Innholdsfortegnelse for No 203 i Artist's Palette

Peter Griffen’s studio is exactly how you would imagine an artist’s studio to be. Situated in a quiet inner city street in Sydney, it is a large warehouse-style building that serves as a residence, studio and teaching space for Peter and his wife, Denise. The studio area is a mass of paint and artworks in varies stages of completion. Some are perched on easels, other on tables, and still more lay grouped on the floor. Although this may sound chaotic, the more I was there I realised that there is a great deal of organisation amongst the chaos. Things are grouped together in an orderly way, and the fact that all his paint tubes and containers have all their lids makes me feel slightly guilty about all the lidless and…

Dear Editor Every time I read your magazine I get more and more inspired to do more painting and have entered several small paintings in local art competitions, but I would like to think bigger and go further afield. I have noticed that at big art competitions (like the Archibald) the paintings are nearly all on very large stretched canvas. How do the artists manage to get these paintings to and from the art shows? I read that you can take a stretched canvas off its frame to be transported - but once at the competition you would have to have someone there to put it back on. I suppose you could send them by transport trucks - but how would you support them and wrap them when they are…

I live on a beautiful property just outside Cowra, NSW, and I travel into town, where I have my studio, six days per week. It has been very important to me over the years to have this separation of home and painting, especially when my children (now in their early 20s) were younger. When I think about what I do as an artist it seems to me I spend my days painting irrelevant details, well, what others may consider irrelevant, but to me these subtle colour changes and details are what make a painting really work. Our eyes look for these details as they scan a painting, even if we are not aware of it. The hard part is the balancing act of using these details without letting them take…

Contributed Q & A FROM DERIVAN A quick visit to your local art store often reveals an amazing array of products, yet it is the standby staples such as visual diaries and canvas that are still in high demand. In some ways these two products represent opposite ends of the creative process. Visual diaries are often used to gather and record ideas. They are more personal, and live in backpacks, and on shelves of their owners. By contrast, canvas is often seen as the end result of a creative process. Once a canvas is on a wall or in a frame the final creative idea is there for all to see. Canvas By definition, canvas is a loosely woven fabric used by may artists as a base for their paintings.…

MATERIALS 1 Pre Stretched Artists Canvas White Gesso Primer to seal canvas Transparent tracing paper roll Staedtler 5B lead pencil Faber-Castell Art eraser Atelier Interactive Artists Acrylic Paint in French Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Yellow, Titanium White, Toning Grey Mid, Paynes Grey and Red Acrylic Jo Sonja’s Satin Varnish Surrounded by a family with a great interest in most sports, I find myself creating a series of sportsmen paintings. I enjoy capturing the excitement and dynamic movements that each sport presents. Joining my series is this Batsman, stepping into a full swing. Though he wears the Australian helmet, he represents no one in particular. Flicking through my sketches, personal photographs and various publications I choose my subject matter and the image begins to form. I gather various…

I used blue chalk to create a rough sketch. I play with moving things around on the canvas so I can work out where the eye will rest if it has balance. I then decided to paint the canvas as if doing two separate paintings, above the water as a landscape then the underwater as the second part. STEP ONE I use a large level to ensure the horizon is straight, and I mark this off with blue chalk then I use masking tape on the underside of the line. I start from the top, working wet on wet, first painting the sky white then adding ultramarine blue dark at the top and brushing, graduating the colour to the horizon. I create the headland, the beach and the palm trees…

MIRRORED WHISPERS & THE UTOPIA COLLECTION Opened by Richard Morecroft, Emma Hack’s recent solo exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery in Double Bay, NSW combined her two recent collections Utopia and Mirrored Whispers. They recall many aspects of her childhood; in particular, Emma's fond memories of her grandmother's extraordinary garden. Heirloom irises, sweet peas, hydrangeas and gardenias all encircled by what seemed to Emma at the time, a monumental Magnolia tree, meant for joyful, blissful times. As an artist, Emma has always enjoyed working with the female form, and by visually incorporating a 'mirrored' image, the works suggest an internal dialogue, a personal narrative and a gentle rendering of this quiet contemplation. She was purposeful in having the models pose side-on, feeling this profile perhaps a more 'chastened' rendition of…

I was born in Narrabri, in North-West NSW, where I now live and work as a piano teacher and artist. I combine these two aspects of my life by drawing instructive cartoons for my students! I have been drawing for as long as I can remember and have entered community exhibitions infrequently over the years, but my present career began in 2007, when a visitor to our home saw a colour pencil portrait I had made of my wife, Donna. The visitor enquired if I would do a portrait of each of her sons. That was my first commission! I have had many more since then. I am self-taught, having followed my own creative path since childhood, but I have been impressed and inspired by a great variety of artists:…

Drawing and painting is more than hobby for me, it’s in my bones! I‘ve always been involved in some form of creative arts. One of my earliest memories is when my parents made the entire length of a wall in our home into a giant blackboard. The blackboard I am told was about 1.5 metres high by four metres long, which was much taller than I was at the time. I can remember this as a constant source of entertainment and probably good grounding for form and perspective. When I was 10 years old my parents bought a Bedford bus and for eight months we toured Europe. We visited many museums and galleries. Even at the age of 10 I was fascinated by the Masters such as Rembrandt, da Vinci…