We have now published a second volume of our paintings, By the Way, containing paintings and sketches of hidden gems in and around the towns, villages, coast and countryside of Hampshire. The idea was to paint subjects off the beaten track in our local area, the south of Hampshire. Or, something that is in plain sight and seen every day but taken for granted, so much so that it is almost not really seen at all. The extraordinary everyday, like an old shop, garden flowers, a walk by a river, a hidden building with great history or a gate across a lane leading where ... ?

Some screen shots are shown below.

This is a companion volume to our earlier publication, Downs to the Sea, described further down the page. Copies are now sold out.

Towards the end of 2011 Solent Art Society published a book.

The idea came about after Elaine Reed visited St. Ives in the spring of 2010 and found a wonderful little book of sketches of West Penwith in Cornwall by an artist called Sue Lewington. It was full of wonderful drawings, little paintings and scribbled notes on her thoughts about what she was depicting. Its informality and the richness of the pages crammed with work appealed to Elaine so much that she immediately thought that one could be done of our own area. Then she thought of the art group and how, with so many talented people, they could easily do a similar book between them.

After some "gentle" persuasion and assuring everyone how easy it would be, they agreed to give it a go.

We settled on depictions of the countryside , towns, villages and coast roughly surrounding the River Meon in Hampshire. This area includes Old Winchester Hill, Warnford, East Meon, Wickham, Titchfield and Hill Head, out to Warsash in the west and Lee-on-Solent, Gosport, Fareham and the western edge of Portsmouth Harbour in the east.

The task of painting the book?s cover fell to Steve McIntyre as we knew he would do a great job. Then we made a list of various places which different people chose to do so that there wouldn?t be too much overlap (eg; 20 pictures of beach huts).

We gave ourselves 9 ? 10 months to finish the pages everyone was to hand in, having asked each person to try and do at least 2 double page spreads. We limited the book to 72 pages on our printer?s advice. In the end we had too many and the committee had the unenviable task of having to discard some fantastic work, so much in fact that we considered using it for a calendar.

Finally with lots of help from David Andrews of Lee Press, our printer, the book came together and was finished in time for Christmas 2011.

It has been enthusiastically received and the group have been given many lovely compliments about it.

Sorry, but now out of stock ...