Innholdsfortegnelse for No 174 i Artist's Palette

MATERIALS • Artists’ canvas.• Winsor & Newton oil colours, including: Titanium White, Carbon Black, Burnt Sienna, Naples Yellow Hue, Yellow Ochre and Dioxazine Purple.• Various quality brushes – preferably Sable – ranging from broad to very fine. STEP ONE This is a portrait of a horse’s head. Portraits are more personal and show off the horse’s features beautifully. I like to choose a suitable subject from my reference books. I started by using purple and a small splash of white on the canvas, working the colour outwards with a broad brush. I applied black from the outer edges and blended softly. This created a soft ‘background lighting’ effect. I chose the dark colours to contrast with the light gold colour of the horse. STEP TWO When the background paint was…

• Be passionate about your subject. • Observation is the key to a successful painting. • The larger the area painted, the larger the brush required. • Put your work on a vertical surface to view it. Balance and tonal contrast can be more easily identified. Any imbalance will ‘jump’ out at you. • Do not work on only one section at a time. Build the painting up as a whole. • Always use artists’ quality paints and the best Sable brushes you can afford. • Always use a live plant specimen when painting. • Use a definite light source which will indicate three-dimensionality and solidity of the subject. • Work with a limited palette to keep the colour clean and pure, and try to keep individual colour mixes to…

My life began in Helsinki, Finland, in January 1957. I came to Australia with my parents in 1959, at the tender age of two. We travelled on board an Italian ship called ‘The Aurelia’. We stayed in migrant hostels in Melbourne, Bonegila (outside Albury) and Skyville (near the Blue Mountains) before settling for a time in suburban Sydney. After a short stint living in Adelaide, we moved back to North Sydney where my father had a bad accident while working on the Cahill Expressway. Some scaffolding collapsed underneath him and he fell about ten metres, breaking nearly every bone in his body. With his workers’ compensation payment, my father bought five acres at Tahmoor near Picton and established a poultry farm. I was aged seven. Amongst my first memories of…

For Ailsa Fay McMillan, life began at Gympie in Queensland. She grew up in Rockhampton. Early in her career she had a job at Mercier Studios for four years, where she worked in oils – painting sepia photographs and doing darkroom tasks developing films and printing photographs. On weekends, she also did some wedding photography. Another four years were spent working with Channel 7 television in Rockhampton, editing news film and assisting in the make-up department. There were a lot of ‘live to air’ programmes back then (in the early days of television), and she really enjoyed her job. Having always been interested in art, Ailsa began to attend weekly classes. She had an aunt who was a professional artist in America; and an artist cousin in Christchurch, New Zealand.…

South Australian designer Lyndy Danby took up painting when she married a man on the land and found that surrounding property owners were much more inclined to spend money on new tractors than new kitchens or any sort of residential improvements. They believed their choices to be more productive. Our artist begs to differ! Having worked in Melbourne for nearly ten years as an interior designer, a silversmith and an art teacher, it was a bit of a shock to find herself in the middle of a paddock (so to speak) … even though it was on a beautiful property in the south-east of South Australia. So that she felt productive and creative (and not being able to bark like a sheep dog), Lyndy attended a two week live-in watercolour…

• The more I look at a painting, the more I will search for mistakes. I usually go away and have a cup of tea if something is not right, and by the time I return it will either look better or I will see a way to correct it. It is easy to overwork and mess up a painting, however, if I continually pick at it. • Portraits can be difficult. It is important for the draft to be as close as possible to the correct shape and proportion. • With oil painting, the texture of the paint can be smoothed and blended with brushes; with fingers; or (gently) with a soft cloth. • If you make a mistake, try not to scrape too much paint off with a…

From a very early age I’ve been into drawing, painting and making things. I seemed to find interest in things wherever I went. I once melted down the lead from a broken stained glass window. I carved a small block of wood with a heart shape in the centre, and I melted the lead over a fire and made some great lead hearts. After they cooled, I made a hole in each and glued crystal stones into them. I gave one to my little sister Kath and kept one for myself. In my young adult years, work didn’t leave much time for painting, but the urge in me to draw on everything never faded and I found I drew on whatever was at hand: Walls, doors, fences, drink coasters; particularly…

MATERIALS • Colours used: Cadmium Lemon; Permanent Rose; French Ultramarine; Sepia. Vanua Levu, one of the outer islands of Fiji, promises all the recognised hallmarks of an island escape … and much more. For the past three years, Leonie Norton has been taking two botanical painting groups and a holiday sketching group each year to Daku Resort – a small privately owned resort situated on the waterfront near the town of Savusavu. Modern bures offer comfortable accommodation, with the added bonus of being lulled to sleep in the evenings by the rhythmic lapping of water on the sand. Leonie is a highly sought after international artist and tutor. She is a prominent professional botanical artist who balances fine botanical art with her spontaneous pen and wash sketches. STEP ONE Over…

• If you discover subject matter that you love and which fascinates you, the picture seems to come to life on its own. • It’s good not to have a final outcome in mind, so you can allow for spontaneity and changes to occur as you work • It’s always good to step back and look at your work from a distance, and take a break if it’s starting to get to you. Go for a walk and breath in the fresh air – and completely forget about your work if you can! It will be new again when you come back to it. • Take classes whenever you can, or do intensive summer schools – they are inspiring and supportive places to learn new skills while building your confidence…

MATERIALS • Jo Sonja’s acrylic paints.• Stretched cotton canvas 75 x 60 cm.• Artists’ brushes. STEP ONE Use a good base. For me it is canvas, but use whatever you choose. Prime and seal well. I like a light undercoat as it leaves my colours true. STEP TWO Get your subject where you want it. I never used to sketch first, but now I find I can get better proportions by standing back and viewing my sketches. STEP THREE I laid down the darker colours first (being mostly feathers in this particular piece). That gave me a sense of shadows to start with. STEP FOUR Gradually build up to lighter shades, possibly three to four; and apply them at random, which will give texture to the feathers. STEP FIVE Being…

MATERIALS • Canvas 450 x 910 mm.• Artists’ quality acrylic paints.• Various brushes.• Spatular.• Matisse Gel Medium 4. During the summer months in the hinterland State forests around Pomona on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the flooded gums shed their bark and show a body of reddish glow. When the sun comes out after a shower, these trees stand out with a glow that cannot be missed. After making a trip into the forest and taking quite a few photographs, I came across the tree which is the subject of this Demonstration. It was large – with a diameter of around 1.25 metres – and it stood proudly all by itself amongst a lot of ironbark gums. It just had to be painted. STEP ONE I loaded the photograph onto my computer…