Artists Drawing and Inspiration Issue 13

We have this gathered some amazing artists for you this issue. We have a selection of pencil, pastels and charcoal drawing demonstrations for you to try. Every artist presents you a creative drawing inspiration from pets to portraits and seaside creations. We hope you enjoy all six artists and their tips and ideas. We take you three amazing galleries located in Victoria and NSW. These reviews present some amazing artworks and talented artists. In this issue we also have a special feature on Derwent Charcoal and Graphite blocks. David Winning takes road tests the products and gives us a report on his findings .We hope you enjoy this issue of Drawing and Inspiration. We would love to see what our readers are doing so please send photos of your work…

KATHERINE APPLEBY I am interested in hyperreality as a result of contemporary scepticism in metanarratives that once acted as external referents for differentiating reality. My artistic practice addresses this concept through the depiction of nature interpreted by the imagination. In particular, my body of work became an investigation of a fictitious, invented place: Firdarrig. By fabricating a place such as Firdarrig I am able to create a frame through which I can examine and comprehend my own reality. Each viewer has the opportunity to do likewise and the view through the frame will be unique to each observer. Firdarrig is a place to which I can return to and explore as I wish. To the editor, Hi my name is Gemma. I have been encouraged to send a photo of…

The earliest thing I can remember is drawing dinosaurs, and being astonished at the magnitude of my accomplishment when I drew in a background: a third dimension! I always drew growing up. I stared at animals, cartoons, and people, studying their anatomy and the way they fit together. In a sense I don’t know why I do art; it’s just always been something that just needed to come out. As I got older and got better at all of the skill-sets necessary for living in western society, I refined my artistic skills at every opportunity, mostly out of a feeling that it was a basic need. Like many in my generation I was inherently skeptical of almost everything life seemed to offer, and most of the explanations offered as to…

This piece/technique is a particular method of chiaroscuro portraiture done using mainly willow charcoal and an eraser to work up shadow and light evenly. This creates a dualism that will utilise the full range from white to black along with all of the shades and textures in between. MATERIALS • Paper (I used 160gsm)• Soft willow charcoal• Eraser• Knife• One piece of hard dark graphite• 2h pencil• One small piece of white pastel STEP ONE Any black-and-white portrait is essentially a two dimensional rendering exploring the different light/dark interactions of a three-dimensional face. To ensure that it’s aesthetically pleasing, preparation is all important. We spend incredible lengths of time looking at human faces, and are sensitive to flaws in their dimensions; this is why portraits are notoriously difficult to just “whip up” or to perfect. When selecting…

• Treat your preparation and your photo with significance and care, because the entire piece is going to build on these foundations. • Don’t focus on one area too much, work up the piece evenly. • Don’t get lost in detail; the idea is for it to look perfect from a distance, and look like charcoal up close. Fine details can wait until the final two stages. The eyes will be your main temptation. • Do not panic or freak out if it doesn’t’t look how you imagined it would at any stage along the way, it is YOUR decision as to whether the piece is bad, or just incomplete. Persevere. • Don’t just think of your eraser as a tool for fixing mistakes, as you could just as easily…

Born in Yorkshire 1943, I displayed some artistic talent throughout my schooling and my teachers suggested I might think about art school. But I wanted to follow the sun and after seeing the film ‘A Town Like Alice’, decided that would be a good start and at the age of 18 had saved up enough to buy a passage on a boat to Australia. Alice was more than everything I had hoped for and I knew instantly I was a desert person. The stunning colours and vistas of the inland in the midst of a drought reiterated my desire to paint, and those scenes remained in my head throughout leaving Alice seven times for good, before finally settling there in my 30s when I began to dabble with paint. I…