wELCOME!


​​Welcome to the Harpenden Arts Club!

The Harpenden Arts Club aims to provide a wide range of creative workshops, demonstrations, life drawing and studio practice evenings, as well as a sociable meeting point for artists of all abilities. We meet most Thursday evenings at 7.30 - 9.30 pm in the small public hall, Southdown Road, Harpenden, AL5 1PD.
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Have a look at this season's programme for details:
NEXT MEETING
Thursday 28th March 2019
7.30pm

Tips for painting reflections and water
A presentation and workshop 
​led by Sarah Poppleton
Sarah Poppleton is a local artist and HAC Committee member who gets involved with some of the publicity work for the club. She works mainly in oils and best known for her landscape paintings which often feature water, shadows and reflections or fleeting light effects.

For this meeting she aims to give a brief presentation discussing certain aspects of water including reflections, sparkling light on water, and waves, and her approach to painting these. Then it will be the turn of members to put some of these ideas into practice in their own paintings of water. 

Please bring:
  • A photo or picture of water to use as inspiration. This could be still water reflections, ripples or waves - whatever appeals to you. 
  • Suitable paints or media - Sarah's tips are aimed at opaque media where light colours can layer onto dark, rather than more transparent media such as watercolour. If you enjoyed last week's oil painting workshop why not try oils again? Otherwise media such as acrylics or pastels would work.
  • Suitable paper, canvas board or similar to paint on.
  • Brushes, jar for water or turps, palette.
  • Kitchen roll and newspaper for the tables.
  • Apron or similar
  • Plastic bags for wrapping up oil paint brushes if you are using oils to take them home to clean properly.

Please note that if using oils, we cannot pour any turps, white spirit or similar down the sinks in the hall. Brushes can be cleaned briefly in turps in a jar at the hall, then must be taken home to clean further, finishing with soap and water. 

​Some of Sarah's work can be seen on her website if you are interested:

Harry Dobkin - the new honorary president of HAc

After 12 years on the Committee with the Harpenden Arts Club, most recently as the club's Webmaster and photographer, Harry Dobkin has recently retired. He has made many valuable contributions to the smooth running of the club over the years and his humour and willingness to help will be sorely missed. But we are grateful that he has accepted the position of Honorary President of the club, which was unanimously offered to him by the Committee. Hopefully we will still see many more years of his artistic endeavours in his retirement.  

ANNUAL ART EXHIBITION - 8th - 11th November 2018

The Harpenden Arts Club celebrated its 60th Annual Art Exhibition in November at the Harpenden Public Halls, which was a sparkling success and great fun!

For a review of the exhibition and photos go to the 2019 Exhibitions page:

aBOUT uS


We are a sociable and creative group of people who enjoy learning new art techniques and sharing ideas. We have over 130 members and a strong committee of nine enthusiastic individuals who, along with many willing helpers, organise and run the activities.
 SOME MEMBERS CELEBRATING THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY
If you would like to join:
Have you seen our Facebook page yet? We post regular photos from the weekly sessions there and more day-to-day information. If you use Facebook, do "like" our page to hear from us!

hac rOLLING EXHIBITION AT ROTHAMSTED

We have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to display works by HAC members at the Conference Centre restaurant of the Rothamsted Centre for Research and Enterprise in Harpenden over the last 20 months. Unfortunately this opportunity has now come to an end due to redevelopment of the restaurant area, but we are grateful to the Conference Centre staff for working with us on this joint venture. Over the period we installed 9 separate displays of artworks by 52 individual artist members. We sold nine paintings and had quite a number of enquiries about HAC membership as a result. Thank you to everyone who got involved, lent their pictures and helped to display the artworks!

gdpr iNFORMATION

Harpenden Arts Club has now published a data protection policy in line with the new General Data Protection Regulations.

Are you getting our emails?

We have changed our email system over the summer. Emails to members now come from info.hac2018@gmail.com . Please make sure your email system accepts this new address and doesn't put our emails into your Junk folder! Also, please make sure we have your current email address. If in doubt, contact Membership Secretary Peter Brown on 01582 793174 or pjbrown4242@gmail.com .