Wow, what an inspiring and fascinating demonstration we had on Saturday presented by the award winning and highly creative artist Sheila Whittam. Sheila does amazing contemporary mixed media paintings incorporating collage, pastels, gouache and charcoal. A few hick-ups with the slide show kept our tech team hard at work but did not deter Sheila from presenting a highly informative session. Starting with the initial photograph, she then simplified it into a rough sketch, gradually adding gouache, pastel, collage and charcoal to create a unique and highly imaginative work of art. Everyone was fascinated by this approach to using pastel and I am sure there will be a few inclusions of this in our "Proudly Pastel" exhibition in June.