Innholdsfortegnelse for No 184 i Artist's Palette

Watercolours The boat was built in 1936 and owned by the Royal Navy during World War Two, and used by Sir Winston Churchill and American President Roosevelt. I was lucky to be on board during a recent trip to Queenstown in New Zealand. On seeing the boat, I had to paint her. STEP ONE I began with an accurate drawing, taking particular care with the boat. STEP TWO For the sky area, I floated on Cobalt Blue. STEP THREE I painted the mountains using Raw Umber, Sepia and French Ultramarine Blue – wet-on-wet. The boat’s masts were masked out with masking fluid to keep the timber colour fresh. STEP FOUR I started on the boat masking. For the captain’s jacket and the timber, I mixed combinations of Cadmium Orange, Burnt…

STEP ONE I started with a collection of photographs (taken from Mission Beach looking out to the Family Isles) for reference. I used a gesso primed canvas board and put an extra coat of white gesso on it. On the bottom third of the board, I based in Unbleached Titanium for the sand colour. For the sky I blended Warm White with Sapphire from the horizon line up – using a flat brush. For the sea, I blended from the horizon line down with Ultramarine Blue into Aqua into Phthalo Green and Naples Yellow Hue (these last two colours were ‘washy’, to blend over the sand colour). STEP TWO I blended some Raw Umber, Gold Oxide and Smoked Pearl onto the sand; dry brushing. I then traced on and base…

Atelier Acrylics and Archival Oils STEP ONE We go out painting once a week and have been doing so for the last 20 years – come rain, snow or blazing sunshine. This particular spot is out in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, with a hint of autumn left in the air. When looking for subject matter to paint, I take in a wide vista so I can compose a painting from all that lies before me. What I call ‘Naturalism’. Natural appearances, tempered by aesthetic selection but not distorted, tell the truth with pencil and brush … composing and organising natural forms into an expression. That is art. With this in mind, my first step is to sketch out my composition in charcoal – placing in the elements. The reason…

IN THE GALLERIES Shelena Russell’s life of painting started in early 2002 following her move from New Zealand a year earlier … while in the later stages of pregnancy with her first child. It was at this time that her partner Warren asked her what she wanted to do with her life once the baby was born. While her working life had previously consisted of holding down office administration jobs, Shelena said her dream was always about a ‘creative’ future such as fashion design. Warren immediately bought her a sketch pad, with the first page etched with the words ‘let the creative juices flow’. The drawing of fashion garments quickly gave way to a more artistic bent as Shelena began to sketch and colour artworks. After buying Shelena all the…

Most of my ‘training’ has come from practising, and from books on art, although I’m quite poor at following instructions. I usually find a picture or artist I really admire, and simply say, ‘I want to do that’ … jumping straight into trying to achieve that quality of work without pausing to find instructions about how to do it. This can have its drawbacks at times! I have had no formal training, except a little in high school. After the mandatory early years of art classes in school, I avoided the subject – drawing and painting purely for myself – until working as stage manager on a school performance in Year 11. It was then that the drama/art teacher saw me sketching, and told me to quit studying agriculture and…

Jennifer Payne My artistic memories go back to sketching horses when I was a child; and in high school my art teacher commended me for a painting I did of ‘a face looking through the clouds’. Victoria’s town of Oakleigh was my birthplace, but I moved to beautiful north Queensland almost 30 years ago. I finished school at the age of 16 to begin my working life as a secretary in an office. Two years later, I purchased a small set of oil paints and painted two pictures: One was of coconut palms and the other was of atolls in the Pacific. They were perhaps a premonition of my future direction in art. By then I’d fallen in love with coconut palms and the tropics, and started travelling to many…

I was born of an Australian mother and an English father in Newcastleon-Tyne, England. My father was stationed in Darwin during the latter stages of World War Two with his Spitfire squadron. He met my mother and they married in Broken Hill before returning to England at the end of the war (as dad was still in the RAF). We came to Australia in 1949 and settled in Broken Hill where my father became a rigger and later a foreman on the North Broken Hill mine. We became a typical mining family with my brother and sister-in-law, and various cousins, uncles and in-laws, all employed at the local mines. My sister became a nurse and also married a miner. Without exception we were all ‘local and Outback’ which, in a…