Artists Drawing and Inspiration Issue 42

SIDNEY NELMES  I have always enjoyed drawing and painting but it is only in recent years since I have retired that I have had the opportunity to concentrate on improving my art skills and extend my interest in art to working with charcoal and pastels. Coming across Artists Palette Magazine at my local newsagent has been most beneficial in helping me and encouraging me to try new mediums KEN BONNER  Ken lives in Noosa, Queensland at the moment but is due to leave these shores for Santé Fe in the USA to continue his painting and to extend his exhibitions. Ken has been very successful at international exhibitions - New York and most recently Hong Kong and this new venture is to further his art, yet again. LUISA GOMERSALL  Hi!…

I began my working life as a professional photographer, photographing mainly weddings and portraits. I worked for a professional studio as well as for a lab which handled professional processing. Back then my real love was hand developing my own black and white pictures and medium format photography. As a natural part of this, I learned to control contrasts and tonal values while developing black and white images. Colour processing taught me how to see colour hues and balance them. When chasing that ultimate photo, looking for the light and knowing how to use it as well as composition became invaluable lessons that I still draw upon for my art today. I had worked successfully in my own professional photography business for 26 years until the time when I felt…

STEP ONE As my drawing will be a compilation of a few photographs, I map out a quick sketch to help me visualise what it may look like. This is only a guide; I find I like to change things to better suit what I am working towards. I also chose my light direction at this stage. STEP TWO Inormally arough the outside to remind myself where the mat will sit for framing and then proceed to draw over this in most cases. I then start with rough block shapes to allot areas and then begin to define the actual shapes of my subject. STEP THREE I wanted to make one cow the feature so I started with the nose. It gives me a reference point to set the rest…

• Paper: For this demonstration I used a sheet of Stone Henge torn in half. You can purchase it in a range of tones. I like soft, warm tones; they are easy to frame, easy to hang in homes and give the picture a sense of warmth. Other times and particularly for pen work I love Arches HP 300gsm watercolour paper.• Pencils: I use a combination of Rotring mechanical pencils in sizes .35, .5 and .7. They don’t go blunt like normal pencils and allow me to keep a consistency in my line work. I use H, HB, B, and 2B leads in these. I need a blend of hard and soft pencils to achieve my techniques and so I love General Kimberley and Derwent Graphic pencils. I use a…

I was born in Sydney, and moved to the New South Wales Central Coast where I spent my childhood as part of a large family on a small hobby farm surrounded by grassy paddocks and bushland. For as long as I can remember, I loved drawing. I spent lots of time drawing pictures for my friends – copied from cute greeting card illustrations or photographs of horses. up My in a tree, or walking through was the bush looking for echidnas and lyrebirds in the hills behind our farmhouse. I think I was born with a love of Nature and the animal world. I studied science subjects at school rather than art, because it was considered difficult to achieve high marks in art at the time. I studied to become…

STEP ONE My aim was to create a hot, dusty sunset in Africa – based on a single photograph of an elephant from Dubbo zoo. Her flared ears and prominent right forefoot inspired the idea of a matriach protecting her family from strangers in her homeland. The paper was clipped to a piece of MDF board with at least three layers of plain paper underneath to provide a slight amount of ‘give’. I sketched my ideas onto a half-sheet of warm Burgundy paper with white pastel pencil. Sketches on tough Colourfix paper can easily be re-done if needed – using a kneadable eraser. STEP TWO Using pastels broken into thirds, I quickly laid in sky colours with side-strokes of the pastels in colours ranging from dark Burnt Siennas through to…