Hinckley and District Society of Art

June 2026 – Rita Sadler

Dave Wykes — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:03:10 +0000

Rita is an artist who teaches, runs workshops, demonstrates and exhibits her work widely. She is a member of several Artists Societies and an elected member of the Leicester Society of Artists.

She lives and works in the East Midlands and has been teaching for over 25 years. Rita runs classes in various venues. Workshops are held in her purpose built garden studio.

https://ritasadlerart.weebly.com/

Rita came to the society in June 2026 and demonstrated “Adventurous Still Life” to over 40 of the society members. A fun evening was had, the issue of the wine glass being too full was particularly funny… . the painted end result symbolising the dangers that drink may have. .

May 2026 Art & Craft Fair

Dave Wykes — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:37:23 +0000

Delighted to update you on May 2026 Fair, what a turnout of members, friends and visitors we had, it was a lovely positive day I think.

We ran out of Best in Show entry forms so had to improvise to keep the voting going. The first prize went to Shirley Simonetti with her wonderful Tiger painting Stay Back. In joint second we had Sylvia Turner with her Moonlight Over Ammoudi Bay Picture and Julie Worthington with All Creatures Great & Small. We had 35 entries to our Competition and all were appreciated by our visitors, I know because they came and told me about the pictures and how much they enjoyed them.

Our HDSA Cafe surpassed itself and broke new records, we made £670 on the day which will go towards to the new Exhibition Boards for our August Exhibition on 29 & 30 August, our Cheese & Wine Preview Night on 28 August and our Hopton Hall Adventure 16 to 19 July.

To our wonderful stallholders, thank you for taking part, we couldn’t do the event without you and your efforts are very much appreciated and give people the opportunity to see your work and to purchase original hand made items.

Also thank you to all our volunteers, you were simply fantastic yesterday. What great teamwork we have at HDSA!!

May 2026 – Irina French

Dave Wykes — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:21:22 +0000

A near capacity art society audience saw something new for the society in for May 2026, Irina French came to the society to demonstrate her digital artistry process in respect of portraiture. Irina is a professional digital artist mainly working on character illustrations, boardgame artworks, book and music album covers. More information about Irina can be found here http://www.irinafrench.com/

Irina showed us the technical equipment needed to create digital art along with many techniques to manipulate the art. The software used by Irina was Adobe Photoshop which requires a subscription but there are others like Krita which is free, a browser-based app called Magma also free, CorelDraw, requiring a subscription plus more like Clip Studio Paint, ArtRage etc.

Regarding the equipment Irina uses Wacom Intuos Tablet & Pen

April 2026 – Christine Varley

Dave Wykes — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:03:32 +0000

Originally from the Cotswolds, Christine Varley has been working since 1987 as a Pet and Animal Portrait Artist, She is now recognised as one of the leading Artists in her field exhibiting at Crufts and major Horse Trial events.

Christine visited the society in April 2026 to talk about her art-life and demonstrate her watercolour portrait techniques applied to animals – in this instance a dog, and was very well attended by around 45 society members.

More information about Christine can be found by following the link below

https://www.pet-portraits.co.uk/

March 2026 – Cordell Garfield

Dave Wykes — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:07:00 +0000

March 2026 already! and Cordell Garfield visited the society to talk us through his methodology for portrait painting in oils witnessed by another great turn out from the society members.

January 2026 – Nick Logan

Dave Wykes — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:05:47 +0000

2026 got of to great start with the majority of the society members, 40+, coming out to hear Nick Logan talk us through portrait painting and colour diversity.

Although Nick didn’t get to finish a painting on the evening his insights into how skin tones and shadows can be constructed, introducing the “skin tone sphere” and demonstration using his arm was very well received! In addition Nick also demonstrated the art of sizing faces and positioning of facial components among many other insights into portrait art.

The optical illusion of the tone wheel was also cool!! (See Image Below)

More about Nick and his art can be found by following the link here https://www.nicklogan.co.uk/

November 2025 Art & Crafts Fair

Dave Wykes — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:53:25 +0000

Hi Everyone

Just taking a short breather after yesterday’s Art & Craft Fair!!

It was a lovely day. Thank you to our wonderful stallholders, who put on such a great display of talent and our small band of fantastic volunteers who worked hard selling raffle tickets, selling cakes and serving drinks – we couldn’t have run the Fair without you – it is an opportunity for us to put something on for the Burbage community and the surrounding area and also to raise funds to keep HDSA going. Our HDSA Cafe & Raffle raised over £450 yesterday which is a great result and will help us with our programme for 2026.

November 2025 – Alix Almond

Dave Wykes — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:39:26 +0000

Alix Almond came to demonstrate her linocut print making techniques to the society in November 2025. A former teacher, Alix is now a full time linocut artist focussing on animals and birds and gave an interesting demonstration about the process of cutting and printing.

More information about Alix can be found by following the link https://www.alixalmond.com/

October 2025 – DJ Workshop

Dave Wykes — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 13:12:23 +0000

17 Members enjoyed a day with DJ from www.artbydj.co.uk, who took us through a Woodlight Light tutorial in acrylics. It was a busy day and we learned several new techniques in terms of colour mixing and paint application and ate lots of cake, what’s not to like!

The resulting paintings were really impressive as you can hopefully see in all the photos.

You can also see a nice video that DJ has put together here DJ Art Movie

We have another DJ Workshop in the 2026 Programme on 19 Oct where DJ will take us through a seascape in oils or acrylics.

October 2025 – Darren Awang

Dave Wykes — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:12:36 +0000

October 2025 demonstration with Darren Awang, Destruction Arts or Dazzler.18 depending on the art I guess was witnessed by another full turnout from the society.

Darren told us about his life, growing up in Liverpool, and how he got into art and how he developed his unique social history art talking through the process.

More about Darren can be found by following the link https://www.instagram.com/dazzler.18/