Artists & Illustrators November 2021 [PDF]

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Artists & I L L U S T R A T O R S TIPS • TECHNIQUES • IDEAS • INSPIR ATION

Animal Magic

November 2021 £4.99

STILL LIFE Start of our great new series

Gain confidence with colour

Illustrating characters Top tips for creating visual stories

Richard Estes

Meet Damien Hirst’s favourite painter

How to... • Draw better figures • Paint autumn leaves • Develop landscapes

THE RIPARIAN ZONE

“Great Blue and the Button Bush” 28”x20”x1”, Nitram Charcoal & paper sculpture on Courbet Super Fine Canvas

NITRAM LIQUID CHARCOAL “During a recent gallery show, the most common question I got about my charcoals on canvas was, “What are you using—how are you getting those textures?” The discovery of Nitram Liquid Charcoal took my artwork to a new fluid and expressive place. The ability to lay in organic textures and move them with water allowed me to “go with the flow”. Nitram Liquid Charcoal combines perfectly with dry charcoal as I build up the detail layers. My current body of work centers on the riparian zone, the vegetated strip of land along a waterway. Great blue herons and button bushes are just some of the subjects found in this fragile habitat. Witnessing first-hand the fragility of the environment, I have become an advocate through my artwork.” ~ Wendy Bale Water soluble

Learn how Wendy Bale used Nitram Liquid Charcoal on canvas in her large-scale artworks bound for the Crar y Art Galler y in Warren, PA. Go to: https://youtu.be/YJ7sv2l2Noo or scan the QR code to watch the video now!

Wendy Bale is an artist and environmentalist in Jamestown, NY. known for hand-cut paper sculptures and charcoal drawings of wildlife. Her inspirations are the local waterways and regions of Western New York and the flora and fauna found there. After leaving behind her career as a creative director and designer for fashion catalogs, she rekindled her personal art career in 2019. Now, with time and inspiration, a full-time art career has flourished. “It is my goal to make connections with people through a mutual love of nature. Seeing someone light up at the sight of a favorite bird—or ask to learn more—is what it is all about for me.” www.wendybaleart1st.com

NITRAM

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FINE ART CHARCOAL

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 Acting Art Editor Andrea Lynch Assistant Editor Rebecca Bradbury Contributors Ravneet Ahluwalia, Hashim Akib, Laura Boswell, Aine Divine, Elly Jahnz, Matt Jeanes, Peter Keegan, Evgenia Malina and Jake Spicer ONLINE ENQUIRIES [email protected]

MANAGEMENT & PUBLISHING Chairman Paul Dobson Managing Director James Dobson Publisher Simon Temlett Chief Financial Officer Vicki Gavin EA to Chairman Sarah Porter Subs Marketing Manager Bret Weekes Group Digital Manager Ben Iskander BACK ISSUES www.chelseamagazines.com/shop ISSN NO. 1473-4729

RICHARD ESTES

ADVERTISING Advertising Manager David Huntington (020) 7349 3702 david.huntington@ chelseamagazines.com Group Sales Director Catherine Chapman Advertising Production www.allpointsmedia.co.uk

Welcome

WIN AN ART WORKSHOP WORTH £1,000

Artists & I L L U S T R A T O R S TIPS • TECHNIQUES • IDEAS • INSPIR ATION

Animal Magic

November 2021 £4.99

STILL LIFE Start of our great new series

Gain confidence with colour

Illustrating characters Top tips for creating visual stories

Richard Estes

Meet Damien Hirst’s favourite painter

How to... • Draw better figures • Paint autumn leaves • Develop landscapes

COVER ARTWORK TOM SHEPHERD

STAY INSPIRED BY SUBSCRIBING Artists & Illustrators Tel: +44 (0)1858 438789 Email: [email protected] Online: www.subscription.co.uk/ chelsea/solo Post: Artists & Illustrators, Subscriptions Department, Chelsea Magazines, Tower House, Sovereign Park, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, LE16 9EF Renew: www.subscription.co.uk/ chelsea/solo ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES

I know I am biased, but we have some fantastic interviews and technique articles for you in this issue. I'm very pleased to be able to start things off with a profile of the American photorealist painter Richard Estes, who is having his first UK retrospective at the age of 89. It is a chance to view his vast, meticulous paintings of New York up close and arrives on this side of the Atlantic thanks to a rather unlikely celebrity fan... Find out more on page 20. Our beautiful cover image, meanwhile, was painted by Tom Shepherd, the wildlife watercolourist famed for his podcast presenting and YouTube tutorials. One of the many interesting parts of my chat with Tom focused on confidence and how far too many artists are lacking it. When Tom is teaching a class, he likes to set out some basic principles that his students can work through systematically as they try to resolve a painting. While I'd never heard it explained quite like that, in a way that structured approach is really at the heart of all of the technique articles in Artists & Illustrators. We're not trying to teach you to paint in a specific style, but rather give you an understanding of the fundamentals that you can apply to whatever creative problems you face, while hopefully developing your own distinctive voice along the way. Steve Pill, Editor

Write to us! If you could stage a retrospective by any artist, who would it be and why? Share with us at: [email protected]

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Artists & Illustrators 3

Contents 32

62

New ways to find colours in the greys!

For vibrant, luminous paintings, mixing directly is a great technique to try – HA S H I M AKI B , PAG E 58

68

REGULARS 5 Letters Win a £50 Atlantis Art voucher

6

Exhibitions

26 Art Histor y

54 Project

The forgotten genius of Bloomsbury Group painter Duncan Grant

Learn how to develop drawings into better finished landscapes

Bite-sized tips, ideas and reviews

32 In The Studio

58 Demo

14 Fresh Paint

Tom Shepherd enthuses about watercolour, wildlife art and more

Acrylics at the ready for Hashim Akib's easy-to-follow paint guide

November's best gallery shows

9

Sketchbook

New artworks, fresh off the easel

38 The Working Artist With our columnist Laura Boswell

39 Prize Draw Win an art course at West Dean

62 How I Paint TECHNIQUES 40 Masterclass

82 Meet the Artist

Autumn leaves provide a tricky puzzle to solve in our 12-step demo

With Viktorija Semjonova

46 Principles of Depth

INSPIRATION 20 Prof ile A first UK retrospective prompts a look at photorealist Richard Estes 4 Artists

& Illustrators

Jake Spicer shows you how to draw figures from awkward angles

50 Mixed Media Why oil over acrylics is the perfect recipe for dynamic portraiture

Sharp lines and blocked colour adds intrigue to Jeannie Kinsler's portraits and still life paintings

68 Still Life Workshop A new three-part series begins with a focus on balancing tones

74 Tips Two leading illustrators share advice for building characters that will appeal to the whole family

w ay Fin d a th e ate to cr e s c t kid per f e ters c c h a r a e 74 – pag

Letters Write to us!

LET TER OF THE MONTH

Send your letter or email to the addresses below:

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT LETTERS FOR PUBLICATION

BACK IN BLACK I love seeing all of the different mediums, styles and techniques used by artists published in Artists & Illustrators. I wanted to share one of my pieces and my love for using black watercolour paper in my recent landscape pieces. I’ve always enjoyed using different coloured papers to create art and have experimented with pencils and my beloved pearlescent watercolour paints on coloured paper for years. Over the past year I’ve really taken to gouache paints and I’m obsessed with using them for creating landscapes on black paper. You get the vibrant colours from the gouache and then it’s really fun to use the black paper for the shadows and to create atmosphere. I really wish that 300+ gsm watercolour paper came in more colours! Kathryn Huxter, via email

article [pictured left]. David Raison, Guildford, Surrey A very thoughtful gift, David. Here’s wishing you a speedy recovery and many more paintings to come!

PAINTED WITH CARE I recently spent five weeks in hospital, a week of which was in intensive care, with canulas stuck into arms and neck. As a result, both hands became very restricted in their movement, not to mention the connection with my brain. My son and his wife bought me a colouring book and some cheap brush pens, which gave me the opportunity to exercise my hands and get some connections working again. I moved on to trying out drawing in a small sketchbook and eventually making a small watercolour. I developed this into an A4 painting, which I framed and gave to the nurses who looked after me as a “thank you” for their care. I attach a photo of the finished

BIRDS IN THE BASEMENT I live in Spain and my subscription to Artists & Illustrators is eagerly awaited and never fails to disappoint. I re-read back issues all the time for inspiration. The August edition with Hashim Akib’s Masterclass painting flamingos was just that. Avoiding the heatwave recently, I spent time in our cool basement trying out his method. My art group is very supportive of all our efforts and I have to say that your magazine is passed amongst us each month, it really is a delight

POST: Your Letters, Artists & Illustrators, The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ EMAIL: info@artists andillustrators.co.uk

to receive. Keep up the good work, whilst I try to be braver with big brushes and lots of paint. Vivienne Williams, via email OUT OF THE FRAME There are no ads in the back of Artists & Illustrators nowadays for good old framers, the type that had a little sign saying, “Fine Art Trade Guild”. I used to go to one in Kingston upon Thames that had a great selection of sample corners, and card backings. You could try before you buy. There is little choice when buying from a high street shop, and you need a workshop and specialist tools to frame things at home. My frame shop turned into yet another coffee shop – like we really need one of those – and I’m left talking about the good old days. Terry Last, via email If you are missing a bespoke framer, Terry, there are still plenty of options advertised in Artists & Illustrators every month. Look out for adverts in this issue for the likes of Frinton Frames in Essex, Gloucestershire's Fellows Framing, and The Picture Gallery in Bedford, all of which have websites.

The writer of our “Letter of the Month” will receive a £50 gift voucher to spend with Atlantis Art, the UK’s largest art materials store. www.atlantisart.co.uk

Share your stories and get a daily dose of Artists & Illustrators tips, advice and inspiration by following us on our social media channels... @AandImagazine ArtistsAndIllustrators AandImagazine AandImagazine

Artists & Illustrators 5

Exhibitions NOVEMBER’S BEST ART SHOWS

6 Artists

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© CITY ART CENTRE. PHOTO: MUSEUMS & GALLERIES EDINBURGH – CITY OF EDINBURGH COUNCIL

THE EXPRESSIVE MARK 17 November to 2 April 2022 Abstract Expressionism was arguably the first artistic movement that shifted the focus of Western art from Europe to America. Nevertheless, post-war British artists still had a part to play in this new language of painting. Collecting key examples, The Expressive Mark will show how British painters such as Gillian Ayres [Distillation, left] and Roger Hilton were influenced by their peers across the Atlantic to develop their own vocabularies of mark-making techniques. The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, The University of Leeds. www.library.leeds.ac.uk

© ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, LONDON. PHOTO: PRUDENCE CUMING ASSOCIATES LTD.

springboard to explore the artist’s final 12 years. Among more than 50 artworks on show will be mezzotint prints, watercolours and more full-scale oil paintings, as well as some of his famous plein air cloud studies. Royal Academy of Arts, London. www.royalacademy.org.uk

© ESTATE OF GILLIAN AYRES. PHOTO: © TATE

LATE CONSTABLE 30 October to 13 February 2022 John Constable’s seminal six-foot scenes of the River Stour are arguably the most iconic landscape paintings in British art. Yet this new survey uses the final offering in the series, 1825’s The Leaping Horse [above], as a

REFLECTIONS: THE LIGHT AND LIFE OF JOHN HENRY LORIMER 6 November to 20 March 2022 While Claude Monet and Edgar Degas were pushing the boundaries of painting in France, oft-forgotten contemporary John Henry Lorimer was quietly developing a more classical style back home in Edinburgh. Giving the Scottish artist the attention he deserves is this retrospective of oil paintings, watercolours and sketches, including The Flight of the Swallows [below]. Throughout Lorimer depicts elegant interiors and lightfilled landscapes with technical brilliance. City Art Centre, Edinburgh. www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk

© TATE

SAINSBURY CENTRE © MARY WEBB

Dates may change due to Covid-19 restrictions Always check gallery websites beforehand

RHYTHM AND GEOMETRY: CONSTRUCTIVIST ART IN BRITAIN SINCE 1951 2 October to 30 January 2022 Calling into question the assumption that creativity and logic are two very distinct entities were the Constructivists of mid-century Britain, who relied on mathematical and scientific foundations to create their geometric abstract art. To celebrate the emotive and optical effects of colour and pattern so closely tied to the movement is this collection of paintings, reliefs, sculptures and mobiles, dating from the 1950s to the present day. The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich. www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk

HOGARTH AND EUROPE 3 November to 20 March 2022 Few artists have defined an era like William Hogarth, whose satirical depictions of 18th-century England still capture imaginations today. However, he was not alone in painting the rapid changes to society, as this exhibition hopes to prove. Hogarth originals will be placed alongside those of his continental contemporaries, such as Parisian painter Jean-Siméon Chardin and Venetian artist Pietro Longhi. The comparisons should ensure the British artist’s work is revealed in all its complexity, while proving parallels and sympathies have no borders. Tate Britain, London. www.tate.org.uk

Artists & Illustrators

7

I am addicted to painting portraits. I am tremendously fascinated by how a tweak of the brush can translate into a whole range of different human emotion - Rosso Emerald Crimson

Learn from the best Learn under the watchful eye of some of the world's biggest names, including awardwinning portrait artist Rosso Emerald Crimson. Meet enthusiasts from around the world and try project-based learning with personalised feedback from the experts, all in our interactive online classroom. Whether you're a budding artist, a greenfingered gardener or the foodie of the family we've got online courses for everyone.

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SKETCHBOOK

November TIPS • ADVICE • IDE A S

FAST AND FREE LEO CR AN E introduces a quick ar tistic challenge to warm you up! Short, dynamic poses are used to get the model and painter warmed up at the start of a session. It is a liberating experience: there is no time to get stuck or fiddle with detail, and you can produce so many works in a short space of time that it doesn’t matter if many of them don’t work out. When the model and I are ready, I set the clock for two minutes. I spend the first few seconds reading the pose, then I load the brush with paint and let the feeling of the pose travel through me onto the paper. When the timer beeps, we move immediately on to the next pose, and the next. I’m aiming for at least a dozen poses so we can truly get into a rhythm. If I’m feeling adventurous, I will work wet-on-wet, liberating the pigment and watching the painting develop even after the clock has stopped. This is a space to experiment, explore, fail and perhaps stumble upon an unexpected delight. Here are a few examples…

This is an edited extract from Contemporary Figures in Watercolour: Speed, Gesture and Story by Leo Crane with Roy Joseph Butler, published by Batsford. www.pavilionbooks.com

Emotive drips This briefly described form captured the weight of Lidia’s pose with fluid strokes loaded with dripping paint.

Dynamic flicks To accentuate the movement of Maya’s forward step, I tilted the paper and blew into wet paint to encourage drips. I flicked paint to add dynamism and pushed my painterly mark making in exciting, unexpected directions.

Figure emerging For Roy to emerge from the page, I graded the wetness of the paper, so that painted lines softened in one place and rose to a definitive solidity where it was dry. Solid silhouette With a wash of clean water, I described Roy’s silhouette as he crouched down. I dropped paint into the wet shape and watched it bleed to the edge. Vibrant, transparent colours blend and bloom; opaque colours dominate with a reassuring weight.

Artists & Illustrators 9

SKETCHBOOK

NEW HUES FRENCH ULTRAMARINE Discover a new colour ever y month The name of this deep blue is suitably evocative – derived from the Latin ultramarinus, meaning “beyond the sea”. The original medieval pigment was made from lapis lazuli and used in the turban of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Synthetic alternatives were first developed in France in the 1820s and where modern brands sell two Ultramarine options, the French pigment usually has a warmer red bias.

THINGS WE LOVE…

Brighten up!

Matthew Burrows’ Artist Support Pledge (ASP) initiative was a bright spot in the pandemic. Artists posted work worth up to £200 on Instagram using the #artistsupportpledge hashtag – for every £1,000 of sales, they pledged to buy £200 of work from other artist(s). After an estimated £60 million worth of sales, A Generous Space will collect together ASP highlights at Hastings Contemporary from 24 November to 18 April 2022. www.hastingscontemporary.org

Three quick tips f or brilliant watercolour paintings

1 2 3

Draw lightly. Keep your pencil lines soft and erase heavier lines carefully before adding paint. You don’t want any loose graphite dirtying your colour. Simplify your mixes. Don’t combine more than three pans or tube colours in a single mix. Extra pigments can increase the chances of colours becoming muddy. Let layers dry properly. You can spoil still-wet colours otherwise. If you’re too impatient, start two paintings at once and switch back and forth between them.

BOOK OF THE MONTH Still Life by Susie Johns Best known for her popular books on knitting and sewing, Slade art graduate Susie Johns turns her hand to painting and drawing for 10 step-by-step tutorials. The subjects and choice of media are clearly aimed at those starting out, yet there are enough fundamental techniques recounted in clear, simple language to satisfy developing artists too. GMC Publications. www.gmcbooks.com

We’ve long enjoyed painting with Da Vinci’s range of vegan-friendly watercolour brushes, thanks to super-soft synthetic bristles that mimic Kazan squirrel hair. This year’s new addition are the elegant Series 490 riggers, available in two sizes. www.davinci-defet.com

GUSTAVO LEIGHTON/UNSPLASH

Why not try… Da Vinci Casaneo brushes

Artists & Illustrators 11

SKETCHBOOK

The Diary

15 NOVEMBER The Academi Frenhinol Gymreig (or Royal Cambrian Academy) is inviting submissions for its 2022 Annual Open Exhibition before 5pm today. www.rcaconwy.org 19 NOVEMBER At 5pm, the final whistle is blown on the Football Art Prize, a chance to submit for an Arts Councilsupported touring show with £10,000 of prizes. footballartprize.artopps.co.uk

BEST REASON TO PAINT “ISTHE THAT THERE IS NO REASON

”

TO PAINT 12 Artists

& Illustrators

— Keith Haring

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The Ar tist s & Illustrator s web site is one of the bigge st re s ource s f or ar tist s on the internet . You can f ind tip s , new s , of f er s , ar t f or s ale, comp etition s , inter view s and a huge databas e of practical painting and drawing advice. W W W. A RTI S TSA N D I LLU S TR ATO RS .CO.U K

ILLUSTRATION: BETT NORRIS

EXPERT TIP John Collier’s society portrait of Mary Ann Griffith is a masterclass in clever tonal painting. Our eyes are naturally drawn to high contrasts, so the very dark shadows behind the sitter encourages us to focus on her head and shoulders first. Meanwhile, the artist’s use of very stark highlights on her necklace and the golden edge of the chair help suggest that these are both shiny objects and should be read as different materials when compared to the subdued tonal shifts in her dress.

BRIGHTON AND HOVE MUSEUMS AND ART GALLERIES

24 NOVEMBER The Royal Institute of Oil Painters’ annual exhibition opens at London’s Mall Galleries (until 5 December). Look out for paintings on the mini-theme of “rebirth”. www.theroi.co.uk

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Fresh Paint Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

Sarah Butterfield With its dreamy pastel hues, palm tree silhouettes and car headlights speeding into the night, Sarah Butterfield’s Oceans, Light and Palms XIV has a touch of Miami Vice to it. In fact, it was a return to another American hotspot – California, where the British artist had lived and worked as an architect in the 1970s – that first inspired this body of work. “I took our family to that place of dreams and a whole series of new paintings flooded my mind,” she explains. Collected together in her forthcoming solo exhibition Oceans, Lights and Beyond, Sarah’s recent works provide a much-needed dose of escapism for an audience largely confined to British shores over the last 18 months. “I hadn’t thought of my work as escapist, but I like the idea a lot,” she says. “We do need some form of escapism.” One of the aims of her paintings is to reveal beauty in unexpected places, whether that’s the Californian traffic in Oceans, Light and Palms XIV or a KFC restaurant just off the A27 in Hampshire. “When I capture these phenomena in my paintings, a feeling of escapism naturally follows as I hope the viewer can find the splendour of the menial or mundane process in their lives too.” Sarah’s perceptive paintings are backed by a sound knowledge of scientific theory, perhaps unsurprisingly as the daughter of the celebrated late medical researcher Sir John Butterfield. “Knowing some concepts helps you see perceptually,” she says, pointing to her interest in refracted light on water and the optical effects of complementary colours. “Think of Monet’s paintings of poppies in a grassy meadow,” she adds of the latter. “The increased luminosity of the red petals against the green grasses not only conveys a glow of light but the optical effect between these two complementary colours also even suggests the nodding movement of the heads of these flowers in the breeze.” Travel is another key aspect of Sarah’s work, yet the recent restrictions have given her a chance to reflect and refine paintings in readiness for the new exhibition. “Sometimes during lockdown, late in the evening, I would see a previously completed traffic painting I had seen around the house all day and would just pick up a brush and palette knife making gestural marks that captured what I had wanted to do much better than before.” Oceans, Lights and Beyond runs 2-6 November at Mall Galleries, London. www.sarahbutterfield.co.uk 14 Artists

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SARAH’S TOP TIP “If you are trying to wed two areas together, one of shade and one of sunlight, try adding a common colour to both mixes”

Fresh Paint

LEFT Sarah Butterfield, Oceans, Light and Palms XIV, oil on canvas, 122x152cm

Artists & Illustrators 15

16 Artists

& Illustrators

Fresh Paint

SIMON’S TOP TIP

LEFT Simon McWilliams, Forest Ether, oil on linen, 153x121cm

“To vary the surface quality, I cover certain areas with stencils and spray a semi-opaque dammar varnish glaze over the painting”

Simon McWilliams Simon McWilliams may have been elected Vice President of the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) earlier this year, but he has been creating paintings of equally impressive venues for more than half of his life. The Belfast-born artist has had a fascination with painting palm houses and greenhouses ever since he concluded a decade of artistic studies with three years at London’s Royal Academy Schools from 1995. “I like the contrast of the architectural with the organic,” he says, explaining how the built elements of his subject provide “a scaffold of realism” on which to experiment with oil paint. “The stimulus comes from the real world and gives me the excuse to use these techniques to say something, not only about the nature of the paint itself but also that which it depicts.” Forest Ether is perhaps his most impressive realisation yet of themes and interests that were further inspired by an influential visit to a Michael Andrews retrospective at Tate Britain in 2001. Last year, the curator and art historian Dickon Hall noted that Simon “has constantly made technical experiments within the space of these works” and that is certainly true here, as the leaf motifs on the left of the painting were printed in place, while impasto tree shapes were created by pushing oil paint with a piece of card as if it were a squeegee. More than just being a depiction of plants in a glasshouse, however, there is a transcendent quality to Forest Ether and other paintings in this series, a sense of these spaces being not quite of this world. “It made me think of the early 70s science fiction film, Silent Running, where all plant life on Earth was becoming extinct and specimens had been preserved in a series of enormous, greenhouse-like domes floating in space,” agrees Simon. “I have always been attracted to the universality of subject matters, that it is not necessarily a portrait of a particular place. The otherworldliness of the painting suggested the title for me, it was an attempt to direct the viewer in a spiritual direction, as if above the forest was this mysterious substance suffused with light.” Would the RUA’s new Vice President class himself as a spiritual person then? “As openness is generally a personality trait of artists, who knows?” he says. “I’m open to any ideas.” The Royal Ulster Academy’s 140th Annual Exhibition runs from 29 October to 17 January 2022 at Ulster Museum, Belfast. www.royalulsteracademy.org

Artists & Illustrators 17

Fresh Paint

RIGHT Gary Lennie, Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas, 30x40cm

Gary Lennie It might be too soon to start talking about New Year’s resolutions, but every January Portfolio Plus member Gary Lennie sets himself the same goal: to improve upon his practice so much that he’s mortified by the work he’s painted 12 months prior. “I want to be embarrassed by it, as I like to see I’m making progress,” he says. “I’m always open to learning and I think that’s very important.” This growth mindset led the Scottish artist to sign up for a year-long, virtual painting programme taught by awardwinning painter and occasional Artists & Illustrators contributor Louis Smith at the Warrington-based Realist Academy. “The whole thing was done on Zoom,” explains Gary, who now lives along the southeast coast of England. “We had to login with our laptops, so we could see Louis, and our mobile phones, which we had to place looking over our shoulders so he could see us painting.” One outcome of the course is the oil painting, Portrait of a Young Woman. Using a photo posted out for reference, Gary sketched the outline of the face on a canvas stained with Burnt Umber before filling in the shadow shapes and 18 Artists

& Illustrators

building up the subsequent layers over several sessions. Capturing the young model’s Every month, one of our Fresh Paint smooth skin was Gary’s biggest artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus, challenge – “I find it easier to our online, art-for-sale portal. For your paint old, wrinkly faces,” he chance to feature in a forthcoming admits – but limiting his palette issue, sign up for your own personalised proved helpful. In fact, the flesh Portfolio Plus page today. You can also: tones were created using the • Showcase, share and sell unlimited four colours of the Zorn palette artworks commission free (black, white, red and yellow), • Get your work seen across Artists & plus a hint of violet to capture Illustrators’ social media channels the cooler lights around the • Submit art to our online exhibitions eyes and temple. “When you • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more first look at skin, you don’t Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand expect to see these colours, illustrators.co.uk/register but if you really look, they’re there,” he says. “That was what I got out of the course more than anything: the importance of close observation.” www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/mr-lennie

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20 Artists

& Illustrators

PROFILE

LEFT Alice Tully Hall, 2015, oil on panel, 30x22cm

PROFILE

Richard Estes

At the age of 89, photorealist master Richard Estes is finally having his first major UK exhibition. STEVE PILL explores his detailed approach and learns why he found an unlikely ally in Damien Hirst

© RICHARD ESTES

T

he American state of Illinois managed to delay the impact of the Great Depression in 1929, as a diverse economic output and a wide-ranging agricultural base helped it to weather the initial downturn. They could only hold out for so long. In the state’s largest city, Chicago, the unemployment rate would hit 40 percent, homelessness and crime was rife, and freak weather only exacerbated unrest. The city’s emergency relief funds were totally depleted by February 1932. A little over three months later, Richard Estes was born on 14 May in Kewanee, Illinois, a small town just off the I-80 between Chicago and Des Moines. Like many of his generation raised during the country’s

lowest ebb, he would embrace postwar optimism and craft a clear-eyed vision of modern America, rather than wallowing in the funk of the Great Depression. He did so as the leading light of the photorealist movement, a style of painting that emerged in the late 1960s and was simultaneously conservative and cutting edge, traditional and modern. New York gallery owner Louis K Meisel first coined the term “photorealism” in 1969 and several years later set out a five-point definition of the genre which specified that a true photorealist should use “the camera and photograph to gather information” and “have the technical ability to make the finished work appear photographic”. Alongside Richard Estes, artists such as Ralph

Goings, Chuck Close and Audrey Flack created meticulous depictions of real life that provided a contrast to the prevalent Abstract Expressionist style popular in galleries of that era. While Richard is now rightly regarded as one of the pioneers of photorealism, he nearly didn’t become an artist at all. In a true Sliding Doors moment, he was all set to study architecture under the great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology until a trip to Europe prevented him from submitting his application in time. As a keen painter in high school, he opted instead for a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The gallery’s collection proved a regular and inspiring place of study with widescreen 19th-century European

Artists & Illustrators 21

PROFILE

landscapes such as Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day a particular favourite. By 1959, he had moved to New York and found work as a graphic artist for the advertising agencies of Madison Avenue. This was the era of Mad Men when the suits were as sharp as the taglines and adverts were designed on paper, not screens. Largely working freelance, Richard honed his ability to quickly conjure up multiple variations of a subject on demand for big-budget clients. The experience got him over the stigma of using photographic reference, as time was of the essence. In his spare time, Richard continued to paint and took to padding the streets of New York with his camera in search of potential subjects. His interest in architecture remained a key factor, but paintings of Manhattan landmarks such as his takes on the Guggenheim Museum or the Flatiron Building were rare. Estes instead focused on the more mundane aspects of the built environment, filling his canvases with diners and drug stores, phone booths and billboards. Asked recently if he had an artist’s statement, Richard answered succinctly: “If it is really ugly, paint it.” While many would argue that there is

much beauty to be found in Richard’s scenes of urban life, it is true that his work lacks the romantic sweep of his painterly heroes like Edward Hopper and Thomas Eakins. The artist was equally unsentimental when asked by an interviewer from NPR radio why he didn’t just exhibit his original reference photo. “I get more money for the painting, I guess,” was his flippant response. In truth, Richard’s paintings are far more than mere photo facsimiles and the level of artistry, of decision making throughout the process, is often underestimated. “The apparently straightforward documentary simplicity of his depictions is deceptive,” agrees Linda Chase in the Phaidon Focus monograph Richard Estes. “He paints his subjects from odd and unexpected angles, employing an array of photographic techniques including wide-angle lenses, extreme and unusual cropping, and multiple images. At times he alters the photographic information and deliberately flouts traditional precepts of good composition in the service of an apparent verisimilitude that confounds our expectations.” The latter is particularly true, his awkward, asymmetric viewpoints reminding us of photographic

snapshots when in fact he was often working from incredibly deliberate, composed source material and photo collages. Another of Meisel’s definitions for photorealism was the use of “a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas”, which for many artists at the time meant using slide projectors to aid the tracing of a photo. Richard instead favoured a much looser beginning, sketching out a composition directly onto the canvas in an acrylic underpainting as he shifted elements around to suit his needs. It is the irony of the work of this photorealist master that if one held up his canvases to reality, one would find certain features out of place – a bus stop moved, a wall lowered, a colour shifted. Richard was able to turn to painting full-time in 1966 and many of the trademark features of his work were established early on. The following year the painter was exposed to the work of photographer Lee Friedlander, showing in the New Documents exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and soon embraced reflective surfaces such as car bonnets and storefront windows in his own work. Other features were a natural result of the way he collected source material. Many viewers

LEFT Serengeti, 2015, oil on panel, 35x57cm

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PROFILE

ABOVE Brooklyn Diner, 2021, oil on canvas, 94x140cm

comment on the lack of people in his early paintings, although that was as much to do with his preference for strolling around SoHo with his camera on quiet Sunday mornings as it was a conscious creative decision. Likewise, it was common to find a foreground in shadow, drawing the eye to brighter light in the distance, yet again this was a common occurrence amid the high-rise buildings of Lower Manhattan when the low morning sun had yet to fully rise overhead. Much like the sharp all-over focus of his paintings, Richard’s debut solo exhibition at New York’s Allan Stone Gallery announced his vision to the world fully formed.

More than half a century after that American debut, Richard’s first major exhibition has finally opened in the UK. It is all the more remarkable for having happened at the Newport Street Gallery, the south London venue built for Damien Hirst to exhibit his extensive art collection. “Richard is a living icon of American painting and this will be a rare opportunity to see his mesmerising works in person,” said a clearly excitable Hirst. “I’ve loved his work since I was shown it when I was 13 by my art teacher in high school, Mr Wood. While trends and movements come and go, Richard has stayed true to his vision and singular approach to painting for more than 50 years and I find this

Richard Estes’s paintings are far more than mere photo facsimiles and the level of artistr y is often underestimated

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PROFILE

24 Artists

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PROFILE

“Richard Estes is a living icon of American painting… I’ve loved his work since I was 13” – Damien Hirst

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Beech Hill I, 2010, oil on panel, 58x40cm; Rihanna, 2012, oil on panel, 31x61cm; Madrid, 2018, oil on panel, 41x51cm

unwavering commitment to be a true inspiration.” Since that initial breakthrough, Richard has indeed ploughed his own furrow, largely sticking to the style while occasionally expanding his field of vision beyond his beloved New York. In 1975, he bought a home on Maine’s Mount Desert Island and divides his time between studios there and back in Manhattan. Travel broadened his horizons, with the success of major 1970s shows (at

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston among others) funding regular trips to Europe and beyond. Richard turned 89 this year and his most recent paintings in the new exhibition reveal his continued wanderlust, with Brooklyn diners and boat trips in Maine jostling for attention alongside far-flung destinations such as Venice, Tanzania and Nepal. Even his most recent paintings of New York – filled with

contemporary signifiers like Rihanna adverts and Whole Foods stores, alongside enough reflections to prove his magpie-like eye for a shiny surface is still in tact – present a simple and pristine vision of city life, in keeping with a man who is always humble to the point of being dismissive of his own achievements in interviews. “While Richard’s much-loved paintings of New York will be central to the show, the lesser-known works made from his travels around the world are a revelation and I’m super excited to include them in his show and to be helping to give a broader understanding of Richard’s work to a British audience,” adds Hirst. While it may be surprising to learn that the man famed for pickling sharks has a fondness for quiet 1970s photorealist cityscapes, there is no doubting Hirst’s commitment to this first retrospective. The 45 paintings will be collected in a dedicated hardback catalogue with text written by Patterson Sims, the co-curator of Richard’s 2014 US retrospective at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. And much like Richard alighting on the perfect subject during one of his genteel Sunday walks around the city, it doesn’t matter so much how this exhibition got here, we should just be glad that it has. Richard Estes: Voyages runs until 12 December at Newport Street Gallery, London. www.newportstreetgallery.com

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ART HIS TO RY

Duncan Grant Coinciding with the launch of two new exhibitions, RAVNEET AHLUWALIA celebrates the brave and intimate paintings of the Bloomsbury Group’s Scottish maverick

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heavily enthralled to the simplified forms and bold colours of Henri Matisse who she would have first truly discovered, like much of Britain, via the 1910 exhibition, Manet and the Post-Impressionists. This landmark collection was arranged by another artistic Bloomsbury Group member, Roger Fry, and introduced the works of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso to the unsuspecting and rather traditionally minded British public of the time. Perhaps the most interesting and under-explored artist of the original

Duncan Grant was the most interesting and under-explored artist of the Bloom sbur y Group

© THE ESTATE OF DUNCAN GRANT. PHOTO: PRIVATE COLLECTION

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he collective power of the Bloomsbury Group left a long and lasting impression on the first decades of the 20th century. This liberal congregation of intellectuals and creative types famously “lived in squares… and loved in triangles”, such were their complex, intertwined lives which played out amid the leafy residential enclaves of bohemian central London A century on, however, while those controversial lifestyles continue to fascinate, the wide-ranging work that emerged from this hotbed of critical thinking has also lost none of its power to impress: Virginia Woolf’s novels remain loved and studied the world over for their idiosyncratic visions of urbane womanhood and English social structures, Clive Bell paved the way for abstract art with his theory of significant form, and John Maynard Keynes became one of the world’s most influential economists thanks to his development of macroeconomics in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Painting remained at the core of the group’s interests, however. Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, was an accomplished figurative artist,

A R T H I S T O RY

BELOW The Pond, Winter, 1943, oil on canvas board, 41x51cm

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TOP LEFT The Cat, Opussyquinusque, c.1932, oil on board, 23x31cm TOP RIGHT Duncan at Charleston, c.1933-'35 ABOVE The Hammock, c.1921'23, oil on canvas, 82x147cm

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Bloomsbury Group, however, was Duncan Grant. Amid the southern English dilettantes elsewhere in these literary gatherings, here was the only son of one of Scotland’s premier clans. Duncan James Corrowr Grant was born on 21 January 1885 to Major and Mrs Bartle Grant at the family’s ancestral home, Doune House on the Rothiemurchus estate, about three miles from Aviemore. The Grants of Rothiemurchus were a branch of the wider Clan Grant, which still owns much of Inverness-shire and Duncan

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himself was the grandson of Sir John Grant, a prominent Whig MP. Duncan’s early life was far from easy. Aged seven, he apparently had a premonition that his elderly grandfather would die the next day and remarkably it came true. “It was so easy for me to imagine my grandfather as a corpse,” he later recalled. “He was always white as wax, silent and laid out at full length.” Money was also a worry, despite such inherited wealth. His ancestors had lived beyond their means and a third of Sir John’s estate was taken

to pay off debts. Around this time, Duncan’s great aunt, Elizabeth Grant, wrote a personal memoir that was published in 1898 as Memoirs of a Highland Lady in which she laid out some of the family struggles. Interestingly, the Rothiemurchus estate website celebrates Elizabeth’s book today though no mention is made of Duncan in the family’s history – perhaps because he spent a large part of his early childhood overseas as his father was stationed in India. While Major Grant was apparently stripped of his office during this

© THE ESTATE OF DUNCAN GRANT. PHOTOS: CHARLESTON/LAING ART GALLERY

A R T H I S T O RY

© THE ESTATE OF DUNCAN GRANT. PHOTO: TATE

A R T H I S T O RY

time and nearly faced imprisonment due to his debts, the family lived the comfortable colonial life in India with a number of staff. The bustling bazaars and the army’s Sunday parades provided endless visual inspiration for the young Duncan, who became fascinated by the movement and colour. When he was sent to prep school in England at the age of nine, he found comfort in his art class, spurred on by the encouragement of teachers and a number of art prizes. A fidgety teenager, he avoided following his father into the army and

instead began a period of studies, making copies of Renaissance works in Italy, attending Jacques-Emile Blanche’s Parisian atelier, and spending an unfulfilling term at the Slade. By 1909, Grant had established his own London studio at 19 Fitzroy Square, a short walk from Bloomsbury and a place with a great artistic pedigree, given Ford Madox Brown and James McNeill Whistler had also lived on the square. It was here that Grant had begun making work indebted to Matisse and Picasso, both of whom he had become acquainted

with. He achieved moderate success over the next few years, exhibiting with the New English Art Club and Walter Sickert’s fledgling Camden Town Group, while also producing designs for Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops, yet it wasn’t until the onset of the First World War forced a radical change of his metropolitan lifestyle that the Scottish artist’s work truly came into its own. Grant was a conscientious objector to the war, yet, as a single man aged between 18 and 41, he was eligible for conscription after

ABOVE Venus and Adonis, c.1919, oil on canvas, 64x94cm

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A R T H I S T O RY

TOP RIGHT A linen chest painted by Duncan Grant, c.1916-'17 ABOVE RIGHT Julian Bell Reading, c.1930, oil on canvas, 80x52cm ABOVE Room with a View, 1919, oil on canvas, size unknown

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the Military Service Act of 1916. To avoid this, he found work as a farm labourer – a profession deemed of national importance – and Vanessa Bell arranged to sublet a 16thcentury farmhouse, Charleston, at the foot of the South Downs. By the autumn, Grant had moved here with his partner David Garnett, living alongside Vanessa, her husband Clive Bell, and their two children. It was a polyamorous arrangement, as Duncan and Vanessa gave birth to a child of their own on Christmas Day 1918. While Charleston would become something of a rural retreat for the wider Bloomsbury Group, in those first years it was a rather intense set-up, as the group worked on restoring the

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old house and walled garden, while trying to establish new ways of living and loving amid the complex web of jealousies and attachments. Grant’s art flourished, the Downs providing a natural backdrop to his elegant figurative work, while the backdrop of the conflict helped inspire what the Charleston Trust has since called “a new type of war painting that replaces soldiers with flowers, the trenches with farm buildings and the destructions of conflict with creativity”. Grant and Bell didn’t just restrict themselves to the page or canvas, as they applied their artistry to furniture, bed frames, fireplaces and even walls at Charleston. While also decorative, the apparent ambition was to blur the

boundaries between art and life – this wasn’t just a space in which to create art but also a work of art in itself. This period culminated in Grant’s debut solo exhibition which took place in February 1920 at the PatersonCarfax Gallery in Old Bond Street, London. The collection received mixed reviews from critics, with even Grant’s Bloomsbury cohort Roger Fry writing in The New Statesman that the artist must “amplify, solidify and deepen the expression of his vision”, yet the wider public clearly disagreed and 24 of the 31 canvases sold. Though delayed due to the current pandemic, Charleston has just opened a centenary recreation of this collection titled Duncan Grant:

© THE ESTATE OF DUNCAN GRANT. PHOTOS: CHARLESTON/PRIVATE COLLECTION

Charleston wasn’t just a space in which to create art but also a work of art in and of itself

A R T H I S T O RY

© THE ESTATE OF DUNCAN GRANT. PHOTO: PRIVATE COLLECTION

ABOVE The Student, c.1919, oil on canvas, size unknown

1920. It features intimate portrayals of life on the farm, from portraits of visiting Bloomsbury Group associates to landscapes dotted with cowsheds and apple blossom. One of the most striking and imaginative works is Venus and Adonis, a magenta-hued nude that apparently inspired Henry Moore's work and is now part of the Tate collection. “In 1920 Duncan Grant was at the top of his game,” explains Dr Darren Clarke, Charleston’s Head of Collections, Research and Exhibitions. “After 10 years of experimentation, he had developed his distinctive style that can be seen emerging across the paintings in this show. There is a palpable sense of freedom and energy

in these beautiful, light-filled, lifeaffirming canvases, a visual freedom after the restrictions of war. These works were made at Charleston and present a secret life that the viewers in 1920 would have had no idea about. We can now appreciate these works not just as excellent paintings but as a document of this brave and experimental world that the artists at Charleston were creating.” Showing alongside Grant’s centenary exhibition at Charleston will be a second exhibition of work by the young British artist Tunji AdeniyiJones. Astral Reflections will comprise nine large-scale figure paintings in watercolour, ink and acrylic, alongside four original prints. “The figures in my

work are expressions of my identity and there is something very rewarding about using the body as a vehicle for storytelling,” says Adeniyi-Jones. “This is also something I really admire and appreciate about Duncan Grant’s work – his exploration and focus on the physical form.” The New York-based artist was only born in 1992, 14 years after Grant’s death, yet his appearance here is testament to the continued relevance of the Bloomsbury Group painter. Duncan Grant: 1920 runs until 13 March 2022 at Charleston, East Sussex. www.charleston.org.uk Charleston – The Bloomsbury Muse runs until 10 November at Philip Mould & Company, London. www.philipmould.com

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IN THE STUDIO

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Tom Shepherd The new presenter of Ask An Artist doesn’t need a large studio when he has big ideas. He tells STEVE PILL about his watercolour methods and confidence tricks.

1 The animal’s spots were painted wet-inwet to create softer edges 2 Tom’s huge passion for wildlife informs much of his art

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om Shepherd is one of life’s enthusiasts. Whether he’s talking about his latest artistic project or his long-term love of wildlife, his new home in Pembrokeshire or his passion for surfing, a conversation with him is a constant stream of infectious positivity and genuine intrigue about how the world works. He’s the sort of person who would find the bright side to a sudden downpour and no doubt treat his house falling down as a chance to learn a bit about architecture.

The 36-year-old’s optimistic and knowledgeable outlook has made him not only a rising star in wildlife painting, but also one of the UK’s most in-demand art tutors and presenters. His YouTube tutorial videos have racked up tens of thousands of views, while more than 50 episodes of his Creative Perspectives podcast have made him a regular presence in the studios of countless artists around the world. Tom is now set to take over from printmaker and Artists & Illustrators columnist Laura Boswell as the

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IN THE STUDIO

Being passionate is what makes you an ‘artist’ ... It’s got nothing to do with how good you are or whether you make a living at it

co-host of Ask an Artist. “I jumped at the opportunity because it’s such a great podcast,” he says, with typical relish. “If nothing else, you end up chatting to like-minded artists for a few hours, which is never a bad thing.” Tom had appeared on an early episode of Ask an Artist and he was the first choice of co-host Peter Keegan – author of our new still life workshops on page 68 – to share the reins. The pair look set to complement each other well, with two distinct and different styles, choice of media and approaches to the business of being a professional artist. “One of the fun things about a podcast,” says Tom, “is it’s an open platform to discuss all of the different routes you can take. There are almost an overwhelming number of options for how you can make a living as an artist, and I think demystifying them and talking about them openly is useful for listeners.” “I feel like there are probably more opportunities than there has ever been if you want to be a professional or semi-professional,” he adds. “It’s such an exciting time to be an artist.” Calling yourself an “artist” is, of course, one of the first hurdles to navigate. Tom regularly talks to students who have been painting for 10 or 15 years and yet refuse to label themselves as “artists” for fear of failing to fulfil some imaginary set of criteria. “It’s really important to me when I teach or do my podcast that I get across that it doesn’t matter if you’ve been painting for years or only for a little bit – the important thing is that you are really into it and passionate about it,” he says. “That is what makes you an ‘artist’. It’s got nothing to do with how good you are or whether you make a living from it.” Confidence is not something that Tom appears to lack so he is keen to ensure that students emerge from 34 Artists

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his workshops feeling the same way. When teaching in person, he will try and guide a struggling student through a series of questions to pinpoint what they feel they need to work on. Do they like the composition? Is the drawing as accurate as it needs to be? Are the shadows dark enough? “I almost give people a checklist of things to go through because that provides a very tangible, logical process that they can follow through to analyse their own paintings,” he explains. “That in turn instils a bit of confidence in them and makes things seem less mysterious.” It was about 12 or 13 years ago, Tom says, when he first called himself an “artist”: “I don’t think I ever had a problem with that weirdly. When I set out to try and make some sort of living as an artist, I realised that it was important that I presented myself professionally in order to do that.”

With a geography degree under his belt, he had been all set to explore a career in wildlife conservation when he decided to pursue art instead. He found work painting graffiti designs on guitars – “a niche market within an already niche market” – while subsidising his craft as a part-time gardener. A switch to traditional media proved the breakthrough, with Tom initially drawn to the alla prima representational oil painting style of John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn. He went to sessions with his mum and painted obsessively, quickly getting to the point where he could share his skills with others. After the birth of his first child, Tom took on more teaching and his students’ thirst for acrylics led him to a few years experimenting with this new medium. It was only when an injury restricted the arm movements required to paint at an easel that the artist decided to

3 The splashy background of Drinkin’ Ellie was a response to initial layers 4 Photography informs Tom’s paintings, such as Gold Blue Macaw

IN THE STUDIO

try his hand at watercolour instead. “I felt like I had found my voice as an artist,” he says of the experience. “I could see the potential for how I wanted to paint was wrapped up in watercolour: it can be so quick and so expressive and so improvisational, I guess. You have to go with what the medium is giving you too. It’s almost like you paint alongside watercolour, you’re not in charge of it.” Tom utilises photography, particularly for his wildlife paintings, though he is keen to avoid slavishly copying an image. Safari trips abroad in search of subjects have increasingly given way to visiting wildlife parks or exploring the bird life on Skomer Island near his new home in Pembrokeshire. Whether he has taken the photos himself or paid to use them online, he prefers that they act as a jumping off point for a more expressive interpretation of a subject. “Watercolour is improvisational,” he says, “I’m not planning at the start where I’m going to put a splash in the background or where I’m going to leave the white of the page – that’s born out of the process of painting. All I’m really trying to achieve is a

strong sense of light and shadow, and nice fresh washes.” Tom and his young family moved to south Wales nine months ago. His attic room is smaller than previous studios, but the space is fairly tidy and organised, a legacy of his increasingly refined working process. Aside from a desk and two plan chests, there is a tidier corner for filming his video tutorials and a computer for editing them afterwards. Unsurprisingly, the artist is a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm when it comes to his materials. As a keen conservationist, he prizes Holbein and Daniel Smith for their animalfriendly watercolours, and ProArte and Escoda for their synthetic paintbrushes. He favours thick cotton papers from Baohong, Two Rivers or Winsor & Newton, always with the roughest possible textured surfaces. “If you make a brushstroke, I want to see the sparkles of the white of the paper showing through,” he reasons. A self-confessed geek when it comes to art theory and more scientific understanding, Tom’s latest discovery came when he looked into how humans perceive tonal values.

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5 Applying a high contrast background around the gannet’s head draws the eye 6 Tom utilises the texture of his rough paper to suggest a sparkling sea 7 Larger wash brushes encourage more confident strokes and less fiddly detail 36 Artists

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IN THE STUDIO

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I teach people watercolour, but I still have imposter syndrome and I have no idea why that is Once he realised that the eye perceives a huge range of lighter tones, whereas there is a steep drop off at the darker end of the scale, he decided to apply that logic to his own practice. He soon realised he could be much freer with the lighter parts of the painting, provided that he kept a tight tonal range in his shadow areas, perhaps using just two darker tones to anchor the whole image. “That’s what holds the painting together and tightens it up and makes sense of the madness of the half-tones on the light

side of the subject,” he explains. Given such curiosity, knowledge and apparent confidence, it is reassuring to discover that even Tom isn’t immune to the same worries that afflict us all. “I teach people watercolours, but I still have imposter syndrome as a watercolourist and I have no idea why that is,” he admits. “That little bit of self-doubt is always in there.” Listen to Ask an Artist at www.artists andillustrators.co.uk/askanartist Register for Tom’s online watercolour workshops at www.tomshepherdart.com

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COLUMNIS T

The Working

Artist Don’t expect a breakthrough after every picture you make. Real progress only happens if you work at it, says our columnist LAURA BOSWELL

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ince you’ve been making art, have you ever had a moment when your work has taken a leap forward? A time when something clicks and suddenly you have a creative change for the better? If I look back on the last 16 years of my printmaking career, I can point to specific moments when I can see sudden innovation has occurred. While it is impossible to engineer such magic, there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of a creative breakthrough. Firstly, don’t expect them every day. While we all hope such developments will be a regular occurrence, it is unrealistic to hope they will happen frequently. For the most part an artist’s career is one of linear progress. The more experience and skills you gain, the better you become at expressing your individuality and making work. For working artists 38 Artists

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particularly, it makes sense that their portfolio will reflect a steady progress of developing ideas and skill. However, this doesn’t mean sticking to one technique, subject or medium – and it certainly doesn’t mean missing out on taking advantage of creative leaps forward.

Breakthroughs will find you… The more you work, the more likely you are to get lucky

Breakthrough moments will find you working. It sounds obvious, but the more you work, the more likely you are to get lucky. I use this as motivation when I have a spell of creative block: remembering that you could hit the jackpot with the next random sketch is a great reason to get going. Speaking of random sketches, hang on to them. One of my best breakthroughs came with a set of prints made from sketches that were several years old. Sometimes ideas take a while to mature and rise to the surface. Be prepared to be uncomfortable; a breakthrough is far more likely when you are working outside your comfort zone on a regular basis. This means accepting that there will be failures, with plenty of ideas and images abandoned along the way. If you see your art in terms of a constant upward curve of your individual creativity, rather than focusing on each piece as an end in itself, it is easier to accept that risk taking comes with the territory – and why it is a positive for your work. Lastly, always go with your gut feeling and follow your enthusiasm. Your ideas may seem counterintuitive but feel irresistibly right. In my experience that reckless move might just be the very thing. I always gamble when this happens in the hope of a win. www.lauraboswell.co.uk

TOP Laura Boswell, Skye to the Mainland, linocut, 46x73cm

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Not only does West Dean stand out for its wide range of top-quality courses, but also the sumptuous grounds and award-winning gardens add to the college’s creative credentials. The estate was once owned by poet and patron of the surrealist art movement Edward James, whose legacy continues through the actions of the school. Alongside these beautiful surrounds, students can expect to find expert tutors, fully equipped studios, and a safe, hospitable and Covid-secure environment in line with national guidelines. To find out more about West Dean and to browse its new winter programme, which runs from January 2022, visit www.westdean.ac.uk

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Artists & Illustrators 39

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Jigsaw MASTERCL ASS

PAINTING

For this autumnal step-by-step demonstration, illustrator MATT JEANES shows how being selective with details and experimenting with texture can create focus in a complex subject offers the chance for a more painterly approach

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s autumn is well under way and the dark nights have crept in, now is the time to forget the warmth of the summer and look to our brushes and paints to keep us company. I find as the seasons change, the beauty of autumn can create the most beautiful colour palette for an artist. The leaves move from green to brown with their own specific rainbow of ambers, yellows and reds, which are all quite beautiful. Taking a walk one day, the age-old subject of inspiration came to mind and it struck me that we often look up for inspiration, but we rarely look down.

If we go outside in the autumn, we will often find a carpet of leaves under our feet, which is what became my inspiration for this piece. I am always looking to challenge myself with each new painting and I knew this subject would be just that. Having taken a photograph of some fallen leaves with which I was happy, the task was how to create an interesting painting out of such a vast jigsaw puzzle of colour and detail. The answer involves experimenting with textures, layering masking fluid, and being selective with details, as I will show you in this demonstration. www.matthewjeanes.co.uk

Matt 's materials •Paints Winsor Lemon, New Gamboge, Permanent Rose, Quinacridone Magenta, Winsor Violet (Dioxazine), French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Cerulean Blue (Red Shade), Antwerp Blue, Manganese Blue Hue, Winsor Green (Blue Shade), Viridian, Hooker’s Green, Green Gold, Naples Yellow, Naples Yellow Deep, Gold Ochre, Quinacridone Gold, Indian Red, Perylene Maroon, Burnt Umber, Indigo, Payne’s Gray and Neutral Tint, all Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colours; Permanent White, Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache

•Paper Fabriano Artistico Traditional White 300gsm cold-pressed watercolour paper, 45.5x61cm •Brushes ProArte Prolene Series 007 round brushes, sizes 1, 3, 10 and 20; ProArte Prolene Series 008 flat brushes, size 1”; Royal Sovereign colour shaper, taper point, size 2 •Masking fluid •HB pencil •Coloured pencils •Old toothbrush •Tracing paper (optional)

ORIGINAL PHOTO Artists & Illustrators 41

MASTERCLASS

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St ar t simp ly

With an intricate and complex subject like a pile of leaves, the biggest issue is avoiding confusion and trying to get your head around so much information. With that in mind, I started simply by focusing on just a couple of leaves. I drew each leaf in a different coloured pencil and then used a colourless masking fluid to paint around the outside of the leaf shape, before adding watercolour washes within it.

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Add tex t ur e s

Looking closely at my reference, I noticed each leaf was so different, not only in colour, but also shape and texture – some were fresh and clean, others battered and starting to decay. I wanted to capture some of this variety in my painting. I set myself the challenge of working on one leaf at a time, so I didn’t lose my place. I use an old toothbrush to spatter paint onto the lighter base layer. This can be repeated again when dry to create more texture.

Rem ove t h e m a sk

Once the paint on the first few leaves had dried, I removed the masking fluid with my finger. (You could use a putty rubber to remove masking fluid but after a time it will clog up and ruin the rubber). If you have a large build-up of masking fluid from a lot of layering and re-masking, take your time removing it. Rushing this stage can damage the surface of the paper and also cause blisters.

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4

M a sk in s ide

Once I had removed the masking fluid outside the line of a leaf, I then applied a new line of masking fluid within the line of the same leaf. This allowed me to start painting the next leaves around it, repeating the processes from above. I spiced up the palette with various combinations of New Gamboge, Naples Yellow, Hooker’s Green and Burnt Umber with hints of Quinacridone Gold and Green Gold.

MASTERCLASS

5

Link t h e im a g e

When only the bigger leaves on the top of the pile were painted, it looked disjointed, but as I started to add leaves underneath, this jigsaw puzzle of a painting began to come together. Building up this complex underlayer of leaves, shadows and grass takes concentration, yet with the top leaves still protected by masking fluid, this next stage can be a bit quicker. Using a size 5 brush, I added colours quite boldly, starting at the top of the page and working my way down. Don’t worry if your painting doesn’t resemble the reference photo yet, it’s still a work in progress.

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Sp lat ter m a skin g f luid

Making each leaf different from the last gives us great opportunities to try out different techniques. Once the paint is dry, I tried a negative spatter technique. For this, I used a toothbrush dipped into masking fluid to spatter on a leaf, be careful not to overload the tip of the brush to avoid drips. The trick is to aim your brush close to where you want the effect to be created. When the masking fluid spatter dried, I added another layer of paint to the leaf. When this is removed later, it will reserve lighter spots of colour.

Top tip

Use an old brush to apply the masking fluid and keep rinsing it in water to avoid it clogging up

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A s s e s s yo ur p r o gr e s s

When all of the leaves and background were painted and completely dried, I removed all of the masking fluid again. It is important to take your time – there will be quite a build-up and you don’t want to rip your paper. You can now assess your progress. The painting may look a bit rough and ragged, but don’t be disheartened – these masked areas create extra texture and interest, and they can be refined in these final stages.

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Add s e a s onin g

I now started to pull the elements of the painting together. Stems, veins and blades of grass that were masked needed some colour. Some leaves stood out too much, others not enough, so I added shadows and more texture. A neat way to do this is with salt. If you add a wash to several of your leaves (if they are different colours, make sure they don’t touch each other), sprinkle some table salt into the wet paint at the end and leave it to dry thoroughly. When you brush this off, you will find exciting watermarks and stains.

Artists & Illustrators 43

MASTERCLASS

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To u ch up t h e p aint in g

With the masking fluid and salt removed, now was the time to refine the painting. Each element needed careful consideration: adding a touch more colour, a line of shadow, or a little detail. Consider adding exciting and unexpected colours to spice up your image at this stage. You might try reds and lavenders in the shadows, or turquoises and oranges for the grasses. I opted for a smaller size 3 brush here, which was perfect for adding detail and still big enough to apply mini washes of colour.

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D raw at tent ion

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Finishin g to u ch e s

After using so many different techniques and mediums, it was time to bring them all together. A painting like this needs a focal point for the viewers’ attention. I liked to use coloured pencils for this to emphasise the drawing on a specific part of the painting. I used the pencils to add strength to the stems and a little natural damage to a few of the leaves. Don’t add too much detail to all of the leaves, just the ones you think draw your attention into the painting.

Pick o ut highlight s

It was important to define the edges of the leaves, as otherwise all the colours would blend together into one indistinct mass. I used white gouache applied with a size 1 brush to pick out highlights on the edges of a few leaves, which helped draw attention to certain ones and create a balance of things appearing in and out of focus. If neat white gouache is too bright, mix a little of the leaf colour with it instead. The opacity of the gouache will still give the leaf an accurate edge highlight.

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I added little highlights and drops of water to make the leaves glisten. A neat way to do this is to take a sheet of tracing paper, draw around the leaf you want to work on, cut it out carefully, and lay the background over the leaf. This will protect the rest of your painting. You can then use the toothbrush dipped into some white gouache to gently spatter your leaf. Use this sparingly as less is definitely more. Once I removed the tracing paper and added a few final little highlights, my painting was done.

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Artists & Illustrators 45

PRINCIPLES OF DEPTH

3. Foreshortening This six-part guide from Figure Drawing author JAKE SPICER helps create a greater sense of space in your work. Here he shares useful strategies for drawing at awkward angles

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eloved by some and frustrating to others, foreshortening describes the principles of diminution applied to a single subject. Whether you are drawing a log in a landscape or a figure in repose, the part of the subject that is closest to you will appear larger than an equivalent part of the subject that is further away. Despite knowing that the cylindrical body of a wine bottle has a consistent diameter, its cylindrical form appears to taper into a cone when you are drawing it from one end. From our singular perspective, we should just be able to simply draw it as we see it, but our rational mind interrupts our observation so that we see and draw the subject as we think it should look, rather than how it actually appears. While extreme foreshortening presents a common challenge for beginners, most experienced artists also fall foul of the brain’s subjective challenge to the eye’s objectivity, so in this third instalment of our series, I want to introduce four simple ways to improve how you deal with foreshortening in your drawings.

ABOVE A foreshortened subject viewed across your line of sight [above] will appear compacted when it is seen along your line of sight [below]. 46 Artists

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PRINCIPLES OF DEPTH

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Tip 1: Crating Note the top, bottom, left and right limits of the subject before you begin Slide your thumb along your pencil to measure the horizontal width of the subject and turn your pencil vertically to compare that width to the height. Imagine that those limits are the walls of a crate, tightly fitting around your subject – is that crate a square, a landscape-format rectangle, or a portrait-format rectangle?

Tip 2: Space Draw the negative spaces around the subject to help you to see it more objectively This is an old lesson that bears repeating – you will bring fewer pre-conceptions to the abstract shapes that surround the subject, so focusing on those negative spaces will help you to make a more accurate study of your subject.

Tip 3: Overlaps Use overlaps to divide your subject into separate receding sections Form and perspective are inextricably linked; both speak about the volume of a subject. In a life drawing, for example, notice how the sections of the model that would present a continuous surface in an upright pose are separated by contours when you look along the foreshortened body. Isolating those sections will help you to draw each overlapping unit as its own discrete shape, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

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PRINCIPLES OF DEPTH

EXERCISE Shifting Perspective Diminution – and, by extension, foreshortening – will affect any subject you draw. The challenge is to recognise the extremity of the foreshortening you are seeing so that you can pre-empt any issues and remind yourself to exercise more checking strategies as you draw. The extremity of the foreshortening you see is the result of your relative position to the subject, so changing your position will change the foreshortening. While we all know that is true, there is no better way to fix the idea in your mind than to experience it through drawing. In this exercise, I want you to make three drawings that will help you to think about how your own viewing position affects the foreshortening you see in your subject, helping you to anticipate the extremity of distortion you might expect to see.

4 Tip 4: Extremities  Check the size of the furthest extremity against the size of the nearest extremity No matter how diligent your observation, you are likely to draw the distant parts of a subject slightly larger than you see them and the nearer parts slightly too small, subconsciously attempting to raise a foreshortened subject to the expected vertical plane. As your drawing develops, keep checking the size of the most distant section of your subject against the nearest section. If you notice your drawing is deviating from your observations, adjust it as you go and avoid putting detail into the extremes until the later stages.

READER OFFER SAVE £9 OFF THE RRP! Artists & Illustrators readers can buy Jake’s new book, Figure Drawing, for a reduced price of £16, including UK P&P. Order by calling (01235) 759555 and quoting the code: “9952100052”. Offer ends 20 January 2022. 48 Artists

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PRINCIPLES OF DEPTH

You should make the three figure drawings from a single reclining pose – you can perhaps try this with a model at a life-drawing class, a family member on a sofa, or a friend sunbathing on the beach. Alternatively, you could try it with a mannequin or a long still life object. Before you begin, get as low down as possible and look hard at your subject. Without taking your eyes from them, slowly stand, noticing how parts of them are revealed by the angle of your view and how the difference in scale between their extremities reduces as you raise yourself up.

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H e a d on

For the first part of this exercise, get as low as possible so that you are end-on with your subject, the nearest part almost obscuring the more distant parts. Make a 15-minute

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study from this angle, noticing the abstract and strange nature of what you are seeing. These angles are often the easiest to correctly proportion – they are so extremely foreshortened and deviate so significantly from your expectations of how a figure should look that they are often easier to view without preconceptions.

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Lo okin g a cr o s s

Now sit on a chair so that you look along your subject’s body. Try to perceive them more as a “landscape” than a figure with overlapping internal forms obscuring some of the expected shapes of the truncated body. Make sure you measure the height of the pose against its width – you will often be surprised that a pose which seems to be in a portrait orientation is actually square or even fits within a landscape-format crate.

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O ver h e a d

For this final drawing in the exercise, you need to get even higher than before, perhaps standing at an easel to draw. If the setup allows, get closer to the subject so that you are looking down on them. From this elevated perspective, you’ll notice that while the pose seems much less foreshortened than the previous two drawings, there is still an element of foreshortening present. These subtle distortions of the expected proportions of the figure can be some of the most challenging to represent. You will see fewer overlapping sections and will need to make particular use of the negative spaces surrounding the figure in order to draw your subject well. Next month: Jake continues the series with a look at linear perspective. www.jakespicerart.co.uk

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Artists & Illustrators 49

MIXED MEDIA

2. Oils Combining several media can really enhance your paintings, as AINE DIVINE's new series explores. This month oils over acrylics adds character to a quick portrait session

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PHOTOS: JIM MACKINTOSH

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his month I’m capturing another favourite subject in mixed media: the human head. I was lucky enough to have Aonghas MacNeacail, the wonderful poet and songwriter from the Isle of Skye, as my sitter. I love his shock of white hair, the bushy brows over earnest eyes, and his wonderful capacity for weaving a tale out of thin air – all wonderful attributes for an artist’s model. In this series, I want to give special mention to a particular medium and this month it’s the turn of oil paint. Oil paint has such weight and substance, from Rembrandt’s lacy collars to Lucian Freud’s fleshy nudes. There is a lush, buttery feel to it that is second to none. It sings out from the matt surface of dry acrylic paint and the combination really brings that extra substance and richness with it. I love to use oil paint with economy so that this richness is really seen. The oil layer for me often begins with a tone darker than anything in the acrylic layer. With that, I can then better locate the lights which typically use a lot more paint. The acrylic base often serves as the mid-tone. In the portrait of Aonghas over the page, you can see how the little dark of the nostril applied in oil paint explained the form and location of the nose, which was mostly painted in a subdued brownish mix. This dark cavity coupled with my brightest light on the tip of the nose explained the form of the nose. Aonghas and I have only had time for one session so far, so I’ve included two other finished portraits here to show the benefits of oil over acrylics. In the portrait of another bearded

MIXED MEDIA

model, Alisdair [bottom left], the planes of the face and form of the features were clearly described with sculpted marks of oil applied over the mid-tone acrylic. I love to lift an area with a flash of bright colour, as in the red tartan pattern covering Alisdair’s shoulders – oils over acrylics is perfect for this. Meanwhile, in the portrait of Anna [left], her gold headdress was swiftly explained with a patterned acrylic underpainting. Its shape was outlined by the grey oil background, and her skin was built up with thick patches of carefully observed oil colour. Back to today’s session and I chose to paint Aonghas on an extra-large board, prepared with a layer of white gesso. I wanted his portrait to be at least twice life size to do justice to all that hair and his larger-than-life personality so a 45x60cm panel suited me perfectly. I love to work on a smooth panel rather than canvas, as I feel then nothing interrupts the flow of the paint and the sweep of the brush or rag. The energy of each arm movement remains intact on the surface, it is not diluted or diminished by the tooth of the canvas. When working from life, the environment and atmosphere you create is key. A portrait sitting is a sensitive exchange and the set up should be comfortable to allow for ease and flow. To this end, Aonghas and I took over an hour to get settled into the right positions. As always, I made sure my materials and equipment were within easy reach. Aonghas settled on a chair, so I also sat to keep at eye level with him. When seated, be conscious of moving often to avoid any stagnation – try to lean back to see the bigger picture at regular intervals. To do this, I perched myself on the edge of my seat at arm’s length from the easel, with my back straight and my chest open, fully occupying the space. I could easily move in and out to gain perspective. I used acrylic initially, keeping the marks broad and sweeping. My aim was to fill the space quickly to describe the skin, hair, background and body before we stopped for lunch. This would provide a quick, inspiring surface over which to work in oils.

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MIXED MEDIA

2

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DEMO A first portrait session

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marks in the hair turned out to be descriptive enough to be all I did to this section for much of the session.

G et in p o sit ion

I find the energy at the outset is important. A confident stance works wonders here, so get in a posture of openness where you are making brushstrokes from the shoulder. I wanted something I could work back into and wipe away, so I laid on a strong layer of Yellow Ochre with a 2” brush for the hair. The runs enlivened the drier, scumbled paint underneath. At the outset, I aim to surprise myself, to take risks, and be open to chance. To this end, I like to push for bolder marks, even if they read as ugly for a while; it gives me something to sink my teeth into later.

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B e dir e c t

To capture the dishevelled chaos of curls of Aonghas’s hair, I vigorously lifted off most of the wet Yellow Ochre paint with a dry rag, thereby creating horizontal marks in the hair. This allowed the downward vertical pull in the beard to be more evident. These

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3

Pick o ut highlight s

4

Add warmt h

I applied Payne’s Gray acrylic with a dry rag to explain the edges of the hair. I added gleaming Titanium White to indicate particularly bright shocks of hair on the head and moustache. Hair is very useful when it comes to capturing the character of an individual. I recommend giving time to observe its flow, texture and colour, then really aim to capture it in a truthful way.

I mixed a warm skin colour with Burnt Sienna and a touch of Ultramarine Blue. I looked at the shape of the face as outlined by Aonghas’s hair above and beard below. I liked the conversational tilt of his head. Sometimes it’s only once the painting is underway that the model settles into themselves, so I recommend you keep your eyes peeled for gestures that keep returning. Once the

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Top tip

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h at 1 /4” brus Use a firm fl t an rt po im to chip in l, like the details in oi stril dark of a no

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diagonal was recognised as an appealing compositional feature, I encouraged Aonghas to keep it. I masked off an area with a straight edge to capture the grey triangle of his collar – a little geometry in the midst of all the softness bought clarity and order.

pieces together, as I try to find the precise shape of the features and the spaces between them. It’s important to maintain a curiosity about your sitter’s face and aim to describe the shapes of the lightest and darkest patches of colour in particular, as these help to mould the form.

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Int r o du ce oils

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M o uld t h e f orm

After letting the acrylic dry over lunch, I started the oil layer. I use oil sparingly, so that it serves to enhance and clarify what is already insinuated in the acrylic layer underneath. I reached for the Vandyke Brown, applied with a 1” flat firm brush, to nail some proportions and capture the darkest parts of the face. This created a landscape in which to locate the dip of the eye sockets. Other significant darks were the shadow to the left of the beard, the nostril, and the corner of the mouth.

I like to think of this stage as if I’m modelling in clay or fitting jigsaw

Ref in e t h e e dg e s

With the first sitting almost over, some edges needed softening and others defined more clearly. But for now, I’m happy to give the painting some breathing space and set it aside for another session. Do give this process of mixing acrylic and oils a go. There’s plenty of opportunity for adjusting edges all the way through and really engaging with the painting. Try applying the paint, wiping it away, losing and finding details again and again until you achieve the balance you’re after – and a character you can recognise. Next month: Aine paints flowers in mixed media. www.ainedivinepaintings.co.uk

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PROJECT

Develop

a drawing

DAVID BRAMMELD shows you how to develop initial sketches into a fully-fledged painting while putting a creative spin on a familiar favourite subject

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he bottle ovens of the Potteries (the Stoke-on-Trent area that once produced world-famous tableware and sanitaryware) are fascinating subjects to paint. I have many photos of these iconic structures in various stages of decline. I find it incomprehensible that these important buildings – part of our industrial heritage and often decorated with beautiful details – are allowed to decay into a sad and neglected state to be lost forever. This painting was to form part of a series with an industrial theme. It is an ongoing project that I keep adding to from time to time. Bottle ovens are difficult shapes to draw; apart from the challenge of symmetry, the proportions are awkward to get right. At first, they seem quite simple and straightforward, but perspective and scale need to work together if the drawing is going to work. Other buildings are often attached to them. Naturally, where the adjoining roof meets the circular bottle there is an unusual juxtaposition where the pitched roof rises up the tapering bottle shape. There are also all the signs of neglect and abandonment that on the one hand are sad to

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witness, but at the same time very interesting to draw. Many of these buildings display scars of alterations and damage accrued over the years; some of the exposed walls are painted white as they would have been internal walls at some point. Nature plays a powerful role in trying to reclaim neglected buildings, so when mortar gets dislodged from in between brickwork, soil accumulates, and airborne seeds sow themselves. Grass, flowers, weeds and trees start to grow in abundance, in turn trying to force the bricks apart with their thickening root systems. All of this helps hasten the decline. I have drawn this particular subject many times and find something new every time. Every bottle oven has a different shape and size. Many were part of pottery factories built adjacent to canals, which were originally used to bring in raw materials and transport out finished ware by commercial barge. They remain potent symbols of our past heritage, existing in an era when manufacturing industries were prominent. In my own artistic practice, I feel it is important to acknowledge this history as it has helped shape the

character of the area as well as the people. At the same time, I want to place it into today’s context. For me it is a lifelong influence and inspiration, something to keep going back to again and again. As my work moves in different directions, it is interesting to see how my interpretation of the same subject has changed and developed over time. With this particular image, I had previously explored different approaches using a variety of media, for example by producing a small series of A3 studies, in watercolour, charcoal and pencil. Certain subjects have such an appeal that there is always something different to say about them, and for me this is one. I think I will always find something new to say about this image, such is the fascination it holds. With Potteries Memory I liked the flexibility of working with mixed media: applying paint in different ways, drawing with various pencils and pens. It is about finding the best qualities of a particular medium and using them in combination with the best qualities of a different medium to create something new. At least, that was the intention.

PROJECT

LEFT Potteries Memory: Bottle Oven, acrylic and ink on paper, 59x84cm

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PROJECT

MATERIALS •Acrylic paint •Selection of brushes including a rigger (a specialist watercolour brush with long soft bristles) •Painting knife •Acrylic inks •Dipper pen •Drawing pens •A1 sheet of heavyweight cartridge paper

Potteries Memory study, pencil on paper, 30x42cm This early pencil study clearly shows vigorous mark-making. At that stage, I had no intention to produce a finished painting – I was just experimenting and exploring the subject through different drawing media to see what worked and what didn’t.

METHOD

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Working from a small photograph, I used a 6B pencil to sketch the image onto the paper. I mixed some diluted white acrylic paint and washed this over the whole sheet of paper to seal the drawing, ensuring it remained visible under this transparent layer. I could have put the paint on first and then drawn over this, but I prefer the feel of pencil on paper rather than on top of a painted surface. The mark-making is quite different and making adjustments with an eraser is more difficult.

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I strengthened the drawing, still using the pencil. Then I started to add more paint, blocking in the main building with varied mixes of reds, browns, yellows and pale blues for the sky and some darker shadow colours – greys with hints of green at the base of the picture.

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As I built up the paint layers, things were starting to appear more solid, but the drawing was getting lost, so I introduced some pen and ink to bring back some definition. Painting is all about losing and then finding the drawing, but for me, all this extra corrective drawing adds more interest to the picture.

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The pen-and-ink work now looked too strong and prominent, so I scrubbed some paint over it with an old bristle brush to soften things off.

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The beauty of working with acrylic paint is that you can switch between transparency and opacity quickly and easily. As soon as there are one or two layers of paint on the surface it becomes easier to manipulate subsequent layers. The painting was looking much more balanced now.

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Potteries Memory study, watercolour and pencil on paper, 30x42cm I use watercolour as a means to enhance drawings or as an essential ingredient in mixed media. Therefore, I don’t take much notice of matching exact colours – it’s not important for such experiments. Here there are watercolour washes over a pencil drawing, with some white pastel to knock back the sky colour.

PROJECT

Potteries Memory study, charcoal on paper, 30x42cm Another study – this time in charcoal – gave me ideas on how I might proceed. Each version was enjoyable. The shape of the bottle oven is quite simple on the face of it, but it is really difficult to get the balance of perspective and scale, let alone the symmetry.

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I wanted to create a painting that reflected the derelict nature of the bottle oven, so I needed to find a technique that would be effective. I experimented with a painting knife and started to apply opaque paint thinly over the building. Of course, this obliterated some of the inked line work, so it had to be later reworked in places. This was now more difficult because of the rougher texture of the knifed paint. But such is the nature of painting that when a new effect is tried, it has to be adjusted and worked into the rest of the picture.

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I was pleased with the way textures were being created. I thought they were sympathetic to the subject. I decided to use the palette knife to add some colour into the roof and brickwork and was surprised at how controllable it was, up to a point.

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Some white and light blue paint was added to the sky. A lot of detailed brickwork was added to the oven and walls. The pen was perfect to draw the fine branches of the trees coming out of the top of the wall and also the undergrowth at the bottom. The rigger helped to thicken up some of these lines.

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A small, flat, synthetic brush was used on its side to apply browns mixed with burnt sienna and yellow ochre to create a varied surface.

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Finishing touches involved a lot more pen work for the brickwork. I had to exercise some restraint here as I was in danger of carrying on until all the bricks were drawn. In conclusion, I thought this work sat well with an earlier painting of the pit head winding gear, as it used the same materials and equipment. But the challenges posed by each painting were quite different. I think my earlier series of A3 studies helped create a better outcome. I hoped that by reworking the image I could create a different emotion. It was all about finding another way of expressing a new idea about the same subject. This is an edited extract from David’s new book, Creative Drawing Techniques, published by Crowood. www.davidbrammeld.com

Potteries Memory: Bottle Oven [detail], acrylic and ink on paper, 59x84cm This close-up of the brickwork shows the way the drawing reacted with the painted surface. The paint texture is clearly visible, which made it more difficult when drawing straight lines in pen. I was looking for different ways to apply paint so that it didn’t look like a conventional painting made with a brush.

Artists & Illustrators 57

DEMO

DIRECT

mixing

HASHIM AKIB guides us through an abstract painting of a stream, tree and rocks to show how applying paint directly to your canvas can spark acrylic colours to life 58 Artists

& Illustrators

DEMO

Hashim's materials • Paints Azo Yellow Lemon, Azo Yellow Medium, Azo Orange, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Blue Violet, Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine), Greenish Blue, Permanent Green Light, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna 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 • Mixing Tray • Water pot

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L ay o ut colo ur s

Have you ever looked at your mixing tray or scrap piece of paper and found the crudely mixed colours more striking than what eventually landed on your canvas? It is unfortunate that acrylic paint can quickly become dull, especially if it is mixed or diluted too much. If you want vibrant, luminous paintings, mixing directly is a great technique to try. Begin by squeezing out plenty of paint on your palette or mixing tray. To make it easier on your first attempt, consider either working on a smaller scale to get used to the larger quantities, or limiting the number of colours you use.

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Pick up p ur e pigm ent

I began painting by dabbing a moist 2” flat brush into Cadmium

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Orange, Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre and then applying the colours directly onto my canvas. These harmonious colours should mix well and produce some streaks when applied directly. I then used the same brush to pick up more Cadmium Orange with touches of Permanent Blue Violet, Ultramarine Violet and Burnt Sienna to apply various diagonal strokes and create movement.

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Avoid mixin g

Without cleaning the brush, I dabbed it into Azo Yellow Medium, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna. With some orange still on the brush, these mixes produced a brownishgreen colour. Be careful not to brush over the initial layers completely as this can muddy the colours.

Essentially, you’re looking for the pigments to sit side by side or partly skim over each other. From here I added some dark tones using the same brush, mixing in Ultramarine Violet and Greenish Blue to dominate the other colours.

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Contr ol s atur ation

The advantage of these purer applications is that they can energise your paintings, especially at the early stages, so the balance should be towards richer pigments there. As you progress and drawing comes into play, these will make way for less saturated colours and tints (those mixed with white). Here I introduced richer greens, yellows and Yellow Ochre with less Cadmium Orange and Burnt Sienna, applied using a clean, damp 2” flat brush.

Artists & Illustrators 59

DEMO

Top tip

brush ! Load up your bedded Pigment em makes es in the bristl sier ea s ke long stro

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Pr e -mix tint s

White is a tricky pigment to use with this technique as pure white streaks can be distracting. To avoid that, I did my first bit of pre-mixing, adding white to create separate pools of lighter tints on my mixing tray first. I began by mixing a light green with various greens and Titanium White, plus a touch of Yellow Ochre. This tint was then used in combination with the other pure colours directly on the canvas. I used the tint to shape some of the forms and indicate grass via thin lines made with the edge of the brush.

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B e gin dr aw in g

I added more Lemon Yellow, Cobalt Blue and small amounts of Greenish Blue to the lighter green tint here. I used a 1.5” brush to begin carving out the lights on the tree trunks and branches.

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I created other pools of light blue and light orangey-yellow tints too. It may be tricky to almost start the drawing halfway through a painting, but the refined lines provide a good contrast with the chaotic blocky ones. Practise really helps, as you’ll begin to pre-plan to maximise various effects and contrasts.

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Work w ith dark s

With a clean 1.5” brush, I mixed a pool of blues to highlight ripples in the water. The early pure blues became mid-tones, and the brushstrokes were now more controlled. I avoided overstating details in order to maintain the energy of the early marks. Once I’d added an overall impression of the tints, I then applied darks. To do this, I simply dabbed a clean 1.5” brush into the Ultramarine Violet, Phthalo

Green and Burnt Sienna on my palette and applied the colour directly onto the canvas. These marks accentuated the water’s edge by providing dark shading around the trees and rocks.

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B alan ce thin g s o ut

All of these refinements added to the dominant lights and darks has helped to create a more orderly scene. Using a 1” flat brush, I added highlights for leaves, parts of branches, grasses, and rocks. Lemon Yellow and Titanium White were used for the purest highlights. Darks were kept fairly minimal, with lines only teased at via lost and found edges. It’s important not to completely override the early marks in favour of a fully representational drawing – opt for a balance between the two. www.hashimakib.co.uk

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H O W I PA I N T

H O W I PA I N T

Jeannie Kinsler Recently re-settled in England, the South African painter tells STEVE PILL how she composes her portrait and still life paintings, while sharing tips on colour, texture and more

J

eannie Kinsler was born in Stockport, England in 1963, before moving to South Africa. She left school to study a diploma in graphic design from Technikon Natal (now the Durban University of Technology), only turning properly to painting in her late 30s following three years in the studio of South African artist Pascale Chandler. Jeannie returned to England in 2019 and has since exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and New English Art Club.

Where does a still life painting begin for you – is it an object? The light? A concept? It’s probably a combination of those things. I do tend to paint from a collection of objects that I have gathered, even quite random things, but also some very treasured things. Sometimes I just come upon something on a windowsill and think, that’s great, but then other times I actually really do plan them.

Laura Reading, oil on canvas, 90x100cm

Do you have a shelf full of objects in your studio or do you find things around the house? You know, it’s quite interesting, we only moved to the UK about two years ago, we moved from a really large house where we raised our children in Durban, and it’s amazing how much of the home is the things in it. We’ve moved four times since then because we’re renting and we’re trying to find where we want to live in England, so the objects are packed up and then wherever they are, I feel at home.

How do you go about planning a new still life composition? A lot of my viewpoints are from an angle above or from directly above, like Wreath and Mustard Bowl. I have a bit of a collection of fabrics and cloths, which provide me with a horizontal or vertical. I take a lot of photographs and I crop images, sometimes I work from more than one or I splice them together. And then the light is quite key, mostly because of the shadows it makes – often the shadows link one object to the next. I’ll take a number of photographs, say 10 or 20, then I might shift something or add a new object. Also, I redraw a lot in my paintings. I will shift things and redraw along the way. On the progress photo of Wreath and Mustard Bowl [see page 67], I see you added in blocks of colour early on. What was the purpose of that? I put down those blocks early to take the pressure off having a clean, white canvas. I have done a number of paintings over old paintings which just works so well and sometimes I put down these patches of colour to attempt something similar to that. I let those horizontal and vertical lines hang in the painting until the end. They end up being quite useful. You can see that in the painting of my daughter, Laura Reading, there’s quite a dark horizontal – it was just there in a number of photos I took from that day and it was useful to me to go that dark early.

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H O W I PA I N T

There are a lot of geometric shapes and angles in your paintings. Where did the idea for those come from? I did study graphic design at college, that might have something to do with it. Also, everything is very considered – there aren’t many throwaway marks in my work. A very early influence was Euan Uglow, who measured up with grids and kept that grid showing through. I don’t work on a grid, I just divide the canvas in half vertically and horizontally, but I do a lot of measuring through those two lines, just to check I’ve got the basics right. So do you draw on the canvas first? I do use pencil, just a little bit. I prefer to go straight in with a filbert brush, a smallish one, and draw with that. The paint looks a little chalky in places and the texture really comes through. How much does that have to do with the canvas? Or do you mix any mediums into the paint? One thing that I do is use the side of my brush – it’s very noisy when I paint. I also mix my oil paint with Liquin, always – I do use a lot of thin layers and sometimes I’ll leave those showing through. Even the thicker top layers going on, I’ll paint them sideways and it’s hard on the brushes – they lose their shape on one side because I really go at them. I work on stretched canvases, always. I’m not very fussy about what kind of canvas it is and I’m still working it out. I had someone who made my canvases in Durban so when I came here, I’ve just been trying every different supplier and type.

Summer Evening Light, oil on canvas, 70x50cm

I studied graphic design at college… Everything is very considered, there aren’t many throwaway marks in my work 64 Artists

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Does it need to have some texture? Yes, not too rough, but the texture is quite useful because you do get to see it. And I do tend to stop before I should because I want it to look like a painting, I don’t want it to pretend to be real life. Sometimes I’ll leave a whole corner unpainted. I noticed that on Summer Evening Light. Did you plan that in advance or just like how it looked? I did deliberately leave it. I always think that I might get to it and then sometimes I might even put down something and then I just feel like it is… Not ordinary, but I just take it off.

I was doing that anyway and then I discovered the work of Diarmuid Kelley. I admire the fact that he leaves whole swathes of canvas undone with some pencil drawn lines still evident. When I saw that I thought, ‘Ok, I’m just going to do what I want’. You move objects around when planning a still life. Are you directing your portrait sitters in the same way? Apart from commissions, I tend to paint people I know very well. I often

tell them to not think about me and just sit, and then I’ll just go and move them around. Girl with Linen Cloths is my youngest daughter – that was very planned. I’d seen the movie of Girl with A Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson and there’s an amazing scene that I’ve played and played where she’s hanging these white cloths outside – it’s sunlight and not much else. I just wanted to do something with that, so these cloths

that I collect, I pegged them up and made a wonderful series of photos. That was very planned, other times someone will just be sitting somewhere, and I will say, oh don’t move, I’m coming back with my camera. It’s a combination of both of those things.

ABOVE Girl with Linen Cloths, oil on canvas, 100x100cm

Girl with Linen Cloths looks as if the paint has been printed on the canvas or rubbed away in places. How did you achieve those marks?

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I put down blocks of colour early to take the pressure off having a clean, white canvas

I take the paint off with a cloth and turps, actually. I picked that up when I was learning oil painting with Pascale Chandler, she did that. That’s the thing I love about oils – you can take it off as well. I’d always painted with watercolour and once that’s down, it is there, but it takes the pressure off if you know you can take a mark away. Do you have a fixed colour palette? Yes, I do. Titanium White is always there, and I’ve just discovered Michael Harding’s Unbleached White, it’s a nice stone-coloured white. Then there’s Yellow Ochre, Green Gold, Rose Geranium and Burnt Sienna. Sometimes I use a Cadmium Red Deep. I don’t always squeeze that out though, it depends on the painting, like in Laura Reading I probably did use it because there was a lot of red. Then there’s a Maimeri colour called Cassel Earth and I use a Perylene Black, which, when mixed with white, is everywhere in my paintings. It’s a very green black. And there’s Indigo, Ultramarine and Phthalo Turquoise. Italian Green Umber is a new colour I’ve added, which is nice for knocking things back.

Yes, I might be trying to consciously exaggerate with the greys and even white – there are so many kinds of white. I do tend to mix everything: not much doesn’t get a bit of Indigo or Yellow Ochre added to it, just to knock it off the very pure colour. But yes, I probably will exaggerate some of those greys – I will go looking for extra colours in the shadows.

You manage to find so many colours within the greys. Are you painting as you see it or are you consciously trying to exaggerate?

How do you deal with things if you’re stuck with a painting? The first thing I do is just put the painting aside for a bit and have

a break from it. I always work on a number [of paintings] at a time, so it’s quite easy to do. Then I do something that Pascale taught us, which is to turn the canvas upside down and also look in the mirror with it. This helps focus on the shapes a bit more and be less precious about what you’re trying to capture. Sometimes a canvas can never be resolved, but then they are fantastic for painting over. I just turn them upside down and start something new. www.jeanniekinsler.com

ABOVE Spring, oil on canvas, 90x75cm LEFT Wreath and Mustard Bowl, oil on canvas, 120x90cm INSET TOP LEFT A progress photo of Wreath and Mustard Bowl showing the blocking-in stage

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STILL LIFE WORKSHOP

1. Tonal Values Ask An Artist’s PETER KEEGAN presents a new three-part still life painting workshop, beginning with an in-depth look at how to identif y and capture accurate tones

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hen struggling for artistic inspiration, it is often the simple everyday scenes, such as the humble still life, that can present us with the most interesting and challenging artistic problems. From a bowl of shiny fresh fruit to the vegetables on the kitchen chopping board, the still life can present you with all the painterly fundamentals that can elevate the simple to the sublime. Over the next three issues I shall be taking you through the various stages of a still life painting with a different focus each time. In this first article, we shall look at tonal values. Tone really does underpin everything in a good painting and, for me, the key to successful representational painting is the correct depiction and rendering of tonal values. Simply put, tone is the relative lightness or darkness of a colour: all colours have a tonal value that fits somewhere on a scale from light to dark. Some colours are tonally very dark, almost black, such as Alizarin Crimson, whilst others are very light, such as Lemon Yellow. To illustrate this, look at these two colour wheels on the right. The one on the left of the diagram is in full colour, whereas the one on the right shows desaturated versions of those same colours. They are in effect the pure tonal values of each colour. When thinking of tonal values, 68 Artists

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I imagine I’m looking at the world through a black-and-white TV screen. Suddenly a world of colour is simplified, and it is those whites, greys and blacks that give the world depth, shape and form. That is the secret to understanding tonal values. If you have created a painting that looks a little flat, the problem is often a tonal one; adjust your values by making your darks darker, your lights lighter, or a combination of the two and you will achieve that greater sense of depth for which you are striving.

How to see tonal values  So how does one see tonal values? Luckily this is straightforward – and you don’t need a special tool or expensive technical equipment. The simple answer is: squint. Squinting is possibly the most useful technique for a painter and something I wish I’d known about years ago. I do it all the time when I paint nowadays, so much so that

I find myself squinting at things when I’m not even in the studio. The less you see, the easier it’ll be. As you squint, your eyelashes come together and start to take away the clarity in front of you. The world becomes fuzzy and hazy, as if looking at something on a foggy day. As well as clarity, squinting removes strong colour and thus it becomes easier to observe how light or dark things really are. It takes a little time to get used to this new way of “seeing” the world but, once you’ve cracked it, it can unlock a new way of painting and understanding how tone really works. If you wear glasses, you might even want to take them off. I wear glasses to read, drive and watch TV, but never to look at a subject when I paint. Sometimes I don’t even need to squint as my poor vision gives me the same results. I will still pop my glasses back on to see my palette or ensure I’m sipping from a coffee cup and not a turps pot though.

Tonal values of colours Lightest Darkest

Lightest Darkest

STILL LIFE WORKSHOP

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STILL LIFE WORKSHOP

1

DEMO Subject For this painting, I chose a bowl of sweet, cherry tomatoes. In the photo [top left], notice the clear direction of light cast across the subject from the top right-hand side. This is essential to provide a range of tonal values: highlights, mid-tones and shadows. The better lit your subject is, the easier it is to paint so make sure you are working from a scene or image that gives you all that wonderful, tonal information. Avoid working from anything lit straight on, as this will generally appear flatter as a result.

Materials • Paints Titanium White, Yellow Lake, Yellow Ochre, Scarlet Lake, Alizarin Crimson, Transparent Oxide Red and Ultramarine Blue, all Michael Harding oil colours • Brushes Rosemary & Co. Ivory short flat brushes, sizes 2, 4, 6 and 10 • Support Plywood board, 21x21cm, primed with acrylic primer • Low-odour solvent • Rags

Process

1

I applied a wash of Transparent Oxide Red diluted with a little solvent to the board. I then wiped away the greasy residue of the oil

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paint to give a smooth, thin and even coverage. This acted as a perfect mid-tone to paint on. Using a size 2 brush and dilute Transparent Oxide Red, I drew the placement of the bowl, as that provided the composition’s main shape and structure. To do this, I marked out the very outer points of the bowl (the furthest right and down). I then joined up those points using straight lines only, avoiding the temptation to curve them – curves are hard to get right, whereas straight lines are much easier.

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I started drawing the tomatoes, beginning with one of the “main” ones that I felt was closest to me. Much like the drawing of the bowl, I established the furthest outer points of the tomato first and then joined them up using small, straight lines. I also gave an indication of where the tonal values appeared with a dark shadow line and highlight indication. Once the first tomato was drawn, I moved to the next dominant one, then the next, and so on until I had them all established. Finally, I drew the two escapee tomatoes and the shadows they cast on the table.

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To help achieve a greater sense of shape and form, I lightly shaded in the darkest areas using the dilute Transparent Oxide Red mixture. It is important that this shading is not applied thickly, as it shouldn't mix into the layers of paint applied on top. Notice how even with just a single colour, I was able to achieve a few different tonal shades. For example, the tone inside the bowl was darker (using a little more paint) compared to the shadow under the bowl (a little less paint). Already, the painting was starting to look three-dimensional – this is the power of tonal values.

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With the drawing completed, it was time for the actual painting part. I decided to paint each fruit using what is known as the “insideout method”: starting with the bright, main, bold colour in each tomato. I achieved this by mixing Scarlet Lake and Yellow Lake. Then using a size 10 flat brush, I established the first main colour on each tomato in a single stroke. For the darker tomatoes,

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STILL LIFE WORKSHOP

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I mixed in a little Alizarin Crimson and a dash of Ultramarine Blue to give me the dark purple shadows. Note that I kept all the strokes straight, not curved, to follow the form of the tomato. Also see how I painted slightly beyond the lines of the drawing – this helps the tomatoes to merge into their surroundings.

5

I moved on to the lighter tones of the tomatoes. To achieve these, I mixed more Yellow Lake into the red mixture, with a little Titanium White added, getting paler on the tomatoes

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at the top of the painting where the light was at its strongest. I was constantly squinting at my subject to make sure I was describing the right tone as well as the correct colour.

6

I began to fill in the gaps between the tomatoes, which are usually the darkest shadows in a painting like this. I achieved these darks by mixing Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, adding a little Transparent Oxide Red where needed to get the desired tone. When I applied the paint with a smaller, size 6 brush, I made sure the

brushstrokes overlapped a little, providing soft blends or “transitions” from one form to another.

7

After blocking in the fruit, I started to establish the colours of the bowl. I did this by mixing Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue and a little Titanium White or Transparent Oxide Red where I needed the colour to be lighter or darker. To enhance the orangey-red of the fruit, I made some of the marks of the bowl bluer than they really appeared. The blue-orange complementary balance was a

STILL LIFE WORKSHOP

welcome colour relationship in the painting. I also established the shadow under the bowl using the same colour mixture.

8

To complete the block-in, I moved towards the light background (the lightest tone in the set-up) which I achieved by using Titanium White and a dash of the shadow colour mix from the previous stage. I made sure I was applying this background colour thickly, so that it did not mix with the edges of the tomatoes or bowl. If your brush picks up a bit of the orange or blue paint, simply wipe the bristles on a rag or paper – do not wash it.

9

With the whole painting blocked in, I began finding the areas that needed fine tuning, softening, or restating. I made these adjustments with a size 4 brush, keeping it clean by wiping it on a rag. I started by applying the highlights on the fruit. I broke them down into three different tones of yellow-orange, with increasing amounts of Titanium White where I needed them to be lighter. A little spot of pure Titanium White was used for the very lightest point on the tomatoes. I also picked out the pale grey rim of the bowl.

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I worked on some of the harder edges, where two different brushstrokes came together, to slightly soften them. I focused particularly on the areas where two very similar tonal values came together. I softened them by using a clean size 4 brush and very gently moving the paint already on the surface. I like to keep a balance of both hard and soft edges across a painting, so there is an interesting range of marks and brushstrokes to keep the eye engaged. At this stage, I like to double check that I’ve achieved what I set out to do, which means even more squinting. I wanted this painting to achieve a strong sense of shape and tone, almost feeling like you could pick up one of those tomatoes from the bowl. I also wanted to show the full tonal range from dark, hidden shadows to bright, little reflections on the tomato skins. Once I was happy that I had achieved this, I put down the brushes. www.peterkeegan.com

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TIPS

Ways to Create

CHARACTERS FOR KIDS Leading illustrators Evgenia Malina and Elly Jahnz share character building advice for developing figures that appeal to a family audience

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TIPS

1

OBSERVE YOUR SURROUNDINGS

Elly Jahnz: “I love to sit outside in a busy area and sketch people going about their day. The general public are an endless source of inspiration when it comes to creating characters. I look for details that stand out – patterned clothing, a fancy hat or a particular way of walking and use these things to put life into my work. I try and avoid over-emphasising any one element as I don’t want to create a caricature. “Observation is still important even if I am creating non-human or children’s characters – so many successful characters have traits that are recognisable from daily life.”

2

CONSIDER THEIR ACTIONS

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COLLECT UP REFERENCES

Evgenia Malina: “To develop a convincing character, you need to explore how it moves and how it expresses emotions. Does it stumble like a toddler or glide like a yoga guru? “Once I’ve established this, I sometimes find that my character needs shorter legs or bigger eyes for better gestures and facial expressions.”

EM: “You may think you know exactly what an elephant looks like, but always look again before you begin. I start by collecting reference material for my character, because characters drawn from memory turn out bland and uninspiring. Reference materials help me find the convincing element that makes the character unique: an expression, a special detail, a particular colour.”

TIPS

5

SKETCH FROM LIFE

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LIMIT YOUR PALETTE

EM: “It’s good to get into the habit of always keeping a sketchbook on you, so you can sketch anything you see that you’d like to remember. Sketching also helps you to remember details so much better than simply observing. If you think the way Uncle Richard drives his old truck suits a hedgehog, go with that. There’s no need to research other possibilities if you already have a reference from your own life experience.”

4

CREATE A BACKSTORY

EJ: “Whenever I draw people, I always like to come up with a backstory for them. It doesn’t have to be complex, something like, ‘This person is having a really good day’ or ‘That lady has just bought some cheese’. I find just a few sentences can help give a drawing context, inform the character’s movement or provide extra details to make the work come alive. If I'm drawing a group of people, then a shared narrative can help clarify how they all interact. This works no matter the type of character I’m drawing.”

EJ: “I find if I have too many colours to choose from, I end up getting bogged down in the technical detail instead of focusing on the spirit of the work. This means that the end result is beautifully coloured in but stiff and dull. I try and limit myself to three or four colours only, so I don’t have to think about shading and detail. “If I’m heading out to sketch, then I only take a few colours with me – sometimes I’ll pick colours at random, so I have no choice but to use interesting combinations. I normally favour Posca markers and Akashiya Sai brush pens when I’m sketching as I really like the vibrancy of the colours.”

TIPS

7

SET UP A SCHEME

EM: “Setting up a colour scheme is very important, especially if you are working on a book where the coherence of the whole set of illustrations is important. “A restricted colour scheme makes the illustrator’s life easier and looks stylish. Colour psychology works with characters too, so the scheme for a cosy, domestic story will be different from a dramatic plot or something mysterious.”

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TIPS

8

MIX YOUR MEDIA

EM: “This is my favourite tip: mix your media and be brave in your experiments. Use crayons for rough textures like dragon skin, watercolour for smooth silk or flowers, liners for fine details. Layer media on top of each other to see how they interact. There are so many different materials available these days. “The only consideration to bear in mind is that if you need to scan your picture when it’s finished, use watersoluble materials to keep your scanner clean.”

9

STAY LOOSE, WORK QUICKLY

EJ: “I try and do all my preliminary sketches really quickly. I’ll make a lot of thumbnail sketches to work out different poses. Often, they look pretty scrappy but there is an undeniable energy about them. “The challenge comes when I need to re-draw the final artwork as I need to ensure it doesn’t tighten up too much. I often trace sketches I like which helps keep some of the looseness when working up final artwork. I find that the more scribbles, sketches and observational studies I do, the more chance I have of creating a fluid, interesting final character.” www.ellyjahnz.co.uk www.evgeniamalina.com

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