Artists & Illustrators August 2021 [PDF]

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Artists & Illustrators, The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ Tel: (020) 7349 3700 www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk EDITORIAL Group Editor Steve Pill Art Editor Lauren Debono-Elliot Assistant Editor Rebecca Bradbury Contributors Hashim Akib, Martha Alexander, Grahame Booth, Laura Boswell, Terence Clarke, Lizet Dingemans, Siân Dudley, Laura Hardie, Alan McGowan, Natalie Oberg, Maria Popma, Jake Spicer and Amber Tyldesley ONLINE ENQUIRIES [email protected]

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Welcome Ken Howard RA once told me a theory, and I'm paraphrasing wildly here because I have the memory capacity of a forgetful goldfish, that many of the world's greatest artists can paint a great picture, but only a select few were capable of producing moments of genius day in, day out. We were talking about Claude Monet at the time and the thought popped up again while I was looking at the French Impressionist's series paintings for this issue. Monet's repeated studies of haystacks, cathedrals and even Britain's own Houses of Parliament are full of light and magic, the contrasts between different times of day and weather conditions just helping to confirm his otherworldly skill at observing and interpreting the world. That's not to say there isn't plenty to learn from his approach and I hope the advice from current landscape painters in that piece encourages you to try that technique at home. In this issue, our Artists of the Year 2017 winner Anna Perlin reveals how she made the work for her second solo exhibition with London's Thackeray Gallery. Her first came as a direct result of entering our competition and almost sold out. From being an avid reader of the magazine, she has now established herself as full-time professional artist and deservedly so. Steve Pill, Editor

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Artists & Illustrators 3

Contents

18

Dame Paula Rego 's latest exhibition

The true subjects were not local fields but changing effects of light and weather

32 REGULARS 5 Letters Win a £50 GreatArt voucher

6

Exhibitions

– MONE T ' S HAYS TACK S , PAGE 2 6

68

Discover August's best art shows

26 Art Histor y

52 Demo

9

How to draw a tree trunk in pencil

Quick tips, ideas and inspiration

Capture magical light with the help of Claude Monet's series paintings

14 Fresh Paint

32 In The Studio

New artworks, fresh off the easel

Kew Gardens and The Jungle Book have inspired Lucille Clerc's art

Inspiring paintings and expert advice from four wildlife artists

Sketchbook

24 The Working Artist With our columnist Laura Boswell

25 Prize Draw Win £1,000 of top art materials

82 Meet the Artist With the illustrator, author and avid ornithologist, Matt Sewell

INSPIRATION 18 Prof ile Explore the art of Dame Paula Rego ahead of her new Tate show 4 Artists

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TECHNIQUES 38 Masterclass

56 Tips

62 Composition Think cleverly about your next still life painting subject

64 Mark Making

Hashim Akib shows how to tackle groupings of animals in style

Bring an expert finish to charcoal with our simple blending advice

44 Technique

68 Anatomy

Learn to capture sunlight and shadows with real accuracy

A three-part series on the figure begins with a look at the torso

48 Colour Theor y

74 How I Paint

Draw Brighton's Jake Spicer sets a final colour mixing exercise

Our Artist of the Year 2017 readies for her second London exhibition

op Fo ur t tist s fe ar w il dli exp e r t s h a r e g t ip s in paint e 56 – pag

Letters LET TER OF THE MONTH

OPEN TO CHANGE Encouraged by my wonderful tutor, my larger acrylic portrait of Tope was a “painting from a painting” – created more freely from imagination and memory whilst only referring briefly to my smaller original oil painting. The acrylic portrait [left] is now in the BALTIC Open Submission exhibition in Gateshead (until 5 September) and also BALTIC Open Out, whereby images of some of the artworks, including my own, have been put on billboards across Tyne and Wear Metro and public transport systems to take art out into the local communities. I am very proud to be in this exhibition after retiring and completing a BA in Fine Art from the University of Sunderland in 2019 at the age of 60. As a subscriber to Artists & Illustrators for a number of years now, I hope this letter inspires other readers – it is never too late to develop your creativity or undertake a fine art diploma or degree. Christine Leedham, Tynemouth Congratulations Christine on a wonderful portrait and sharing an inspiring story for us all.

SOAKING UP INSPIRATION Running a busy lifestyle gives me significantly less time for reading. When I receive the monthly subscription to Artists & Illustrators magazine, I thoroughly enjoy reading it while in the bath along with a cup of tea. Call me crazy, but this is the only “me” time I get, and I make the most out of it. Thank you for being a part of it. Marinela Caldarus, via email WELL, WELL, WELL I am a project administrator by profession and an amateur artist. Just before lockdown in 2020, I launched my personal project, Creative Wellness, online with the aim of helping and supporting others in a safe environment. My passion for creativity became a valuable resource in lockdown.

Now over a year later I launched my own website, www.creative wellnessjourney.co.uk, and provide online classes for beginners to learn. Art for wellness is my future and I look forward to exploring and sharing with friends and members. Debbie Crouch, via email THE LONG ROAD BACK I just wanted to write to you and share my experience of lockdown. Prior to it all starting I had taken up running, a hobby that I thought I would never enjoy but sometimes we surprise ourselves. I had planned to do my very first marathon and had started training. As the months went by, I realised that things were not going to change quickly so decided to do my training on a very quiet, long road. I then found myself running in my garden.

Over those same months I had started painting along with Portrait Artist of the Week, every Sunday morning. I absolutely loved it and I am sure that it was helping me stay sane. On 22 January 2021 I completed my first marathon in my garden. I decided to combine my skills and paint a self-portrait of me running on the route that I should have run on, knowing that one day I will run a marathon distance again, exactly where I should have done it. Melissa Pattemore, via email

Write to us! Send your letter or email to the addresses below: POST: Your Letters, Artists & Illustrators, The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ EMAIL: info@artists andillustrators.co.uk The writer of our ‘letter of the month’ will receive a £50 gift voucher from GreatArt, which offers the UK’s largest range of art materials with more than 50,000 art supplies and regular discounts and promotions. www.greatart.co.uk

FREEDOM CARDS Just came across your magazine and I'm feeling refreshed and delighted by the sense of freedom: all those artists, each being themselves, and something new is born. I’ve been isolated for 14 months in the Pennines and I made 816 greeting cards. I can’t really draw so I just fool around. It’s so much fun! Madhuri Z K Ewing, via email HAPPY TO HELP I was reading the latest Artists & Illustrators today and noticed the question: how has art helped you during lockdown? I loved this as I have noticed more people empowered and confident to share their art and start creating online. I worked on a Covid ward during the pandemic, and although it was difficult to create pieces and paint, I always had my art to distract me. I hadn’t been asked this question until now, so thank you. Emmie Tapper, via Facebook

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Artists & Illustrators 5

Exhibitions AUGUST’S BEST ART SHOWS

LUCIAN FREUD: REAL LIVES

24 July to 8 May 2022 Biosphere 2 was one of the strangest experiments in the history of science. Begun in 1991 and aiming – yet failing – to replicate Earth’s eco-systems, eight people were sealed in a high-tech glasshouse in Arizona for two years. Forgotten by many, this bold project has now been critically reimagined by

Argentine artist Ad Minoliti. Yet rather than isolating a minority, Minoliti’s first UK solo exhibition is an inclusive space. Her playful paintings have roots in geometric abstraction, while she intends to use part of the gallery as a space for visitors to explore feminist and queer theory via twice-weekly art workshops. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. www.baltic.art

PHOTO: AURÉLIEN MOLE. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND CRÈVECOEUR, PARIS

AD MINOLITI: BIOSPHERE PLUS

24 July to 16 January 2022 Lucian Freud may have rejected the idea that an artist’s life matters to their art, but deeply private and painting only those closest to him, his works are all we have left to understand the man behind the masterpieces. With this in mind, this presentation of Freud’s work focuses on his sitters, revealing those who came in and out of his life, as well as the personal and artistic changes he went through over his 60-odd-year career. Rarely seen etchings will be on display too. Tate Liverpool, Liverpool. www.tate.org.uk

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LEIGH BOWERY, 1991. © THE LUCIAN FREUD ARCHIVE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Opens 13 August Despite deserting the army during the Second World War, Australian artist Sidney Nolan (best known for his stylised Ned Kelly artworks) clearly had the horrors of Auschwitz at the forefront of his mind when he created a number of holocaust paintings in the early 1960s. Collected here they are minimal and far less colourful than his usual canvases. The Rodd, Presteigne, Powys. www.sidneynolantrust.org

© SIDNEY NOLAN TRUST

SIDNEY NOLAN: COLOUR OF THE SKY – AUSCHWITZ PAINTINGS

Dates may change during the Covid-19 restrictions Always check gallery websites beforehand

© SIR FRANK BOWLING

FRANK BOWLING: LAND OF MANY WATERS

Until 26 September While his knighthood hit the headlines in October, abstract painter Sir Frank Bowling has been catching the art world’s attention for six decades now, particularly with his experimental surface textures and lyrical exploration of colour. Celebrating his career’s 60th anniversary, this exhibition brings together new works made throughout 2020, as well as other paintings from the past decade that revisit old techniques, such as those used to create his iconic “poured paintings” of the 1970s. Arnolfini, Bristol. www.arnolfini.org.uk

© JERWOOD COLLECTION

COAST, COUNTRY, CITY

20 August to 7 November Going on holiday overseas is not straightforward at the moment. But we still have a wide variety of different places on our doorstep to visit, something this new exhibition of UK destinations painted by British landscape artists reminds us. With works by the likes of David Hockney, Edward Bawden and Catherine Yaas, all predating 2020, viewers are invited to reassess their perceptions of Britain after more than a year spent in various states of lockdown. Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire. www.harleygallery.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators

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Adrian Ryan, South of France, 1957, oil on canvas

Lucian Freud (1922-2011) Girl with Roses, 1947-48 British Council, London, ©The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images

John Minton (1917-57) The Hop Pickers, 1945 ©The Royal College of Art / Bridgeman Images

Book your tickets online www.victoriagal.org.uk 01225 477785

For the first time this exhibition brings together the early work of Adrian Ryan and his friends John Minton and Lucian Freud 10 July – 19 Sept 2021 Victoria Art Gallery, Bath

SKETCHBOOK

August TIPS • ADVI CE • ID E A S

Added Value

S IÂN D U D LE Y shares tips for creating stronger, richer dark tones in watercolour

1

REACH FOR TUBES

Adding water to watercolour increases the transparency. The easiest way to make a colour as dark as it can be is to add as little water as possible. In short, pale tones are thinner and dark tones are thicker. Dark tones are easier to achieve using tube paints rather than pans as less water is needed to make the pigment workable. It is also easier to produce dark tones in big quantities with tubes.

2

MIX THINGS UP

Don’t just rely on a single colour. Mixing dark tones, rather than using a perceived dark pigment such as Indigo, makes things more visually interesting, especially if the mix is varied slightly across the painting.

3

PLAY WITH CONTRASTS

There comes a point where colour straight from the tube is still not dark enough. When this

happens, add a tiny amount of the complementary colour – the one opposite it on the colour wheel – to the mix. It will darken the tone without noticeably changing the hue. Use the colour wheel only as a guide. Test possible combinations on scrap paper, then substitute pigments until you find a pleasing mix. For example, Ultramarine should be darkened by an orange – Translucent Orange works well, but Burnt Sienna is even darker.

4

PLAN YOUR PALETTE

When choosing your palette, consider which pigments will be used for dark tones to ensure a more unified image. In the painting above, the bright green needed to be fresh. A purple, rather than a red, mixed with Viridian gave fresher, bluer shadow colours when used both thin and thick (behind the flowers). www.moortoseaarts.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 9

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SKETCHBOOK

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PHOTO: YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY/ILLUSTRATION: BETT NORRIS

LONG “ASASYOU’RE LEARNING, YOU’RE NOT FAILING

”

— Bob Ross MASTER TIP We tend to let the subject of a painting dictate the format: a portrait format for a figure, a landscape format for a scene. Many Japanese and Chinese artists flipped this logic, using a portrait format to showcase tall trees, snow-capped mountains and a greater sense of depth. Take inspiration from Wang Jian’s Landscape after Yang Sheng [left] and turn your next painting on its head to access a whole new way of arranging pictures.

Artists & Illustrators 11

SKETCHBOOK

NEW HUES LEMON YELLOW Discover a new colour ever y month First made in the 19th century from various chromates, Lemon Yellow took a while to establish itself commercially yet became a firm favourite on artists’ palettes after use by Monet, Renoir and Gauguin. As an artificial yellow, the colour changes from brand to brand (PY3 is a common pigment), yet Michael Harding offers a true barium chromate (PY31) that has a vaguely acidic green tint that mixes to make interesting fleshy greys.

For your next portrait, try exaggerating observed colours. If you spot a blue shadow in the hair, for example, use a brighter, bolder version in your portrait on purpose. Working like this for a while helps you tune into these subtle shifts. Set up two varied light sources – one natural, one artificial – to bring out those unexpected hues further.

ISTOCK

Push your colours

The Diary 31 JULY Submit by today to feature in the UK Coloured Pencil Society’s 20th Anniversary Gala, which runs from 14-24 October at London’s Bargehouse, Oxo Wharf Tower. www.ukcps.org.uk

TOP TIP Summer is the best time to try landscape painting. “Working in the field directly, whether sketching or plein air painting is the best starting point for works created back in the studio, since observation is key to all landscape works,” says painter Lucy Marks. “I personally never work from photos always choosing to have experienced the environment directly.” Lucy’s exhibition, Dawn to Dusk, runs until 19 September at Petworth House, Sussex. www.lucymarks.co.uk

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20 AUGUST Midday is the cut-off to enter wildlife and natural world inspired art to the Society of Wildlife Artists’ 58th Annual Exhibition, held at London’s Mall Galleries in October. mallgalleries.oess1.uk 7 SEPTEMBER ING Discerning Eye 2021 submissions close today. This year’s six selectors include painter Pete “The Street” Brown and Art Matters podcast presenter Russell Tovey. www.discerningeye.org

BOOK OF THE MONTH Peter Blake: Collage David Hockney introduces this delightful compendium of cut-and-paste work by his former Royal College of Art chum Sir Peter Blake. The art veers between overcrowded Victoriana and primary-coloured mod graphics, occasionally within the same frame. There’s also insight into the Sgt Pepper’s creator’s process via photos of his West London studio, a veritable cabinet of curiosities. While it could be opened as a museum, it also explains how he hordes his source material. Thames & Hudson, £30. www.thameshudson.co.uk

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Fresh Paint Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

Karen Mai The magic of a still life is it can reveal new ways of looking at ordinary objects. Cue the work of Hong Kong-based watercolourist Karen Mai, whose recent painting In the Sun was selected for this year’s Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours’ Exhibition. Intelligently plotted marks in luscious orange hues bring to life the juicy, plump, good-enough-to-eat clementine segments, while subtle strokes hint at the texture of the shadowy inner peel. It’s a painting that forces us to re-evaluate the beauty of a subject usually destined for consumption or, in the case of the peel, the rubbish bin. However, elevating the everyday is not Karen’s only aim. “Still life is usually not considered the most difficult [subject],” she says, “but they’re actually difficult to do well… I think it’s a very good subject for you to challenge yourself and experiment with new ways of doing things,” From architecture, interiors and industrial scenes to landscapes, gardens and figures, Karen’s rich array of subjects proves her versality. Becoming something of a signature, however, is her clever incorporation of the white of the paper into the composition. It’s a technique Karen uses regularly in her architectural paintings in order to enhance the shape of the buildings and create a sense of space for the viewer. Yet in her still life, the purpose might be to create a particular mood or highlight a certain form. “In the Sun required more peace,” she explains of the reasoning behind the composition. “I was trying to make it simple and make it stand out… Although I do have a really light wash on [the white paper], some warmer greys, but you probably don’t quite see that.” In line with her economical attitude to the composition is Karen’s carefully considered brushstrokes. Although they might appear to be detail-orientated, that’s not the full story. “The trickiest thing is not painting all the details but trying to indicate them without making them too obvious,” she says. “I try to make each stroke precise, as with watercolour it’s challenging if you want to make changes.” Also consistent is Karen’s last step on any painting: turning to smaller brushes to adjust the relationship between different objects. Just look at those atmospheric cast shadows, linking the forms with their orange tints, for a masterclass on how to do it. www.karenmaiart.etsy.com 14 Artists

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KAREN’S TOP TIP “Cheaper brushes can be better when it comes to creating different textures in watercolour”

Fresh Paint Karen Mai, In The Sun, watercolour on paper, 26x26cm

Fresh Paint

ABOVE Nigel Turner, Watching the Water Waiters, acrylic on canvas, 60cm diameter

Nigel Turner Maybe it’s the round canvas calling to mind the shape of a spyhole, but there’s something about Portfolio Plus member Nigel Turner’s painting Watching the Water Waiters that makes you very much aware of your presence as a viewer. In fact, it’s not the first time that this has been pointed out to him. “Somebody asked me if it was intentionally like you’re looking through a telescope, but I hadn’t thought that was the case,” the Staffordshire-based artist reveals. “I just thought a round canvas was not only a novel way to paint, but it also takes away those corners… If you remove them completely, you really have to focus on what is going on in the middle.” The painting is part of a series called 12 Rounds, inspired by the north Cornwall coast and, as the name suggests, all utilised similarly circular supports. Although the canvas shape is what stands out, the composition, with its slither of rocks at the top and sea foam in the foreground, deserves recognition for successfully anchoring the scene. Then there’s the rich turquoises of the waves, which gently roll to shore, fading to hint at the sand beneath and evoking day-dreamy beach days. 16 Artists

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You can almost feel the sea breeze blowing in your hair and hear the far-off cry of hungry gulls. “It’s layer upon layer of paint,” Nigel says, explaining his process. “I paint to music, so it’s quite percussive. It’s like dabbing your brush in time to the beat. It’s a random pattern, Every month, one of our Fresh Paint but the movement is very artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus, repetitious and rhythmical, our online, art-for-sale portal. For your and I find that’s the best way to chance to feature in a forthcoming create the ripples on the water.” issue, sign up for your own personalised For the artist, who is also a Portfolio Plus page today. You can also: full-time product design • Showcase, share and sell unlimited lecturer, it’s a meditative artworks commission free method that has imbued the • Get your work seen across Artists & artwork with a sense of Illustrators’ social media channels serenity, one you hope not to • Submit art to our online exhibitions disturb as you go unnoticed • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more observing the surfers from afar. Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ illustrators.co.uk/register nigel-turner

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Dame PROFILE

Paula Rego

I

n 2004, a retrospective of painter Paula Rego’s work at the Serralves museum in Porto was forced to keep its doors open 24 hours a day to accommodate demand from visitors. Now, more than 15 years later Tate Britain prepares to open the largest and most comprehensive UK showcase of her life to date and it’s safe to say that there’s a substantial buzz around an exhibition that will feature more than 100 works, including collage, paintings, large-scale pastels, ink-and-pencil drawings, etchings and sculpture. “This is my life’s dream,” says curator Elena Crippa of compiling this collection. “I keep hearing how excited everyone is – colleagues at Tate and beyond. I really feel this retrospective is so overdue and so needed. The number of people who

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tell me that they have stories about Paula – whether as a student, meeting her at an opening, or being taught by her – saying how generous she was with her time. There is something extraordinary about her as a human being as well as an artist.” Paula’s career to date has spanned almost 70 years and has earned her a damehood, legions of fans and even a museum dedicated to her work, The Casa das Histórias Paula Rego (or “Paula Rego House of Stories”), in her native Portugal. Britain has played an important role in her life, however. Paula lives and works in north London and it is here that her practice first developed. She is at once an artist, storyteller, feminist, activist, mother and child whose work combines darkness, pain and injustice with warmth, humour and expressions of pure pleasure.

TATE. © PAULA REGO

Ahead of a landmark retrospective of the Portuguese-British artist’s work, MARTHA ALEXANDER speaks to curator Elena Crippa to get an insight into seven decades of fairytale, fear and freedom

PROFILE

ABOVE The Dance, 1988, acrylic on paper on canvas, 212.6x274cm

Artists & Illustrators 19

LEEDS MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES (LEEDS ART GALLERY) UK/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES/© PAULA REGO

PROFILE

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PROFILE

There’s a lot of darkness in her paintings but there’s also humour and pleasure too. Irony and magic... All these things are there

PRIVATE COLLECTION. © PAULA REGO

ABOVE Love, 1995, pastel on paper mounted on aluminium, 120x160cm

LEFT The Artist in Her Studio, 1993, acrylic on canvas, 180x130cm

Paula Rego was born Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego in Lisbon, Portugal, on 26 January 1935. As a child, she would spend hours indoors drawing. By the age of 17, she was in London studying at The Slade School of Fine Art where she recalls struggling to make accurate “to scale” drawings. It was during her time at The Slade that she met her future husband, the artist Victor Willing, who was seven years her senior. The pair had a shaky start, not least because he was initially married to someone else and Paula became pregnant with his child, but by 1959 they were married and settled together in Portugal. In 1962, her father bought the couple a house on Albert Street in Camden Town, by which time she had become established in what was still seen as a male-dominated profession and she was showing work as part of The London Group alongside the likes

of Frank Auerbach and David Hockney. Since then, she has worked consistently on paintings and prints which are almost always political. Paula grew up under the fascist dictator António de Oliveira Salazar and some of her early paintings tackle the injustices he inflicted over Portugal and beyond. One notable work in this respect is 1960’s Salazar Vomiting the Homeland, a piece indicative of the artist’s bravery – this was, after all, a time when having an opinion on the government was dangerous, let alone challenging its authority. Paula has also tackled many other important subjects. Her 1998 Abortion series featured lone women enduring the after-effects of “backstreet” terminations and came about as a result of a referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal failed. This haunting series forced viewers to

consider the reality of removing choice for women and is credited with helping to bring about a second referendum. Yet while the Portuguese-British artist never shies away from the grimness of reality, she also leans heavily into the world of folklore and fairy tale – and regularly uses childhood motifs in her works. “There are lots of little fairies or little dolls in her paintings,” says Elena. “These are all elements which connect to an experience of the magic of childhood. This is so important for Paula… The child within is the most important thing for her to retain.” Animals regularly feature in Paula’s work, especially dogs and cats, often as a way of expressing difficult human emotions. Because for all the nostalgic references to childhood, Rego’s work is dark. It is designed to, if not frighten, then unnerve. The themes are not comfortable or easy ones but to say her paintings are only macabre or gloomy is also too simplistic. Having spent time immersed in her portfolio, Elena warns audiences not to overlook the lightness involved. “Yes, there’s a lot of darkness but there’s also lots of humour and pleasure too,” she notes. “Irony and magic… All these things are there.” The Tate Britain exhibition is essentially the 86-year-old artist’s career laid bare or, as Elena describes it, a means to show her “succession of ways of thinking”. Like a story book, there are 11 “chapters” to the show, each one addressing different themes or ideas. “The more naturalistic pastels are her better-known works, but I really wanted to show the entire range of the work,” says the curator. “Some works have never been seen or shown only once decades ago and have never been seen since. In terms of lenders and loans – this is an extraordinary collection.” The earliest work was painted in

Artists & Illustrators 21

PROFILE

Walking into Paula’s studio is like entering Aladdin’s cave… You can see her love for the quirky 22 Artists

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1950 when Paula was just 15 years old. Interrogation is essentially a depiction of a woman being tortured and rather set the tone for her career. It shows that the way in which women are treated, their fears and the need to speak up about this and other types of abuse, has always been central to her work. One of the forthcoming exhibition’s highlights is set to be the “chapter”

that brings together works first shown at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 1988. That collection proved a turning point in Paula’s career as the mix of early collages and drawings alongside brand-new character paintings firmly established her reputation within the UK art world. One painting that didn’t quite make that Serpentine exhibition was The Dance – it had been intended as the

PRIVATE COLLECTION. © PAULA REGO

PROFILE

ABOVE Interrogation, 1950, oil on canvas, 50.5x61cm TOP RIGHT The Little Murderess, 1987, acrylic on paper on canvas, 150x150cm

centrepiece of the collection, but the artist couldn’t finish it in time. The six months she spent completing it were well spent, however, as it remains one of her most famous works. “This will be an occasion to show that body of work in a way that Paula would have wanted at the time,” says Elena. The Dance has many elements typical of her style. For one, it has a surreal, dreamlike quality, in part thanks to the moonlit backdrop. It shows women both at different stages of their lives, and as vessels or charms for men. Elena has worked closely with Paula in preparing the show, spending time in her north London studio – seemingly a near-perfect artist’s space, large with high ceilings and a skylight.

“When you walk in it’s like entering Aladdin’s cave, that’s the first impression,” recalls Elena. “There’s all these objects: a chest covered in little doll statuettes, fake flowers collected over time… You can see her love for the quirky. There are also lots of props and dolls that she has been making.” They are an important part of Paula’s process and she has previously said that she feels she must “become” the things she paints. By making these objects herself, this idea is more achievable. In fact, on visiting her studio, Elena says she recognised real-life pieces of furniture from the paintings – the same mirror, chair, and so on. There is a collection of dresses, too, that the mannequins will wear.

Then there are her materials. Paula has worked in most mediums throughout her career, but latterly seems to favour etching or pastel painting, particularly as she can scratch through layers in the latter. “There are trolleys with layer after layer of pastels,” says Elena. “It’s extraordinary to see the sheer quantity of colours that she has.” Dame Paula’s studio, it seems, is much like the retrospective will be – a labyrinth of ideas, histories and stories from an artist who has always worked on her own terms, never pandering to popularity or easy wins. “Art is the only place you can do what you like,” she once said. “That’s freedom.” Paula Rego runs until 24 October at Tate Britain, London. www.tate.org.uk

Artists & Illustrators 23

COLUMNIS T

After a particularly isolated year, our columnist LAURA BOSWELL is ready to collaborate – but establishing ground rules are important BELOW Laura Boswell, Barley Crop, Warm Afternoon, linocut, 29x45cm

H

ave you ever collaborated with a fellow artist? Collaborations can be a great way to explore new ways of working and create fresh motivation. I’m currently working with

a fellow printmaker, Will Francis. We are sharing printing work to create an edition that we will divide and sell between us. I’m loving the experience and thoroughly recommend it.

Collaborations can mean so many things. It could be pure pleasure, celebrating a creative friendship with a shared outcome, making artwork for sale, or stretching your skills. Whatever the reason, it’s important to be clear up front about what you want from the project and how the collaboration will work. It’s easy to be caught up in the romance of the idea but agreeing to some ground rules with your fellow artist – and checking you are both happy and committed to collaborating – is essential for a good experience. Along with deciding the aim of the collaboration, work out how you will share skills. Will you be making a single artwork together, a series of joint pieces, or separate pieces in tandem? Decide how much time you can both devote and set an end date for the project to keep you accountable and ensure a finished result. Will you work together in person, take turns to work alone, or will the work divide with each of you working separately throughout, bringing everything together at the end? Do discuss money; there are almost certainly expenses involved in making the artwork to be divided and, if the results are to be for sale, you’ll need to agree some proper terms. A vital part of any collaboration is to explore and experiment together. It’s essential to be open to new ideas and flexible with the work. We artists can find it hard to let go of the reins at times. Will is an expert in traditional pigments, so I have handed colour decisions to him, which took a lot of nerve on my part. Conversations throughout are essential to keep work on track, but far more importantly, you can both explore and share ideas as the work develops. Collaborating on a project means a real investment in working together and a unique opportunity to really push your creative thinking with a like-minded partner. www.lauraboswell.co.uk

Collaborating on a project means a real investment in working together

Wildlife Art

P R I Z E D R AW

Charcoal Inspired

£1,000 OF ART MATERIALS

LONDON GRAPHIC CENTRE PRIZE DRAW Name: Address:

Enter our LONDON GRAPHIC CENTRE prize draw for the chance to win new materials for your next masterpiece Experimenting with art materials you’ve never used before is a sure-fire way to spark up your creativity. That’s where the London Graphic Centre comes in. The online arts supplier, which also has a flagship store in Covent Garden, can help with every artistic eventuality and offer expert advice on how to get the most from your new products. This month, London Graphic Centre is kindly offering four lucky Artists & Illustrators readers the chance to each win a themed bundle worth £250. Two of the packages have been put together with our wildlife painting special in mind. From a Bob Ross Master set of oil paints to Liquitex acrylics and Winsor & Newton markers pen, the “Wildlife Art” bundle is perfect for the animal artist looking to mix up their mediums. Meanwhile, the two “Charcoal Inspired” bundles have all the materials needed to get to grips with the medium. Highlights include Nitram Liquid Charcoal and a Cretacolor drawing set for artists who love to sketch.

London Graphic Centre has been supplying the UK’s artistic communities with quality art materials since 1973. From everyday essentials to specialist items, you’ll always find what you’re looking for. www.londongraphics.co.uk

THE PRIZE Four winners, chosen at random, will each receive a themed bundle of art materials from London Graphic Centre worth £250 each. Prizes available include: • Two “Wildlife Art” bundles • Two “Charcoal Inspired” bundles For a full list of the materials included in each bundle, please visit www.artistsand illustrators.co.uk/competitions

HOW TO ENTER Enter by noon on 3 September 2021 at www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ competitions or fill in the form and return it to: London Graphic Centre Prize Draw,

Postcode: Email: Telephone: The closing date for entries is noon on 3 September 2021. Please tick if you are happy to receive relevant information from The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd. via email , post or phone or London Graphic Centre via email

Artists & Illustrators, Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ

TERMS AND CONDITIONS Choice of bundle is random and prizes are non-transferable. No cash alternatives are available. For full terms and conditions, visit www.chelseamagazine.com/terms

Artists & Illustrators 25

ART HIS TO RY

Claude Monet

Lockdown has made the Impressionist’s series paintings more relevant than ever, says STEVE PILL, who has enlisted leading artists to find out how they were done

I OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Rouen Cathedral, West Façade (Sunlight), 1894, 100.1x65.8cm; Rouen Cathedral Façade and Tour d'Albane (Morning Effect), 1894, 106.1x73.9cm; Rouen Cathedral, West Façade, 1894, 100.1x65.9cm; Rouen Cathedral, Portal (Grey Weather), 1892, 100.2x65.4cm. All oil on canvas. 26 Artists

f it wasn’t for Claude Monet, many of us would never have given the Cathédrale NotreDame de Rouen a second thought. Part way between Paris and France’s English-facing coast, it has been built and rebuilt a number of times over the 800 years prior to the Impressionist painter’s first visit in 1892, even briefly becoming the world’s tallest building several years prior to that point. Yet it took Monet’s multiple depictions – more than 30 in total – of the French cathedral’s west façade for the world to really sit up and take notice. In many cases these weren’t studies, but rather full-scale canvases measuring more than a metre tall. He used every inch of the stretched linen to carve out a very vivid impression of this stately building in pastel hues and dazzling golds. Look closely at any one of these paintings, now sadly almost all separated out across the globe as far afield as the National Museum of Serbia and Japan’s Pola Museum of Art, and one can see the sheer quantity of oil paint piled up on the surface, every meticulous stroke like a chip into weathered stone.

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However, it is only when the works are viewed together that their true power reveals itself. Monet first exhibited 20 of them as a collection in 1895 and clearly intended for them to be seen as a whole. It is as if the artist had access to several years’ worth of time-lapse footage of the cathedral and he had cherry-picked the most dramatic and symphonic frames. Comparing them allows us to pick up on changes that we might take for granted today yet were considered revolutionary when observed so honestly 125 years ago. Dull weather lowers the overall tonal range of one, while the pastel pink hues of morning and shown in another are pitched almost within the same single value. Likewise, the

background sky fluctuates between being brighter than the west-facing façade in the morning as the sun rises behind the building, to being far darker and more saturated during the day. And while Cubism gave us multiple perspectives on a single subject within the same composition, Monet’s series helped to build a far fuller picture of a location. When one has seen the deep shadows of the cathedral’s main arches in the noon-day sun coupled with the softer dappled strokes of morning light, Rouen’s structure seems far more three-dimensional and real than any single image could ever show. Such subtleties are the product of a very clear and focused attempt to see a subject first-hand at many

It is as if Monet had access to time-lapse footage of Rouen cathedral and cherr y-picked the most dramatic frames

Artists & Illustrators

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON/MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON/MUSÉE D'ORSAY, DIST.RMN/PATRICE SCHMIDT/ GOOGLE ART PROJECT

TOP RIGHT Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect, 1903, oil on canvas, 81.3x92.1cm 28 Artists

different and very specific times of the day and even year. It is this in particular that makes this part of Monet’s portfolio so timely, given that many of us have spent the last 15 months forced to stay close to home and focus our attentions on familiar landscapes day in, day out. It is a popularly held belief that Monet and his fellow Impressionists were the first artists to really explore

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the joys and benefits of painting the landscape en plein air. In fact, artists such as JMW Turner and John Constable had already experimented with this idea, the latter painting his famous cloud studies many decades prior. Monet would also have been familiar with the work of the French artist Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, whose 1800 treatise Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting,

Particularly on Landscape extolled the virtues of painting what he called a “landscape portrait” – a depiction of a scene completed in portrait-style sittings in front of the subject. In Rouen, Monet did just that, often working studies up into larger paintings either back home in Giverny or simply across the street from the cathedral where he rented a temporary studio. However, Monet was

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON/GOOGLE ART PROJECT

ABOVE The Houses of Parliament, Sunset, 1903, oil on canvas, 81.3x92.5cm

A R T H I S T O RY

BROOKLYN MUSEUM/GOOGLE ART PROJECT

the first truly prominent oil painter to return to a single, unchanging subject over the course of several years. He first began this approach in 1890, as he ventured out into the fields near his Giverny home. It was here that his depictions of haystacks proved a huge breakthrough in his artistic career and indeed his whole approach to painting.

It’s def initely worth returning to the same spot throughout the year to see how the light changes

While he had painted the landscape from life countless times before, the important difference here was that the subjects in the traditional sense were almost arbitrary – these great cathedrals of hay were simply a motif for the artist’s enquiries. For Monet the true subjects of these paintings were not his local fields but rather the changing effects of light and weather upon them. So how does one even attempt to replicate them in one’s own work? Regular observation and practice are key, so it is little surprise that some of the best contemporary painters of Monet-style series are the ones who are seemingly addicted to the act of painting on location every single day. One such artist is Bristol-based Tom Hughes, who regularly ventures across London, Wales and England’s

southwest to capture changing light effects with his trademark smooth transitions and elegant line work. For Tom, seasonality is important. The key to series painting for him is establishing a sense of how markedly different any given scene can look at different times of the day, throughout the year. “In summer, the morning light transitions seem to happen very quickly as the sun rises more rapidly, whereas in winter, the sun stays so low throughout the day, creating a slower transition. I find the sky colour to be more exciting at dawn on a clear winter morning than it is in summer.” “It’s definitely worth returning to the same spot throughout the year to see how it changes,” he adds. “The green summer foliage is just as dramatic a shift in terms of hue as the angle of the sun is in terms of

Artists & Illustrators 29

RIGHT Haystacks (Snow Effect), 1891, oil on canvas, 65x92cm 30 Artists

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shadows. I find myself drawn more to contre-jour scenes [in which the subject is viewed against the light] in winter as the landscape appears more tonal due to the lack of saturation in foliage. The low sun in winter also creates many contre-jour scenes, often blinding ones.” Andrew Gifford is another of Britain’s leading landscape artists, regularly creating brilliantly observed studies on location that he then works up on a larger scale in his Brighton studio. He is currently working on a series of blossom paintings in various light conditions and he has also painted Monet-style series everywhere from the River

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA, CANBERRA/SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY/GOOGLE ART PROJECT

ABOVE Haystacks (Midday), 1890, oil on canvas, 65.6x100cm

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/MUSÉE D'ORSAY, DIST.RMN/PATRICE SCHMIDT/GOOGLE ART PROJECT

A R T H I S T O RY

Monet's haystacks proved a huge breakthrough in his artistic career and his whole approach to painting Thames to Fez, Budapest and beyond. As such he has plenty of advice for prospective series painters. “Firstly, I would say that it’s important to know where the sun is going to go, so that you know roughly what is going to happen later on in the series,” he says. “Do you want to paint the sun setting in your composition or the sun

illuminating the subject? Also, pick a subject or view that the changing light will alter in an interesting way. Have your canvases or boards prepared. “If you can return to the place for a few days in a row, then write down the time you started each study on the back so that you can work on the right one at the right time the next day.”

It’s worth noting that while the emphasis with painting en plein air is usually placed on being out in the landscape, you can of course make many of these same observations from the comfort of your own home or indeed anywhere with a window overlooking a view that appeals to you aesthetically, as Andrew has done. “I once painted a simple view looking over some buildings in Queens, New York from a hotel window as a large snowstorm came in,” he recalls. “I painted a painting an hour from the afternoon into the evening as the snow turned from mauves to pinks as the city lights came on.”

TOP Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun), 1891, oil on canvas, 65.4x92.1cm

ABOVE Haystacks (End of Summer), 1891, oil on canvas, 65x100cm

Artists & Illustrators 31

IN THE STUDIO

1

e ll i c L u Clerc

From her communal London studio, this French illustrator is exploring the interaction between urbanisation and nature – and wants to take us along for the ride, as REBECCA BRADBURY discovers

Y 1 Lucille

Clerc draws surrounded by inspiration 2 This King

Louie print is part of a Jungle Book series 32 Artists

ou might think you’re familiar with the story of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, but you’re probably yet to experience Lucille Clerc’s fantastical interpretation, brought to life in her illustration of the same name. It’s a place where mythical creatures, tropical birds and larger-than-life plants awaken at night, transforming the V&A, for which it was drawn, into a garden like no other. Dreamy, delicate and infinitely detailed, Lucille’s work combines the familiar with the out of this world and, as a result, dismantles our perceptions of reality. Think intricate

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depictions of buildings, butterflies, blooms and everything in-between, distorted in scale, kaleidoscopic in composition, and transfixing with an ethereal colour palette of soft pinks, dusky teals and emerald greens. Then hidden beneath the surface, but just as interwoven, is the concept of time. As an antidote to today’s fast-paced news cycles and everupdated content streams, the illustrator places prime importance on the longevity of her work, adding a multitude of subjects into a single piece as a way to build up a relationship with the viewer. “A lot of what we see right now are simplified images,” she says.

“They are very quick, and they have to be easy to understand. I do that for commercial work and there’s a reason and it’s valid. For my personal work I have a longer time with the viewer, so I like to hide little details so you can look at the images again and again.” As these more elusive elements emerge, big themes also become apparent. Most prominent is the relationship between urbanisation and nature – a source of great inspiration for Lucille. “It’s a challenge for the future,” she explains. “Does a city go against nature or does it find a way to integrate it? Is it a symbiotic relationship? Or does one destroy the other? I’m really interested in trying

2

IN THE STUDIO

3

For my personal work, I like to hide little details so you can look at the images again and again

3 A pineapple

from Around the World in 80 Plants 4 Lucille has

worked with Jonathan Drori on two books 34 Artists

4

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to find the balance between the two and how we can make it work.” London’s profusion of green spaces is one reason Lucille moved to the city to study for an MA in communication design at Central Saint Martins – and decided to stay afterwards. Prior to this, she had grown up above her father’s carpentry workshop in Nancy – a city in northeast France where the art nouveau École de Nancy was founded in the 1900s – and completed an undergraduate degree in the artistic hub that is Paris. Since finishing her MA in 2008, the artist has worked on a wide variety of projects, from illustrating books and magazines (using a 0.5mm mechanical pencil and Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolours) to painting large-scale murals for the Great Pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Whatever the commission, Lucille is sure to swot up on the subject matter, comparing herself to a performer. “When you’re an actor, you want to live several lives and playing different parts is like achieving that,” she says. “For me, it’s a bit the same – I have to understand what they are doing, if it’s a writer, a scientist or a historian. So, I get to learn a lot about each topic. It goes beyond just drawing.” Another skill in the illustrator’s repertoire is printmaking, something she’s been practising for more than 10 years at Print Club London, located near her home in Dalston, East London. Alongside its communal printing space, where members can book a screen bed for a few hours at a time, is an open-plan studio home to Lucille’s main workspace. “There are no walls per se, but we all have our own little area,” she says. “I really like this kind of atmosphere. There are always people working and clients coming in, and the artists themselves always exchange tips and

IN THE STUDIO

5

6

advice. We all have a very different style, but there’s something very nice about showing and discussing your work with different people.” Every morning, after a coffee, watering her plants and clearing her email inbox, Lucille does a few warm-up sketches before turning her full attention to her illustrations. How does she begin these? “When it’s a personal project I usually start very abstract, like big washes of watercolour,” she explains. “Then I draw on top some very delicate, intricate elements with a mechanical pencil. I’m using 2B so it can get really dark or really light – you can get a nice contrast. Sometimes I’ll use coloured pencils, too. And I’ll add a bit more watercolour on top once the drawing is dry.”

One of Lucille’s personal projects is her London Landmarks series, made up of dreamlike amalgamations of architecture that, despite the unique perspectives, is unmistakably from the English capital. Each “portrait”, as the illustrator calls her architectural artworks (a label in line with her tendency to anthropomorphise buildings), represents her own experience of the place and in doing so preserves her memory of each visit. A place in London particularly close to Lucille’s heart is the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Even before she was asked to paint the mural in the Grand Pagoda, the attraction was one of her favourite hangouts, securing herself an annual pass as soon as she arrived in the city. The project went on for more than a year, enabling her to

5 Kew Green

House is now on to a second print edition 6 Lucille at

work in Print Club London’s shared studio

Artists & Illustrators 35

7

regularly sketch the trees, plants and greenhouses and eventually turn her sketchbooks into a screenprint series. Opting for the CMYK method of screenprinting – individual layers of cyan, magenta, yellow and “key” (or black) – is a challenge Lucille loves. “You have to find a way to combine the drawings into a layer of dots,” she explains. “It’s a fine balance as the thinner the dots are, the closer you are to the quality of your original drawing, but the more difficult it is to print… It can make stains if there’s too much ink.” An element of problem solving is also required when thinking about what colours to use. With just the four colours at her disposal, it’s remarkable how Lucille produces such a wide assortment of hues. “I never print green,” she notes. “I print yellow dots and cyan dots, and it’s magical when they overlap, and you have a new colour appearing.” “There are a lot of steps you have to get right,” she adds, “like the way you prepare a screen, the way you coat it, the way you expose it, the way you rinse it. So, when you get a good one, it’s such a fine feeling.” Requiring a different sort of accuracy are the botanical illustrations that the French artist has recently completed for Jonathan

9

I like to mix different perspectives and scales… I want to take the viewer on a journey

8

Drori’s new book, Around the World in 80 Plants. It follows the pair’s collaboration on Around the World in 80 Trees and, this time, Lucille felt more at ease with the precision required from the art form. Citing observation, practice and experience as the key to her accurate depictions, the illustrator has also added her own flair to the book. Alongside pictures of plants (some of which she copied from specimens grown in her mum’s garden in Nancy, France) are little characters, patterns or references to a particular plant’s

origin. “I wanted to give it that feeling you get when you flip through a travel journal and you feel like you’re jumping from one country to another.” Whether transporting us around the world, offering up one-of-a-kind experiences of a familiar city, or plunging us into fantasy realms overtaken by nature, Lucille never fails to immerse the viewer in her unique narrative. “I like to mix different perspectives and points of views and scales,” she adds. “I want to take the viewer on a journey.” www.lucilleclerc.com

7 Day at Kew

is filled with well-observed botanical detail 8 Lucille

checks her next screenprint in progress 9 A softer side

is seen in her 4 Elements – Water image

Artists & Illustrators 37

38 Artists

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MASTERCL ASS

Busy

COMPOSITIONS Instead of tackling a standard wildlife portrait, HASHIM AKIB shows how a more complicated grouping of animals offers the chance for a more painterly approach

Hashim's materials •Paints Azo Yellow Lemon, Azo Yellow Medium, Azo Orange, Pyrrole Red, Primary Magenta, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Blue Violet, Sky Blue Light, Brilliant Blue, Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine), Phthalo Blue, Greenish Blue, Prussian Blue (Phthalo), Permanent Green Light, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Warm Grey and Titanium White, all Amsterdam Standard acrylics •Brushes Daler-Rowney Skyflow large flat brushes, sizes 1/2”, 1”, 1.5” and 2” •Support Stretched cotton canvas, 60x75cm •White plastic mixing tray •Kitchen roll •Water pot

W

hen it comes to painting animals, it’s common for artists to go for a photographic likeness, perhaps with a heavy helping of cuteness. It’s worth considering a few other options before you start your next wildlife painting to help it stand out from the crowd. For starters, avoid obsessing over the source image and allow yourself to break free by using colours or marks more expressively. This reflects the wildness of the subject matter and adds a creative twist. Try looking for patterns – these might be interesting shapes or colours, you

might look at how repetitive these are, or focus on the effects of light and dark. In simple terms, look at everything other than how detailed the reference material is. Drawing and proportions are vital when it comes to adding naturalism but best tempered by some self-expression. For this exercise, I will be talking you through how I painted a group of flamingos in acrylics, going through the various challenges and choices made. I based the painting on a photo I took at Berlin zoo. I loved the soft tints against dark and the various intricate shapes formed from the extended heads and legs. www.hashimakib.co.uk

ORIGINAL PHOTO Artists & Illustrators 39

1

Mix up colo ur s

Working on a grey base colour mixed from Brilliant Blue, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White, I sketched out the flamingos to make sure everything fitted on the picture plane. On my mixing tray I added plenty of Titanium White, reds, oranges and earth colours, along with small dabs of blues and purples using a slightly damp 2” flat brush. All the flamingos will have a combination of these colours so be generous with squeezing out the paint. The central pool of colour on your palette can then be split into sections as your mixes develop, with stronger reds, slightly browner mixes, blues for cooler combinations, and a creamy mix with extra Titanium White.

3

2

Let paint s t reak

Each flamingo was painted using a 1.5” flat brush, starting with a few semi-circular strokes for the body. The paint was used neat to add an impasto effect and colours were slightly under mixed to create some streaking, which mimicked the flow of feathers. I added creamier tints for highlights and blue-grey tints for shaded, cooler areas. For smaller dabs, I either used the edge of the brush or switched to smaller flats. I used a warmer combination of colours on a few of the flamingos to make them stand out with some marks delicately placed to avoid smudging.

Wo rk s m a ll a r e a s

I wanted to do very little blending, so the painting process was more a case of weaving blocky marks together. If you intend to blend acrylics, it’s best to do so while the paint is still “live”. The quick drying time of acrylics, even with thicker applications, is hard to estimate – under normal conditions, it can take minutes rather than hours. I find that using a retarder or water to dilute the paint can also dull colour so try working on small pockets of the painting at a time instead to allow the opportunity to integrate the colour.

40 Artists

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4

Fin d a f o cus

I made the decision early on that the two preening flamingos would be the painting’s focal point. I used my strongest lights on these two, while the blues contrasted the warm colours around them. In order to avoid chalky tints, I added some Azo Yellow Lemon to inject some heat. I also avoided flattening the colour too much by over mixing. A few of the strokes didn’t work out, so I used a damp sheet of kitchen roll to lift the unwanted paint away.

MASTERCLASS

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B l o ck t h e b a ckg r o un d

With the flamingos painted, I could work on the background. Essentially this was made up of dark, neutral colours, designed to draw the tints forward, though the area around the two main birds contained a warmer range of colours to draw them out further. I used a damp 2” flat to mix Warm Grey, Yellow Ochre and various greens, blues and violets, as well as touches of Azo Orange and Titanium White to create a main pool of colour that I could expand upon. A few blocks of this were applied to measure the effect against the tints. Again, colours were left under-mixed for their streaky effects.

6

Enrich th e palet t e

As more of the background was covered, I varied the colours as I went, primarily to add interest and avoid generic mixes. Richer combinations of Primary Magenta, Yellow Ochre and Azo Orange were added to the main background mix around the focal point with varying brushstrokes. I also applied Prussian Blue to heighten the darks and add crispness around the main flamingos’ necks, though I kept these extremely limited as acrylics dry darker and will flatten out.

Top tip

Avoiding thoroughly mixing paint and allowing streaky colour to show through can help resuscitate lifeless areas

7

Ad d e a r t hy h u e s

The earthy combinations of colour in the background were an important contrast to the warmer tints but I held off using actual earth colours like Burnt Sienna or Raw Umber. It’s worth spending time mixing interesting browns from reds and greens, this way you can vary quantities for richer colour. Try to avoid painting the background up to the very edge of a drawn outline as this will look fussy. Instead, simply block-in close to the edge so things can still be adjusted towards the end of the painting.

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Fin d s om e b alan ce

I added more greens into my original background mix to suggest the foliage. The reference photo provided extra information here but blurring or underplaying the detail gave the painting a clearer focal point. I mixed a warmer green here by introducing Azo Yellow Medium while the very top background contained a little Prussian Blue to frame some of the heads. Once all the elements were in place, I had a clear idea of the overall balance and how each part fits together.

Artists & Illustrators 41

MASTERCLASS

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Plan yo ur mixin g

For this painting, I used two mixing trays. As I made new mixes on the larger tray, I would occasionally dip into the original pool for colour. If you’ve been generous squeezing out paint, your palette may become corrupt. It’s worth spending a couple of minutes skimming off that corrupt colour with a palette knife to avoid muddying mixes. I often use several brushes but rather than cleaning them each time, I wait to see if I could return to that particular colour. The acrylic doesn’t dry as quickly on the brushes as the dampness in the bristles maintains the paint’s freshness.

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B r e a k up h a r sh lin e s

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Finishin g to uch e s

Enh an ce t h e e dg e s

To flesh out the legs, I applied a couple of reflections and spent some time adding lighter pink highlights. Fairly refined applications were required at this latter stage. Overall, they’re probably less impactful but these adjustments help to sparkle up the image. I used my smallest flat brush with a mix of Titanium White, Azo Yellow Lemon and a little Sky Blue to enhance certain edges, such as the necks, the feathers and parts of the face. 42 Artists

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I had a choice at this stage of the painting whether to indicate the legs or not. On the one hand, floating flamingos probably would look odd, but on the other the legs might clutter the composition and create harsh lines. When in doubt, I stuck to the original plan of showcasing the legs. To indicate the legs, I simply used the edge of a clean 1” flat brush to draw a line, leaving an occasional break in the stroke to avoid too many harsh lines. Colour-wise, I used a blue-grey mix of Titanium White, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna for some legs, and a mix of Primary Magenta, Titanium White and Yellow Ochre for the others.

Along with those previous highlights I mixed a strong dark from Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna and various greens and purples. Some darks were lightened slightly and applied to the beaks, while the purer darks were used to sharpen edges and accentuate the curves. To make the colours pop, I added purer versions of reds and oranges where required and lifted the duller pinks on the left-hand flamingos with some cleaner combinations. I avoided adding too much detail in the faces, particularly the eyes, so the finish was less fussy. It’s important to trust that the overall shapes are interesting enough.

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Artists & Illustrators 43

Sunsets TECHNIQUE

and shadows S GRAHAME BOOTH explains why the laws of perspective can help when plotting cast shadows and how contre-jour lighting affects colour and contrasts in the landscape

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unsets are possibly one of the most popular painting subjects – at least when you’re starting out. More experienced painters are often wary of such subjects as it can be quite tricky to portray those beautiful sunset colours and tones without slipping into garishness. In a sunset, almost all of the interest will be in the sky. The bright setting sun will be directly in front or slightly to

TECHNIQUE

A camera is unable to render the full range of tone that is visible to the naked eye

the side of us, creating what is essentially a silhouette of the landscape. One of the challenges with this type of subject – especially in watercolour – is working out how to subdue the daytime colours and make the silhouettes appear dark enough while maintaining sufficient light contrasts to avoid the painting becoming flat and uninteresting. You can’t shortcut this effect – painting an evening landscape with all of the varied colours and tones

ABOVE Promenade des Anglais, Nice, watercolour on paper, 51x38cm Contre-jour light created exciting tones and strong shadows

you would see in the middle of the day just doesn’t work. When it comes to sunsets, apart from the sky colour itself, it is this strong directional lighting in front of the subject – an effect known as contre-jour – that creates the drama. If sunsets don’t appeal to you visually, much of that drama can be found at any time of the day as long as the sun is more or less directly in front of us. Unlike a sunset, the same type of lighting earlier in the day will almost completely bleach out any sky colour because of the more direct, brighter light but the higher sun position will create more tonal variety in the ways in which the light hits the landscape. Painting sunsets en plein air is particularly challenging simply because the light changes very rapidly so, unless you are pretty quick with your brush, a photographic reference can often be better. The problem with such photos is that a camera is unable to render the full range of tone that is visible to the naked eye. As a result, either the colour will be lost from the sky and it will lack that beautiful richness, or the landscape will become a single, dark unyielding mass. Many modern cameras are rather clever in that they effectively solve much of this problem by automatically superimposing two photographs, one with the exposure balanced for the sky and one balanced for the landscape. This is known as HDR (high dynamic range) and even many smartphones will have a setting to allow this to be used. Something else we must consider with the sun in front of us is how it will affect shadows. With the light coming from such a great distance, the sun produces beams of light and cast shadows that will be subject to the usual laws of perspective. Parallel receding horizontal lines will appear to slope towards eye-level and meet at a single point known as the “vanishing point”. When the sun is from the side, any perspective angles are much less obvious but with the sun directly in front of us (or behind) the effects of perspective become very obvious indeed. Fortunately, the perspective rules for such shadows make it fairly easy to check our accuracy with the angle and the length of these cast shadows. The laws of perspective apply exactly only to lines that are both horizontal and parallel but even in a landscape where shadows may be being cast onto ground that may not be perfectly horizontal, the rule will still give sufficient guidance to allow realistic shadows to be rendered.

Artists & Illustrators 45

ABOVE Wexford Quay, watercolour on paper, 51x38cm For this plein air painting, I got everything ready and waited until the light was just right. Most major shapes were created in a feverish few minutes as failing light prevented any fuss.

Sun

Horizon/eye level

VP

Sun

Horizon/eye level VP

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Applying the rules The perspective of shadows being cast from the sun in front of us is similar to the single-point perspective that we would see in a street scene. The vanishing point (VP) of shadows cast on horizontal ground is always at eye level, and always directly below the sun. Say, for example, there is a fence post in the scene you wish to paint. The angle of the post’s shadow can be calculated by drawing a line from the base to the vanishing point and continuing this line in front of the post. Calculating the length of the shadow introduces another vanishing point, the vanishing point of light, which will always be the light source: the sun. The shadow length can be calculated by taking a line from the sun passing the top of the post and continuing until it meets the shadow. It’s worth noting that the rules concerning artificial light or light from the sun behind us are slightly different. Likewise, you may find that the laws of perspective don’t always fit exactly with reality. Take the photo opposite. The vanishing point sits in line with the sun, as it should be, but it is actually slightly below the horizon. How can this be? In fact, the road sloped down very slightly towards the kerb, meaning that the shadows of the posts were not exactly horizontal. The posts (and shadows) were still parallel to one another, so they still created a vanishing point as they receded, but it was one that was slightly below eye level. You can see the opposite of this where the shadows run slightly uphill over the grass bank. If you

TECHNIQUE

LEFT Ballydorn Lightship on Strangford Lough BELOW LEFT AND BOTTOM LEFT Ballydorn Lightship, watercolour on paper, 38x28cm

check with a ruler you will see that the vanishing point for these shadows is slightly above the horizon but still directly below the sun. Reality will often appear not to correlate with perspective rules, but this will be simply because lines are not perfectly horizontal, perfectly parallel or both. The rules of perspective can be confusing but making an effort to understand and accurately apply them, however roughly, makes drawing so much simpler and takes away so much of the guesswork.

Strengthen contrasts Sunsets benefit from a simple approach. As the landscape is relatively dark at that time of day, much less detail is required in a painting in order for it to be convincing. More important is establishing that strong contrast between light and dark. Remember, the stronger you make your darks, the lighter your lights will appear to be. The subject of Ballydorn Lightship was a boat used as a novel clubhouse for a sailing club on Strangford Lough in County Down. I began with an overall wash, creating the blue in the sky and continuing with warm colours in the lower sky and on to the bottom of the paper. This was my “light” and I remembered that with the sun so low in the sky, the light and colour needed to be very strongly reflected in the sea. When this was completely dry, I added a second grey-blue wash to create some variety in the sky and to introduce the local colour and lighter tones of the landscape. In the first stage I was really thinking only of the light, as I tried to create interest without things getting too dark tonally. The land seen in the second photo of the painting was created as simply as possible using two or three layers of increasingly dark washes but taking care to leave the all-important light on such places as the superstructure of the ship, the roadway and the lighter parts of the beach. I was aiming to create strong tonal contrasts so, for example, I ensured that many of my darkest tones were adjacent to my lightest ones. I also avoided using any bright colours, apart from the sky and its reflections. All other colours, such as the natural bright red in the lightship or the green of the grass or trees, appeared significantly dulled at sunset. www.grahamebooth.com

Artists & Illustrators 47

CO LO U R THEO RY

Colour vs tone When viewed tonally, saturated colours like bright red or deep blue can have the same value as an ochre or muted green.

4. Tone To conclude his four-part series on the building blocks of colour mixing, Draw Brighton’s JAKE SPICER sets some tonal exercises to help you think differently

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n this final article looking at the fundamental elements of colour, we come to our third and final dimension: tone. Tonal value describes the light or dark of a colour. Convert a colour photograph to monochrome and you are effectively removing the hue and saturation (explored in the previous two articles) to leave only the tonal expression behind. In fact, we see very little true white or black around us, so, when we strip the hue and saturation from a subject, we are presented with a patchwork of various shades of grey.

This has some benefits. The less saturated a colour, for example, the more easily we can assess its tonal value. By contrast, we often judge saturated colours like bright reds, blues and greens to be lighter than they really are, mistaking more intense saturation for a lighter tone. In this article we’ll look at how to think of tone in relation to the colour wheel, how to balance representational accuracy with the atmospheric potential of tone, and finish with some different ways you can make a tonal study in paint.

Original colour

2D colour wheel

Tonal equivalent

3D colour space A light, desaturated turquoise Tone

Hue

Colour space A colour wheel that shows hue around its circumference and saturation along its radius has no room to represent variations of tone; to make space we must turn the two-dimensional circle into a three-dimensional colour space. If you imagine a tonal scale 48 Artists

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running vertically through the neutral grey at the centre of the wheel, like a dowel pushed through a cardboard disk, you create a space in which progressively lighter colour wheels could be stacked above, and darker wheels below. This three-dimensional cylinder represents a space within

Saturation

which all colours might be imagined and described by three coordinates: hue (named colour family), saturation (how intense or chromatic it is) and tonal value (how light or dark it is). For the curious, Munsell’s colour space presents a more accurate and nuanced representation of perceived colour.

C O L O U R T H E O RY

Observed subject

1. A representational study Aim to match the tones you see in your subject.

Tonal range Palette tonal range

Observed tonal range

2. A high key study Limit your palette to a light range of tones, eliminating black and using lighter equivalents.

3. A low key study Limit your palette to a dark range of tones, eliminating white and using darker equivalents.

Palette tonal range

Palette tonal range

Observed tonal range

Observed tonal range

Learning to represent tonal values as you see them is an important observational skill, but it shouldn’t limit the expressive potential of your work. Tone is a powerfully emotive tool, and you can remain true to your observations of tonal shapes while making creative choices about how you represent tonal values to create different moods in an image. Start by thinking about tonal range, from your lightest light to your darkest dark. In a painting there are three ranges to consider: the tonal range of your subject, the tonal range of your palette (the potential tones you can achieve with your paints) and the tonal range of your image (how you will use the range of your palette to represent the range of your subject). If your aim is to make a visually accurate tonal painting, you’ll be trying to align all three, but you can choose to make more active decisions, limiting yourself with a narrower palette, or mixing colours within a narrower tonal range that is kept within a lighter, darker or central portion of the overall range possible. To explore different interpretations of observed tone, try making three studies of the same subject under the same lighting conditions, similar to the ones on the left. You should still represent the shapes of light and dark that you see rather than inventing them, you are just shifting how you represent them.

Artists & Illustrators 49

C O L O U R T H E O RY

New ways to tone To become more confident in your tonal use, let’s make some studies that lay thoughts of hue and saturation aside completely in favour of representing the values and shapes of tone in your subject. These studies don’t have to be desaturated; they should simply make tone their focus.

Tonal paintings can be made by mixing and applying shapes of opaque tone, by using the transparent qualities of paint to create tonal range through dilution, or by a combination of the two. The opacity of the paints you use, the tone of the ground underneath, and the method you use to lighten or darken your colours will all affect the

expression of the study. As you will see in my four examples below, lightening by dilution will create more saturated mid-tones, whereas adding black, white or complementary colours will desaturate the starting mix. The choice of tube colours also affects the potential tonal range of your palette. www.jakespicerart.co.uk

Ultramarine Blue

White ground 1. Lighten by dilution Make a tonal study on a white ground with a darker tube colour and a solvent. Leave the white ground clean to represent your lightest lights, use dilute tube colour for your mid-tones, and neat tube colour for the dark tones. Titanium White

Dark ground 2. Darken by dilution Starting with a dark ground and white, make a study which reverses the previous approach. Use neat paint for highlights, dilute paint for midtones, and leave the dark ground showing to represent the darker tones. 50 Artists

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C O L O U R T H E O RY

Missed parts 1-3?

Titanium White

Order a back issue at www.chelsea magazines.com /shop

Ultramarine Blue

Ultramarine Blue + Burnt Sienna

3. Tints and complementaries As we explored last month, a mixing complementary is one which combines with your starting paint to create a neutral colour – it should be from roughly the opposite side of a colour wheel. Use white to lighten your starting colour (creating a "tint"), use the colour itself for your mid-tones, and use the colour mixed with its complementary for the darks.

Lemon Yellow

Ultramarine Blue

Ivory Black

4. Shades and false lights Using black to darken a colour creates a "shade". Doing so is considered a colour-mixing taboo due to the desaturating qualities of black, but it shouldn’t be entirely discounted. For an unusual and chromatic tonal study, replace your white with yellow to mix the light tones, using it only for its tonal properties, and not for the hues that it creates.

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DEMO

BEECH TREE l i c n e P in Drawing a colourful subject in graphite shouldn’t be viewed as a challenge, says DENIS JOHN-NAYLOR, but rather a welcome opportunity to use a little artistic license

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DEMO

Denis' materials •HB, 2B, 4B and 6B graphite pencils •A3 cartridge paper •Putty eraser •Eraser shield •Craft knife •Scrap paper

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D r aw outline s

This drawing was made in the studio using sketches and photos made on location. I drew the main trunk and root shapes with an HB pencil. In life, objects do not have lines around them, so these lines should get lost as we introduce tone. Don’t include any background at this point. Use the side of a pointed 2B pencil, held underhand, to lay an initial tone within this outline, using a light circular action. Always test the working edge of your pencil on scrap paper first to check it makes the required mark.

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Pu sh the tone s

Working from the top of the image, add variable toning to

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suggest form. Use short, vertical strokes with slightly blunt 2B and 4B pencils. Add pressure to extend the range of tones and texture with the 4B pencil. Where lightening is required, shape the end of a putty eraser and lift the graphite with a dabbing motion. Keep moulding the eraser to clean the working edge.

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Fe el out the ro ot s

Continue with textural and tonal mark making across the trunk using the 2B and 4B pencils and the putty eraser. Start on the ground to get a feel for its tone and texture against that of the roots. Working from a coloured image gives scope for interpretation. Even when transposing a subject

to grey tones, you can add contrasts in tone and exaggerate or subdue light and texture to make this image your own.

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Show forms

5

Increa s e tex ture

Render the large right-hand root, showing its form with contour lines and marks around its diameter. Vary these so they aren’t simply complete circles around the root. Repeat on other roots where required. Continue placing larger and darker tones to establish form in other areas.

Work areas of ground texture with a variety of pencil grades to give at least four tones. Add contour lines to roots to suggest

Artists & Illustrators 53

DEMO

T t

o p ip

ne lines, To lighten fi eraser with use a putt y hield – an eraser s b dab, don’t ru

roundness and directional growth. Add tone and texture to the adjacent ground with broken marks to suggest embedded roots. Pay attention to the type of light. Subdued light such as this means no strong cast shadows on the roots, so take care to replicate that in the drawing.

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Add intere s t

Suggest twig and leaf litter by making larger and more contrasting marks in the immediate foreground, then reducing them further into the picture plane to give a sense of recession. Start this with a 2B pencil, then use a 4B pencil to make smaller random marks between and over existing ones.

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Repeat again with a 6B pencil. Darken under objects with broken marks, not underlining. Don’t labour over the mark making – develop a fast, random action.

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D evelop tone s

Using a slightly blunt HB pencil and light pressure, add texture and low tonal contrasts to the background shapes in the top corners. The marked difference between the two corners adds variety. Add tone to the middle ground trees, drawing and lifting tones on the branches. To suggest depth, all contrasts here should be generally less than they are in the nearer planes. Avoid line work so these areas sit back in the picture plane.

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Make adju s tment s

Work over the drawing by adjusting edges and tones to push and pull all elements into their place in the order of things. Remember to use bolder contrasts and sharper edges in the nearest planes, reducing to less contrast and blurred shapes further back. Take time over this final stage – adjusting tones against each other is paramount. A final drawing with this much detail would not be completed on site due to the ever-changing light and hours required to draw in situ. Denis’s latest book, Drawing Trees and Flowers, is co-written with Margaret Eggleton and published by Search Press. www.harrowlodge paintings.blogspot.com

SUMMER SCHOOL Get creative this summer with our IRXUDQG¿YHGD\VKRUWFRXUVHV in painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, Young Artists and more. artacademy.org.uk/summer-school [email protected] 020 7407 6969 Mermaid Court 165A Borough High Street London, SE1 1HR

Artists & Illustrators 55

TIPS

Ways to Wondrous WILDLIFE ART Four leading wildlife artists – Laura Hardie, Natalie Öberg, Maria Popma and Amber Tyldesley – share a dozen expert tricks for improving your work in minutes 56 Artists

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TIPS

USE THE FULL PALETTE Laura Hardie: “I use Unison Colour soft pastels. They are a medium, buttery-soft pastel that doesn’t crumble when used. I love their silky-smooth application, rich pigments, and vibrant colours. “Unison’s colour range is great with more than 400 colours to choose from – my favourites, and most used in my work, are the earth colours and subtle greys, but when I need brilliance and vibrance for my flamingos, the reds and oranges never let me down. “Other than my pastels the only tools I use are the PanPastel Sofft [sic] sponges. These are great for blending the first layers of pastel.”

TRY A FIRMER SUPPORT LH: “It’s so important to have a good support to work on and like many fellow pastel artists I use Clairefontaine Pastelmat Board. I prefer using board to paper as it offers more support and won’t crease, tear or warp. Pastel is a delicate medium until framed behind glass so using sturdier supports like these boards gives me that added comfort of knowing it is less likely to be damaged in transit.”

FOCUS ON SHAPES LH: “When starting a drawing, try to not think of it as a specific bird or animal, and instead focus on shape and colour. I work primarily dark to light and always block in first using soft pastels. “Once I am happy with the base layers, I work over this with lighter shades and add details with pastel pencils. To keep my pencils sharp, I use a craft knife instead of a sharpener. I found leads continually break when sharpened with a sharpener and the pastel also quickly blunts the blade, so the craft knife is a less expensive option.”

DON’T RELY ON PHOTOS Natalie Öberg : “Although photos are very important for realist artists, it is also a good idea to not rely on them 100 per cent. Sometimes an artwork may benefit from slightly changing your subject’s pose, redoing the lighting or adjusting some features when compared to the reference. “Having a basic knowledge of your subject’s anatomy and topography can help you in making those adjustments and, as a result, create a more compelling artwork.”

TIPS

PICK PAPER CAREFULLY NÖ: “Choosing the right paper for your artistic needs can make all the difference in how your final artwork looks. Ideally, you should try to use a sturdy, archival and smooth paper of professional quality. “The paper should be able to take many layers of colour and withstand heavy erasing. If you are using water or solvents as your blending option, you also want your paper to be able to handle this. I use a smooth, heavy Bristol paper, as it allows me to work in layers and achieve a very even finish.”

VARY YOUR TONES NÖ: “Think in layers and build up your values and hues in several stages, using different colours to prevent a drawing from looking flat. “My drawings usually consist of about five layers. I start with a lighter base colour, which can be either an undertone of a darker colour or a highlight tone, and I add several layers of mid-tone, followed by shadow tone. I then add more mid-tone, taking out highlights and deepening shadows as required. “In the end, I may burnish the drawing with a colourless blender or a white pencil if I want a glossy finish.”

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TIPS

CAPTURE LIGHT WITH TRIADS Maria Popma: “One of my primary objectives in any work is capturing light to evoke a mood. Therefore, highly transparent watercolours make up my primary colour palette – my favourite being the high-key triad of Van Gogh’s Cobalt Blue with Winsor & Newton’s Permanent Rose and Aureolin. “In some of my studies, I utilise these three pigments only, which lend a sense of cohesion throughout the painting. Neutrals mixed from this triad are luminous and allow the white of the paper to shine through.”

EVOKE EMOTION WITH THE EYES MP: “Since the eyes are such an important part of a wildlife subject, I like to pay special attention to them. Many artists know that the highlight of the eye is important, but many miss the opportunity of what I call the 'low light'. Treat the bottom portion of the eye like a bowl that is capturing sunlight and refracting it. Allow this area to be the mid-tone of the eye and don’t shy away from vibrance – it brings the eyes to life.”

CREATE WET-IN-WET TEXTURES MP: “Dropping wet paints onto a thoroughly moistened page and allowing them to mingle on the page creates wonderful textures for animal hides and hair. In order to achieve this look without losing control of where my colour is going, I like to wet one area of the page at a time – perhaps a portion of the animal that has natural edges such as an eye, ear or leg – to avoid unwanted hard lines. “The trick is to gently push the colours around with a soft sable round brush, sometimes tilting the paper. The pigment floats and settles into the valleys and hills of the page and allows more variation in texture than if applied wet-on-dry. This is how I painted the stripes on the zebra with foal: letting the granulation of the Cobalt Blue spread within a controlled area. I like Arches Bright White cold-pressed paper for this technique, especially when used with granulating colours.”

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TIPS

LAYER UP FURS AT: “I find the best way to paint fur in acrylics is through multiple layers; this is where the quick drying time of acrylics becomes a big advantage. I will start out with thin washes to block in the basic colours of a composition, working over the top with slightly thicker layers to gradually build the layers of the fur. “As a general rule I will apply the darkest colours first and work my way to the lightest. If I need to adjust the colours of a painting during the final layers, I will make thin acrylic washes and use a soft brush to glaze over certain areas.” With thanks to: Laura Hardie – www.laurahardie.co.uk Natalie Öberg – www.natalieobergart.com Maria Popma – www.instagram.com/maria.popma.art Amber Tyldesley – www.animal-artwork.co.uk

CHOOSE THE RIGHT BRUSH Amber Tyldesley: “Make sure that you have the correct brushes for your particular subject, as different types of fur require different techniques. I prefer to use synthetic brushes for my acrylic work, and find that filbert, angle, and round brushes are the types that I use the most. “Filbert brushes are especially versatile – I use them flat to paint larger sections of fur and then turn them on their side to paint the finer strands.”

SOFTEN THE EDGES AT: “If you are aiming for realistic work, try not to make it all about the details. I feel that accurate tones and colours are equally – if not more – important when it comes to realism. It also helps to keep some areas of your painting soft or seemingly out of focus, as this will create a greater sense of depth in your artwork. “Paintings that have an even level of detail from edge to edge can risk looking a bit flat. When painting I always have to keep in mind where I want the focus of the artwork to be, or what areas of the animal are positioned the furthest forward, as these are the areas in which I will concentrate the most detail.”

COMPOSITION

SYMBOLIC

Still Life Every picture tells a story – and every element within that picture adds to the development too. TERENCE CLARKE explains the thinking behind his latest masterpiece

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hen I make a painting, my first thoughts are very much about composition, colour and visual balance. However, every picture has a narrative element to it and View Through a Window [right] is no different. With this painting, I was trying to construct a story around the making of a picture, its historical context and influences. Ostensibly it is just a still life but it’s also full of historical references to picture making and the illusion of a painting. It’s curious but anyone who has seen this picture has never questioned the spatial contradictions. It’s as if there is a kind of satisfaction in understanding the illusions and formal twists and turns as a puzzle resolved by artistic sleight of hand. Rather than focusing on my paint techniques, I wanted to break down this picture for you, explaining my thinking and hopefully showing you some of the ideas you can play with in your own still life paintings. 62 Artists

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MATISSE POSTCARD

Firstly, there are two references to the influence of the French artist Henri Matisse. I copied a postcard of his famous 1905 Fauvist painting, Open Window, Collioure, and placed it at the bottom of the composition. In a sense, my entire picture was taken from the whole idea of Matisse’s original painting – namely, a view through a window into a landscape. It’s a kind of homage.

fruit implied, half-jokingly, the idea of life being “just a bowl of cherries”. In the Matisse sense, the cherries also suggest the idea that painting is about pleasure, enjoyment and rest.

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3D SPACE

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TABLECLOTH

I chose a patterned tablecloth with blue flowers. As well as connecting this colour to the blues elsewhere in the painting, the pattern also in some ways resembled the colourful fabrics that Matisse depicted in so many of his early paintings, adding a second layer to the homage.

All the still life elements were painted as if in a real threedimensional space but then the table was simply flattened out like it would be in a Cubist painting. This suggests the opposite: that the objects were illusions, but the table and pattern were literal. The chairs in the background are half real and half Cubist in terms of how they inhabit the space. The painting is making allusions to its essential flatness. Finally, the windows pick up the reflection of the exterior landscape, thereby becoming mirrored images or pictures in themselves.

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ARTISTS’ TOOLS

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VASE

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FRUIT

The two tubes of oil paint and the paintbrush were explicit references to the medium and process used to make the painting. The paint colours were chosen to reflect the dominant hues of the Matisse postcard, while also playfully refuting the old saying, “red and green should never be seen”.

The lemons added a punch of colour while the bowl of red

The black vase was an opportunity to use true black pigment, as Matisse so often did, and it transitions the composition out into the landscape. The vase makes sense of the space both inside and outside by connecting two contradictory kinds of picture space and resolving the realism and the semi-Cubist spatial structure. Terence’s next exhibition runs 7-21 August at Thompson’s, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. www.terenceclarke.co.uk

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Artists & Illustrators 63

THIS IMAGE Henry, charcoal on grey Canson paper, 32x41cm 64 Artists

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MARK MAKING

BLENDING

charcoal

LIZET DINGEMANS discusses the best tools and techniques for blending charcoal and other drawing media in order to produce a smarter finish to your artworks

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o blend, or not to blend? That is the question. Some artists recommend never blending at all, while others swear by it. If you choose to blend, smudging your drawings with your fingers can be a start, but sometimes you want a little more precision – that’s where the different blending tools come in. In this article, I will discuss the uses of blending, show a selection of different blending tools and finally, show you some passages on my own drawing where I have used these tools for different effects. I will be referring to charcoal throughout this article, as charcoal is very responsive to blending techniques and allows itself to be pushed around readily on the paper. However, you can also use these techniques with other drawing media, including graphite and pastel, or even with paint, so feel free to experiment.

WAYS TO BLEND There are many different ways to utilise blending tools – and not all of these involve actual blending. Here are some common applications:

then allows you to add more subtle accents on top without worrying about any tonal interference from underneath. This technique is also used to evenly fill in the grain of the paper with a single tone, for instance in a background. •Building up involves alternating the flattening technique with gentle applications of darker tone on top. The paper slowly becomes saturated with the charcoal, allowing more control over the tone and preventing any scratchiness. This is especially useful when working on rougher paper with a more pronounced grain and can leave a drawing looking more polished. •Pushing uses a blending tool to gently guide the charcoal around the paper. The areas of tone appear to move, without the charcoal being removed from the paper like an eraser would. This is especially useful when working in the shadows, where you may want to lighten a tone without going back to the white of the paper.

ABOVE Adjusting small shapes I used a large stump to remove a layer of charcoal in Henry’s hair and create the highlight, alternating between the point and the side to create an asymmetrical shape. I also used a small tortillon to gently adjust the shape of the eyelid, getting rid of some charcoal dust that had fallen on the eye, and moving the shape very slightly downwards.

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BLENDING TOOLS •Blending is a well-known technique that consists of gently intermingling two tones to create a gradual transition between them. Blending can be a useful skill that can add to the subtlety of the finished artwork, giving it a more professional look. •Flattening involves blending a single tone into itself to give a more balanced, even finish. This flat tone

There are many different blending tools available, so below I have categorised them by type and given a few examples for how they can best be used. 1. Stumps and tortillons Stumps are made of tightly packed paper in a pencil-like shape. They are usually pointed at both ends and available in various sizes. Tortillons

are a smaller stick, made of tightly twisted paper, and are hollow with one pointed end. Both can be bought at any art shop, or you could even make one yourself by rolling a sheet of heavy gsm paper and sanding the

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MARK MAKING

end to create a fine point. The difference in size affects how they are used. The tortillon has a fine tip that gives you precise control to blend even the smallest of details, whereas the stump can be used to smooth, smudge and blend across larger and smaller areas. Both tools can be used to remove charcoal without being rough on the paper, as you can easily control the pressure and decide how much you want to take off. They are also easy to clean by sanding the tip down to expose a fresh layer of paper. 2. Tissues and rags Tissues and rags are great for areas 66 Artists

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ABOVE Building tone Working the background of my drawing of Henry with a piece of tissue was a quick way to flatten the tones, creating a smoother, more uniform area that wouldn’t detract from the main drawing.

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MARK MAKING

LEFT Pushing a shape I wanted to create a harsher line for the cast shadow on Henry’s neck. A size 8 synthetic brush was a good choice for this, as it took quite a bit of charcoal off the paper and I could use the flat head to create lines. A zig-zag motion helped gently push the charcoal towards the edge of the shadow, causing the charcoal to pile up and create a dark line.

of tone that need to be flattened (see page 64) or areas of shading which don’t require as much precision. They really come into their own in larger areas where working away with a stump or other smaller tool would take hours. For more precision, a tissue wrapped around a finger works great.

4 BELOW Laying down tone I used a foundation applicator sponge here to lay down a large area of flat tone. To do this, I gently dabbed the sponge in charcoal powder and then used even pressure to lay down the tone.

3. Brushes When choosing a brush for blending, the biggest consideration should be the type of bristles. A good rule of thumb is “the softer the brush, the harsher the blend”. While this may seem a little counterintuitive at first, it makes more sense when you realise harder bristles don't touch the paper as much as soft ones do, so therefore they remove less charcoal. This means a stiffer hog brush will actually give a softer blend than a very soft synthetic brush, though they are not as well suited for moving shapes around. The shape of the brush head is important too. A round head provides a less distinct blend than a flat one, so I like to use a flat if I want to emphasise shapes and a round if I want to do a general blend of a large area.

3

4. Other blending tools As you become more confident, you can start to experiment blending with things found around the home. A make-up sponge, such as a foundation sponge, easily absorbs charcoal and can be very useful for slowly building up layers of tone. A cotton wool bud will function very similarly to a stump, while finger blending gives you a lot of control in terms of how much pressure to apply. When choosing to blend with your fingers, make sure to clean them

before and during the drawing, as fingers contain natural oils that can leave residue on your paper. These small spots will prevent pigment from laying down evenly onto the paper. Cleaning your hands periodically while drawing also eliminates any potential debris from sticking to the paper and prevents you accidentally smudging other areas of your drawing. Keeping a wet wipe or a few tissues handy is advisable. Lizet teaches weekly online portrait and figure classes with Raw Umber Studios. www.lizetdingemans.com

Artists & Illustrators 67

A N AT O M Y

Drawing from the inside Understanding anatomy can help give confidence and freedom to our figure art and also suggest effective approaches for drawing, as ALAN MCGOWAN’S new three-part series explores

68 Artists

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A N AT O M Y

T

he study of anatomy has perhaps come to be associated with a particular way of making pictures – with something rather “correct”, restrained, quite precise. A consensus developed throughout the 20th century that such discipline would be stifling to individual expression and as a subject of study it was largely abandoned in many art schools. I believe such a view is mistaken. Anatomy gives us a surer understanding of the figure that in turn helps us to focus on the other things in which we might be interested, such as line, colour and tonality. The insight that anatomy offers can help inform and liberate our creativity; it has a role to play in many different types of figurative art, from refined, precise drawing to looser, more energetic works. An understanding of anatomy adds to our experience of the figure. The knowledge of what is going on under the surface – not only where but why bumps and shadows occur, and how these are interconnected – can help us gain a deeper sympathetic understanding of the model and the pose. We can notice rhythms and echoes as forms repeat, oppose or balance each other. It can help us to see the body as a dynamic subject (rather than something static and flat as perhaps a photograph) which has movement in it, be that actual movement through three-dimensional space, movement of muscles wrapping and spiraling around the body, or potential movement in its tensions and balances. There are many inspiring artists who have taken a more expressive, sensual approach to anatomy. The works of Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Auguste Rodin and Egon Schiele evidence a deep knowledge of – even a fascination with – anatomy but one that is allied to the physical and emotional rather than the mathematical. As drawing and thinking are so closely linked, these ways of considering the figure will naturally impact on the approaches we might choose to take in representing it. Over these three articles I want to explore these ideas by focusing on three specific parts of the anatomy and relating these to possible methods of representation. Let’s start by considering the torso as the heart of the pose, as a place which contains movement and can help us to imagine the form from the inside to see how parts relate to one another and appear as they do on the surface.

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A N AT O M Y

The Three-Part Torso When we look at the torso it is useful to try to see the simplicity that lies beneath the apparent complexity of the surface forms. It can be helpful to think of the torso as a three-part system: there is the chest (or ribs) at the top, the pelvis at the bottom, and between these two rigid structures is the more flexible abdomen. Anatomically speaking there is much more to this, but it is useful to initially conceive of them as three quite simple blocks that nevertheless allow for all sorts of bends, turns and twists. Those movements are organised around a main axis that I would call the “flow”. Once you can start thinking in terms of this quite simplified model, we can build on that with more refinement.

Key anatomy

Linea alba

1 Costal arch

3

Rectus abdominus

2

Semilunaris

4

External obliques Iliac crest

5 Front Torso Most of this figure’s weight rests on the left leg, which is pushing the pelvis up on the left (the right as you look at it). There is a reciprocal drop on the other side, causing the pelvis to appear at an angle. The chest and shoulders form a contrasting angle – raised on the left, down on the right – to create a “contrapposto” pose. This counter movement between ribs and pelvis creates a compression on the right side of the figure at the waist, especially at the external oblique muscle which is crushed between the ribs and pelvis on the right side, and a stretch in the external oblique on the left side. 70 Artists

& Illustrators

Surface Landmarks 1 The linea alba is a good indicator of the twist of the figure – it helps us establish the direction of the mass of the torso in space. 2 The external oblique bulges where it is crushed between the iliac crest and the ribcage, creating a

indentation and shadow beneath the costal arch which can be most noticeable at the junction with the semilunaris. 4 The rectus abdominus – or “six pack” – helps give the sense of bend and change of direction. 5 The hip bone at the top of the femur pushes up

characteristic line of shadow underneath. 3 On the compressed side there is often an

here, creating an angle down to the hollow of the dropped right hip.

A N AT O M Y

T t

o p ip

rso as Think of a to : ribs, three forms the more pelvis, and omen flexible abd

Key anatomy

Spine

1 Ribcage Erector spinae

2

External obliques

4

Iliac crest

3 Sacral triangle

Rear Torso Think of the flow of this figure as a curve bending to the left with a slight twist. The pelvis is seen quite square on, while the ribs and shoulders are rotated slightly towards the left. The right shoulder is further away from us, which could have an effect on the weight of emphasis we might put here in order to depict that turn. The figure is stood with most weight on the left leg, pushing the hip up on that side. A contrasting bend in the shoulders compresses the waist on the left side and stretches the right.

3 The sacral triangle at the base of the spine is

Surface Landmarks 1 The line of the spine and forms of the erector spinae give us an indication of bend and twist. 2 Note the crease between the ribcage and the external oblique muscle which is compressed on the left side. The S-shaped crease is angled

created by the sacrum and the back points of the iliac crest. It helps give a sense of the pelvis’s tilt and direction in space. 4 The forms on the right edge are stretched so appear smoother and less angular than those on

downwards and round to the front, echoing the action of the ribs and external obliques.

the compressed left side, where we might expect more dynamic changes of light and shade.

Artists & Illustrators 71

A N AT O M Y

CASE STUDY Drawing from the inside

ABOVE RIGHT Michelangelo, Study of a Crucified Man (Haman) – detail, 1512, chalk on paper, 40x20cm

A common way to start a figure drawing is to begin with a kind of outline, possibly beginning towards the top of the figure and working our way down and around, correcting that and only moving towards filling in the inside forms later. This method is not without certain pitfalls. An over-emphasis on outline might miss the overall flow and movement of the pose, while individual elements might be considered separately rather than embedded in an overall structure and so their placement can wander. The alternative approach is to consider the figure in terms of its internal structure. This can encourage us to put more emphasis on internal relationships – working from the inside towards external form. However, a figure has both an outline and an internal structure, so the trick is to find a negotiation between the two. Take a look at the Michelangelo study on the right, which comes from The British Museum collection. How does the figure first appear to you? We see the muscles first, I think. The body is impressive and complex. It has a sense of movement, of vitality. But there is a danger that the apparent complexity could blind us to the underlying simplicity and flow of the subject.

Now look at the outline [below left]. The form ripples, but on closer inspection there is no great movement suggested by it. The outside edges of the torso kind of mirror one another. Even an accurate outline drawing

A

B

72 Artists

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does little to convey the essential dynamic movement of the pose. The main movement is internal. It is the twist within the figure combined with the slight drop in the angle of the pelvis. To represent this movement, the most significant lines are inside the figure. Most importantly the path of the linea alba (A) has an S-shaped form, which indicates the change in direction between the rotated chest and straightened pelvis. The turn from the frontal plane to the side plane (B) on the chest also reinforces the sense of the upper torso as a block turned slightly away from us. The secondary movement is the slight compression of the waist on the left side, shown in the movement of the costal arch and underside of the external obliques. If we were to focus on drawing the outline exactly, we would get caught up in the intricacies of each contour bump and lose that overall sense of movement. To better tackle these important aspects, we should start with them instead and build towards that outline form.

DEMO Building from within

1

First establish the “flow” of the subject: the main axis. Try to draw this freely and quite lightly. Draw through the form rather than around it – think of it as if you were drawing the armature upon which a sculpture could be built. Identifying the surface landmarks of the spine and linea alba can help. Don’t be too precise with this – try instead to feel the energy, flow and movement of the form.

2

Now think about relationships across the form – the secondary axes that create the rhythm. Look for any possible asymmetry. Think in pairs: shoulders, external obliques, iliac crests, hips. Again, your placement need not be precise yet as you begin the process of building out.

2

3

4

3

Roughly add an outline. Think in pairs again – as you place a form, pay attention to the associated form on the other side. Consider the three-part nature of the torso and look for significant forms within the figure, such as the linea alba and the turn from the frontal plane into the side plane at the chest.

4

To finish, work to refine these forms by creating more detailed relationships, edges, contrasts, proportions, tones and even colours. Considering form from the inside can help bolster our drawing, creating a dialogue between surface and structure, and acting as a platform for vibrant, energised figurative art. Next month: Alan looks at mark-making techniques while drawing the hand. www.alanmcgowan.com

1

Artists & Illustrators 73

H O W I PA I N T

Anna Perlin As our Artist of the Year 2017 prepares for her second major London solo exhibition, she shares her advice on colour, collage and making gallery-standard paintings 74 Artists

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H O W I PA I N T

LEFT Across Buttermere, mixed media on canvas 76x122cm

Setting a moodboard

A

nna Perlin was born in 1982 and grew up in a tiny Oxfordshire hamlet. After a degree in Textile Design and Marketing, she explored art in her spare time, joining a local art society and attending evening classes. In 2016, Anna was a semi-finalist on Sky Arts’ Landscape Artist of the Year. The following year, she won the Artists & Illustrators Artists of the Year competition. Her prize included the chance to work with London’s prestigious Thackeray Gallery. Anna’s second solo exhibition with them, A Colourful Year, runs until 23 July. www.annaperlin.com

Winning the Artists & Illustrators Artists of the Year competition in 2017 came at a strange time for me because my mother-in-law was in hospital and the awards were on my actual birthday so that evening was amazing. It was something I had aspired to for my whole career and it made it even more special that it had happened. With an award like that, it feels unattainable and as though winning it is the end of the journey, but it’s not at all. I realised that I’d been given this huge opportunity and I’d got a responsibility to Thackeray Gallery – they’d put their trust in me and now I wanted to deliver and do well for them. My first solo show with them had 40 pieces, this one has more than 60. I’d done a couple of exhibitions with smaller galleries but nothing on this scale – and nothing with this level of prestige. One of the reasons I get on with the gallery so well is that they actually didn’t put any pressure on me to work in a different way at all. The only expectation was that I enjoyed myself while I was creating the show. I think that was why the first show with them was such a success. A lot of my work is landscape based and, because of lockdown, my garden

features quite heavily in my new exhibition too. I always love the British countryside. I like walking or going out to National Trust places. No matter where I am, I am always looking for things that inspire me. I try not to narrow myself down, it’s just whatever subject catches my fancy. I don’t do sketches when I’m out and about, I take photos and just try and soak up the atmosphere. When I get back to the studio I will try and marry those photos with what I was envisaging while I was there as well. Sometimes I find if there’s something I really liked, say, from a Venice scene and I’ve got the photos, I might also see colour combinations or something completely different in a magazine, just like a page of colours that go nicely together and will remind me of Venice, and then I’ll use all of those things together like a moodboard to inform the paintings. It’s not an actual moodboard, it becomes more of a mess on the floor: photos, bits of material, things from magazines. I am a very mucky painter. Every now and then, if I don’t feel like painting but it’s still a “work day”, I will go into my studio and do a tidy up.

Colour and collage Even now, starting work on a white canvas can still be a bit scary. I tend

Artists & Illustrators 75

H O W I PA I N T

ABOVE Evening Glow, mixed media on canvas, 76cmx122cm

RIGHT Golden Autumn Days, mixed media on canvas, 90cmx122cm 76 Artists

to start by putting colour down first. I try not to worry or think about that stage too much because I know, no matter what, I’m going to get things wrong, so there’s no point me being hesitant. If I don’t start, then I’ve got nothing to work on so I just have a bit of fun with it and know that I can work things out later on. I use Winsor & Newton Galeria acrylics – very liquid, basic acrylics just to get colours down. I don’t use any mediums or anything like that. I don’t tend to use paints straight from the tube at all. I will always mix colours because it gives me an emotional attachment to the colour in a way – if I have mixed a colour,

& Illustrators

it is my personal interpretation of it, rather than something that someone else has produced. I’ve got probably about six core favourites that go into a lot of my paintings. I always have Titanium White, then I also love Naples Yellow, Permanent Magenta, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow Deep Hue, Payne’s Gray and probably a blue. I then add some different ones to that core palette as well and mix those in. The autumn paintings, for example, might have a broader range of yellows or earth colours, whereas on other paintings, there might be more blues, say. I like to work seasonally. There’s also so many nice subjects at certain

H O W I PA I N T

LEFT Waking Up to a Snow Day, mixed media on canvas, 51x51cm

I like to work seasonally... If I have an autumn painting that I haven’t finished, I’ll wait until next autumn times of year so to be painting autumn when there are lovely summer flowers out seems wrong. I want to be painting what’s out there. If I have an autumn painting that I haven’t quite finished, I might wait until the next autumn when I can see all the colours again and remember why I wanted to catch that feeling. I start by making quite a detailed painting, a lot of colour and form, then I start drawing with charcoal and pastels, just to get some contrast

of lines and a bit of mark making. I’ll then put the collage elements onto it and go back in with paint and other media as well, and then finally back in with the drawing again. I work across the whole canvas at once, so it all develops at the same time. The collage elements include lots of fabric. I go to fabric shops and collect whatever takes my fancy. I never buy fabric with a particular painting in mind – it’s always just patterns and colours that I like.

Often what I will do is find patterns and colours in a fabric and I will paint them into a painting. Gardening magazines often will have images that I really like – sometimes they’ll end up in my paintings or they’ll be a certain contrast or colour that I will maybe use when I’m painting. I stick everything down with a normal PVA art glue. It’s pH neutral and archival so it doesn’t damage the colours and it is lightfast. You can do a lot with PVA glue. The washes and drips are all applied with brushes. I try sponges and rollers, but I find I can get quite a lot of techniques just using brushes. A technique I really like is when you mix the acrylics with water to drip and dribble the paint on, leave it all to dry for a bit and then just before it is

Artists & Illustrators 77

H O W I PA I N T

ABOVE A Moment to Pause (Derwent Water), mixed media on canvas, 61x122cm

fully dry, wipe things off. Some of the paint sticks and some of it doesn’t so you get these nice happy accidents, and you can start to control them a little bit. Certain patterns and shapes can be created just by knowing the drying times.

I’m not sure I ever think a painting is finished, I just get to a point where I stop and come back later

Gallery insight When I’m having a bad day, the thing that helps me is social media. If I’m trying out new things and I’m not sure, I’ll put them on Instagram and see what response I get. People are really lovely and if they like something they will comment, and it just gives you a boost to know that you are doing something right. It gives you that confidence to keep going. I’m not sure if I ever think a painting is finished, I just get to a point where I stop and think I will come back to it later. I’ve learned to leave it and come back to it in a couple of weeks. I might decide that it is done after all, but other times I might come back and decide I want to do more. I might add little bits because you always see something different when you approach it with fresh eyes. 78 Artists

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The Thackeray Gallery has been so helpful in terms of putting together a larger body of work. For the solo show I did there two years ago, they asked me to do a couple of very large paintings that were bigger than I’d ever done before. I’d never worked that size before because I only had room for a certain size of canvas in my studio and my car, but they said that I should do them for impact in the gallery and also because some people do have houses that are big enough to fit larger work. It was a good idea. Walking into the gallery to see those larger canvases was amazing and I sold them too. Larger paintings draw people in, even if they look at them and then buy a smaller one. The gallery suggested I frame all my paintings, even those

larger ones, because it will just finish them off really nicely. In terms of the work, they also said to try to not have 50 different sizes of paintings because when they are seen all together, it works better if there are a few consistent sizes. They advised me to limit them in a way so that it creates a cohesive range. I varnish all my paintings at the end, covering the whole canvas. It not only pulls everything together and puts a consistent finish over it, but also seals the surface so nothing comes loose. I use a Winsor & Newton gloss varnish because I sometimes use magazine pages as collage and they have a shiny finish. I find that the gloss varnish just pulls that into the rest of the painting and ties it all together.

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I really miss drawing when I haven’t sat down and had a sketch for ages My love of birds came first. I grew up in a small mining town in the north east of England where there was a lot of woodland and fields. From an early age birds were pointed out to me, and I used to draw and make up little characters for sparrows nesting near our house. I obsessed over my auntie’s Charles Tunnicliffe book. It had pictures of gnarly gulls, hen chicks and really cool owls – lots of stuff to get a boy’s imagination going. The Red List inspired my new book, Save Our Birds. Seeing household names like the house sparrow and skylark on the Red List [an international guide to endangered species] was a massive shock. I wanted to educate people on why so many birds are struggling.

Matt MEET THE ARTIST

SEWELL The illustrator, artist, author and avid ornithologist on drawing what he loves. Interview: REBECCA BRADBURY

Google Images is the ultimate resource. At one time you’d have to go out and spot these birds before drawing them, but that’s a job in itself. I don’t copy pictures, I look at lots of different references. Once I’ve got the silhouette of the bird right, I can make it as cute or as characterful as I want. The birds in my books are all watercolours. I use Winsor & Newton and the Japanese brand Holbein, which makes really lush and vibrant colours. Arches watercolour paper blocks are my go-to art product. I did my first book on any old cheap watercolour paper, but it soon kicked in that it’s worth spending more on better quality products. Illustrator Eleazar Albin is like the 18th-century version of me. I did a project with the V&A on woodland birds and found his work while looking through their catalogues. I love how simple his work is. I recently painted murals for the NHS. I got to totally transform these areas for three child development centres with cute animals and birds. When the kids came in, the looks on their faces were amazing. My advice to budding illustrators is to just draw. You should always draw what you like, rather than what you think other people will. I really miss drawing when I haven’t sat down and had a sketch for ages. That’s when you develop your own style and find out what you enjoy drawing. Matt’s new book, Save Our Birds, is published by Ebury Press, RRP £12. www.mattsewell.co.uk

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