Jennifer Croom was a fresh personality with a flexible intuitive attitude to her art. “Enjoy your painting. It’s only paint”, she said. She was trying to paint a feeling, not a portrait. “Mess is good. I don’t like tidy paintings. I don’t copy. I change things”.

She started on a big canvas already scumbled all over with mixed colours. She said that unexpected things in a picture can add interest. Paint over old canvases. Let bits of the old picture come through.

If you want a likeness, you must measure. The eyesockets are critical, as is their relation to the line of the mouth. Check that the features are in the right position on the face. She used red/black line work to get started. She was fond of putting strange marks around the edges, which may turn into something later. The skin colour was quite pale at first, using mars/violet. The paint is very thin at this point. Not to worry. You can add thicker later. She kept up a cheerful, running commentary while actively painting.

White in the eyes is a bit of a trap. It can be too dramatic. She worked on the eyes most of the time, but attended to other parts of the picture. “You can use all sorts of things beside brushes to make a mark, such as your hands or a kitchen tool or spatula”.

After a generous afternoon tea, she attended to the back-ground and to the trimming. She felt an intuitive need for flowers in the hair, so she used the palette knife to scrape on white, to which, when dry, she would add transparent colour. She was a very popular demonstrator. The audience was very well pleased.

with WAA vice-president Alan Close

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