Indoor Members' meetings are held twice weekly, on Monday evenings and on Thursday afternoons, during the Autumn and Winter seasons, except for the second Monday and Thursday of each month. No charge is made to members for attending workshop meetings, and visitors interested in joining the Club are welcome to attend two or three meetings before deciding to join. The venue is St Georges Church Hall, Fordington, Dorchester, which has ample free car parking. Workshop meetings comprise a mix of "working sessions" (in which members work on either set themes or subjects, or on subjects of their choice) and more structured sessions (in which members are led in particular techniques by an experienced member of the Club).
Where possible, the aim is to base the 'themes' of the workshop meetings on a rotating cycle of five, designed to ensure that as far as possible a series of, say, still life sessions do not follow each other. The five themes are [landscapes], [figures, portraits or animals], [flowers, fruit or foliage], [still life], and [a miscellany category -- covering techniques, different media, etc]. Within these themes, specific subjects for meetings are set, but it is accepted that members are free to work on their own preferred subject matter if they wish.
Summer meetings are normally held each Thursday (from 10.00 am to 4 pm.) during the summer season (usually from May until late August or early September) at various locations in the West Dorset area, providing for members who like to draw and paint outside, but are reluctant to do so on their own. The locations are often in villages or towns, in places of artistic interest, or in the countryside where landscape subjects abound. When members are able to arrange this, visits to private gardens or farms are sometimes included in the programme, and occasionally in notable private or public grounds (or other privately-owned properties) where charges for admission and/or parking may be made. Where possible concessionary group rates are negotiated for members attending. Most outdoor meetings are 'unorganised' in the sense that members choose their own subjects and viewpoints, but an "organiser" is present at every other meeting to direct people to suggested subjects, and, where those present wish this, to arrange a review of paintings at the end of the afternoon. Most locations are chosen to allow lunch to be taken at a local pub, in company with fellow artists.
The 2012 programme has yet to be announced.
Demonstrations are generally given by visiting professional artists (and occasionally by professional or experienced members of the Club), and usually comprise the techniques of working in a particular medium -- oil, watercolour, acrylic, pastel, etc -- and can be of any subject matter. Because demonstrators are normally paid a fee for visiting the Club, a charge of £2 per demo is made for members who attend, and visitors pay £4.
These pictures show a professional member of the DAC, Marilyn Allis, working on a painting during an indoor meeting of the Club in 2004, using the mirror employed by the dac for demonstrations, a portable device which allows an audience of up to sixty an unobstructed view.
It is particularly useful for watercolour demos (which are difficult to carry out on a traditional upright easel with the artist working with his or her back to the audience, obscuring the view of most of them): details of the 'demo mirror' are on the "Demonstration Mirror" page of this site.
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