Artists Drawing and Inspiration Issue 50

The natural world gives me immense pleasure. I have my mother to thank for teaching me, as a child, to appreciate nature. I have enjoyable memories of clambering over rocks with her on sunny days, catching skinks for her aquarium or playing with the many different dogs she bred. Coupled with an adventurous nature, I soon exchanged dolls for climbing trees, collecting birds’ eggs or moulding animals from clay, sourced from my backyard. All these experiences fashioned me into the person I am today – a wildlife artist. When not exploring my surroundings I immersed myself in drawing. Growing older I found work and later family life crowded out the time to pursue my art. From time to time I caught a glimpse of where I wanted to be when…

MATERIALS • Reference photo• Cotton gloves• Biro• White carbon paper• Fiberglass brush• Very fine steel wool• Scratch knife – curved edge• Scratch knife – straight edge• Ampersand scratchboard• Watercolour brush or airbrush• Black ink – Art Spectrum or similar• Fixative Scratchboard. What is it? Scratchboard is a board with a thin clay coating covered with black ink. A scratch tool is used to scratch through the layer of black ink revealing the white clay underneath. You can buy board that is pre-inked, called scratchboard, or un-inked, called clayboard. There are also boards that are coloured beneath the black ink. You can use a variety of tools, basically anything that scratches. Nibs, steel wool, fiberglass brushes, emery boards and tattoo needles all have their uses. The main tool of trade for…

Born in Nepean Hospital in 1965, I grew up in Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains of NSW. Our house backed onto the National Park, so my playground was the bush. Up to now, I’ve done quite a few Australian landscapes with eucalyptus trees, and I feel this fascination stemmed from my childhood. Very early on I was drawn to the arts. I could pick out tunes and play them on the piano before I was taught. Projects throughout school focussed more on the visual than the written. I remember getting in trouble in history once because I drew the heads of Roman statues instead of writing about them. It seemed more important to me to understand the tonal grading of the face than to discover which town they had ransacked.…

MATERIALS • Large, upright easel• Large backing board either in masonite or any non-pliable board with a smooth surface (size 1m x 1.1m)• Strong bulldog clips – taping the inside of the clip that holds the paper to the board helps to prevent indent marks on the works• Arches 300gsm or Saunders Waterford 300gsm paper are my favourites for smaller works in pastel or a roll of paper I cut to size for larger works. The paper must have a good ‘tooth’ or roughness to allow the charcoal and subsequently pastel to grab.• Selection of soft charcoal sticks in various sizes, i.e. thin sticks for details and thick sticks to cover larger areas• Soft, medium and hard charcoals for a stronger attack on the paper• Kneadable rubber to lighten areas…

Remember When – Series by Ellen Lee Osterfield I remember when school and public holidays were spent “up the river” camping. There were many rivers to choose from only a few hours drive from our home in Bendigo. The Murray, Wakool, Loddon and Campaspe were a few favourites, depending on how long the break was. We did also go to the Murrumbidgee a good half days drive away! The early morning wake up, the long drive and the winding river road that threaded it’s way through the trees was the tiresome part of the journey, but once we arrived and chose our camp site, it was all fun for us kids who whilst the adults put up tents and made a safe swim spot for us (by cutting some saplings…

I didn’t actively decide to pursue art until I was 13 years old and I entered (and won) an art competition run by the local community newsletter “The Village Journal”. Although always encouraged to dabble in art by my talented mother, until then I hadn’t developed any particular aptitude – the diverse array of art materials I had been preciously hoarding remained largely untouched! The competition called for a border design for the newsletter’s back-page calendar, and, ever ambitious, in that first attempt with a black felt-tipped pen, I managed to include a rough sketch of no less than five native Australian animals – a koala, platypus, echidna and quoll, with a pigeon to top it all off! It’s quite possible that I was the only contestant to enter the…