonstrator rather than sitting and watching.

William Gall of Pudsey presented an excellent session based on his photograph of Golden Acre Park, with the use of acrylic and palette knives.

In his early days William trained in art then changed direction to engineering. On retiring he attended more art training at Leeds College of Art. His main interest is reflections on buildings. Further subjects in many media include lighthouses, woodland scenes and Scottish landscapes.

William exhibits work in Sheffield, Edinburgh and at Saltaire Arts Trail. He feels that art is 60% thinking and 40% painting. He brought us sheets of 30 g A Quarell paper, and provided the acrylic paints, palette knives, rigeur brushes and the reference photograph.

To catch the desired effect, he tries to include lemon yellow in paintings after seeing the electrifying effect of light on grass during an early walk in sunshine. He took lots of photos that captured the magical effect of colours in the scene.

Using water-soluble pencils to sketch, as it would not be visible later, William painted to the extreme edge so that a presentation frame would give a better outline at the end. Student quality paints were used.

William showed us some of his paintings of lighthouses and Leeds buildings. At Edinburgh he had been asked to show six lighthouses but at the last minute they wanted 35, which he fortunately achieved, with very hard work. Nine was sold.

William’s reflection works are of Leeds buildings which include lots of glass in construction. Both Edinburgh and Sheffield like these works: William sold one before the official opening of an exhibition.

In our workshop William’s unusual style was enjoyed by all. As normally, no two paintings were alike which is what I enjoy seeing. The demonstration gave us a new way of managing acrylic in William’s style. Jeanette Bray took photographs and posted them on Keighley Art Club’s Facebook page.

Most of our members had only used canvas on board for acrylics and therefore were surprised at how well we could apply this medium to paper with palette knives. The first white layer was thinly scraped on, followed by a mix of Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber for silhouettes of trees, scraping again before drying. The branches were applied with rigeur brushes.

A strong green mix of Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber was applied, then scraped with a palette knife over the branches inserted in the lower part to imply canopy and leaves.

William’s favourite yet lemon yellow manifested itself with palette knives. Fence posts were painted over that. Purple shades were added for interest in the lower part, and random scratchings gave grass-type markings before the paint could dry. A few foreground ferns and a distant copse of trees were then added.

Whilst not his contemporary ‘reflections on windows’ style, the resulting landscape scenes were all colourfully presented by Keighley Art Club members, and again we learned a new skill.

There is so much to learn about drawing and painting, and lots of variety whether in subject matter, the use of different paints or different brushes.