After Hours is an art club I started at my community studio, The Pottery Lab in the summer of 2019. The aim of After Hours is to bring together like-minded art and craft enthusiasts to meet after hours on a weekly basis and learn a new art or craft together.

 

We will be completing one successful year of After Hours in the coming weeks. We have grown organically over the months into a small intimate group, constantly providing each other with support, encouragement and discipline.

 

In 2019, we had begun with watercolours. A few months into our discipline I invited a very talented artist and teacher to conduct a week-long workshop which helped put in place a methodology for us.

 

2020 has been about oil pastels. We have now in the last few months tried out various kinds of pastels and various kinds of paper surfaces – coloured, white, textured, non-textured. Limited access to materials during the covid-19 lockdown has made us try out unusual surfaces as well such as newspaper, brown paper shopping bags and even old used envelopes. The results have been fascinating and we are very happy to be able to make art everywhere, upcycling materials.

 

Here’s a glimpse of what we have been up to.