Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i Artists & Illustrators

1. TRAVEL LIGHTLY “Don’t take your entire studio – especially on public transport. I love going on location using just my dip pen, Indian ink and an HP sketchbook.” 2. DON’T AIM FOR FINISHED WORK “Sketchbooks are often more interesting than a finished piece, because they are not overworked. Your first piece may not be your best but keep going.” 3. TRY A LIMITED PALETTE “My favourite combination is black ink and red watercolour. The extra colour allows you to provide focal points and perspective.” The Society of Graphic Fine Art’s centenary exhibition, Draw 19, runs from 21 October to 2 November at Menier Gallery, London SE1. www.sgfa.org.uk…

“I trained as an electrician. One day I received a life-threatening electric shock and that was it… I decided to become an artist” What brought you to the Singapore Botanic Garden? Last year I was celebrating 30 years of painting en plein air at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland with a show of more than 50 paintings, Inside, Outside & Beyond. The newly-appointed Irish Ambassador to Singapore, Pat Bourne, happened to visit the show and took a liking to the painting Springtime in Glasnevin, which he took to his residence in Singapore. This piece was the starting point of my engagement with the Singapore Botanic Gardens, as the current director, Dr Nigel Taylor, saw it and offered me a one-month artist residency at the gardens. What will the exhibition…

The earth palette comprises the oldest group of colours used by humans. Archaeological evidence of a short list of earth and organic-based colours goes back as much as 70,000 years. Prehistoric people around the world used a palette comprised of naturally occurring yellow clays, brown earths, reddish iron-rich clays, carbon from burned sticks and bones, and white made from ground clam shells and natural chalk. This “limited” palette has been used to create remarkable images on cave walls and cliff faces, as well as the colouring on ancient totems, pottery and jewellery. Reds, yellows, blacks and whites gave a rich variety to paintings of prehistoric animals and humans as well as striking patterning and colour on pottery, jewellery and other objects. Extremely durable, the early earth palette has miraculously survived…

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP For years I have been an amateur painting and often, when I see some of the wonderful pictures in Artists & Illustrators, I think I’ll give up as I could never achieve such a high standard, but on second thoughts I realise that I get such pleasure from doing my modest paintings that I might as well continue. Some months ago, I had an operation and was not interested in taking up my brushes. At last the paints and brushes are being used again and I feel so much better. If you enjoy painting, don’t give up! Marion Hiddleston, Lisburn, Northern Ireland IN IT FOR THE MONET What a refreshingly attractive and informative magazine this is, bursting with informative and varied articles. Issue 409 was…

When using white paper, it’s difficult to get a lamp to look like it’s switched on. This only works when very dark tones are drawn or painted around it. It’s easier to use opaque white on coloured paper to “highlight” what is supposed to shine. The coloured paper serves as a medium tone. Cover the light areas with pure opaque white. By mixing together opaque tempera (or gouache) paints and translucent watercolour paints, you can create subtle nuances. Translucent, transparent surfaces can be achieved with clear watercolours on coloured paper – provided that the paper is sufficiently absorbent. Here’s a tip: first wet the intended area with clear water, let it soak in for a short time and then paint it. This should prevent the colour from blotching. Artist Miguel…

• Paints Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Oxide of Chromium, Raw Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Cerulean Blue, French Ultramarine, Winsor Violet, Cadmium Red, all Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colours; Burnt Sienna, Daler-Rowney System 3 acrylic • Brushes Rosemary & Co. ivory filberts, sizes 2, 4, 6, 8; small synthetic brushes, sizes 2, 3 and 4 • Support 3mm MDF panel, primed with gesso • Alkyd medium • Winsor & Newton Sansodor • Daler-Rowney Graduate Acrylic Gesso • A blue coloured pencil…

Flowers and watercolours are the perfect partners; like getting lost in the spiralling petals of a rose, the more you explore watercolour, the more you will discover its subtle surprises. I am still making discoveries after all these years, but the freshness of colour racing across a wet page, triggered by a single dab of the brush, gets me every time. For this project, having a real rose stem in front of you will make a big difference. The stem is a series of curves that extend out to leaf branches, one on top of another. No two loose watercolour roses turn out the same, so aim to paint this rose clearly and simply. WHAT YOU WILL NEED I always tell my students to buy the best materials they can…

1. Find clarity If you want to photograph oil paintings or any varnished works, make sure you use a lens with a longer focal length (50mm minimum) as this will magnify the artwork giving you the best chance of getting a clear shot. 2. Try a soft touch When depicting the texture of a painting is not as crucial, you can use tools such as photographic umbrellas or softboxes to soften artificial light sources. Alternatively, you can use tracing paper or light fabric as a filter for the light – as long as it’s not too close to the light source which can get extremely hot. 3. Balance colours If you are going to correct the colour balance in a post-edit, purchasing a colour reference card (pictured left) will make…

I was interested in the letter in September’s issue referring to peinture à l'essence, prompted by Martin Kinnear’s article. Years ago, I was intrigued to learn that Toulouse-Lautrec used petrol as a medium for his oil sketches and paintings in the cafés, bars and brothels of Paris as it dried extremely quickly. I was tempted to try this method, it would have been in the 1960s, I did buy a bottle of essence de pétrole, most probably from Jermyn Street. I still have the bottle amongst my collection of mediums. What the results were, I can’t recall, and I have no trial sketches. Perhaps I should have a go now, but in these puritanical days of odourless mediums, it won’t be in bars or cafés – or indeed brothels. John…

THE COLOUR The first real violet pigment was manufactured in France in 1859. It provides a cool, deep colour, less red than Manganese Violet. THE PROPERTIES Cobalt Violet is semi-transparent and has a notoriously low tinting strength. Many oil paint manufacturers offer light and deep varieties. THE USES Monet called violet the “true colour of the atmosphere” and many Impressionists used it as a shadow colour – a compliment to the yellow of sunlight. Though a muted tint, Cobalt Violet mixes with white to form interesting greys.…

Comparison, they say, is the thief of joy. But not so for two painters whose similarities and differences will hang side-by-side in the form of a two-man show. Benjamin Hope and Andrew Roberts, both landscape artists who work with oil paint, realised the potential for a successful joint exhibition when they were part of a much larger group show last year. The forthcoming exhibition, Common Ground in London’s Gallery Different, will feature around 70 paintings of places from all over the world, including London, Cornwall, Spain, and Canada. However, when asked what else people can expect from the exhibition, Andrew is mysterious. “I don’t really know what it’ll be like, myself,” he says. “That’s why I’m doing the show: I want to see what it’ll look like.” “We both use…

I like to take my working drawings to exhibitions and shows. I do it because they are so far removed from the polish of the finished print. They are a desperate mess; a mass of scribble and wrong moves, often re-sized and patched with tape. As a professional artist, I want people to see that I’m always learning to draw in new ways – and that I’m okay about making mistakes along the way. I work best when I am exploring new ideas, so my drawings tend to consist of me slowly sidling up to catching something that, when I started the work, I couldn’t draw. Each shows this untidy journey of trial and error to a point where I can start editing and picking the right shapes and lines.…

Being able to draw provides the confidence and perception to create a convincing representation of a subject. The skill creeps up on you through practise and ingrains as a habit making the act so much more instinctive. The other skill you acquire is simply the patience to look at something. You break it down, conceptualise it, and put it back together in some kind of creative form; you might even leave bits out or reinvent the thing all together. It becomes tricky when balancing the need to master the drawing mechanics with the instinctive, creative urge to simply expressive yourself. In painting – and especially portraiture – the outline you use to guide your path can become the shackles that restrict the free movement of your arm and your imagination.…

The use of photography is integral to the work of Anne Magill, yet her paintings are about as far as it is possible to get from a mere facsimile of a figure or a scene. Always elusive yet comfortingly familiar, they suggest rather than describe, hinting at a nostalgic for a non-specific era or place. The catalogue for her forthcoming exhibition, A Sense of Someone, states that Anne’s “paintings are made to be read like photographs”, yet they do things that only paintings can do, engaging just enough and then allow breathing space for the viewer to overlay his or her own stories and memories. Each new work develops from a starting point that almost always centres around a photograph and Anne’s relationship with it. She perhaps prizes photography given…

Working from drawings made on location, I painted this small oil study, Woodbridge Clouds [below], in preparation for a larger work. I was interested in the towering cloud formations rising high into the sky. Clouds vary in density, some appearing as wispy veils smudging the sky whereas others seem to be almost solid, as if carved in alabaster. These summer clouds were a case in point and my study aimed to explore the “weightiness” of them. Typically for late summer, the River Deben was full of moored boats, yet I felt that depicting so many would detract from the clouds – my intended focus. I decided therefore to understate the amount of activity on the river in order to emphasise the clouds above. Note how the distant clouds reduce in…

WHO WAS HENRI MATISSE? Born on New Year’s Eve 1869, this French artist is best remembered for figurative paintings such as The Dance. In 1941, however, he was diagnosed with cancer and wheelchair-bound as a result. Longing for une second vie – “a second life” – in those later years, he embarked on a new art medium: creating cut-paper collages in a practice he called “drawing with scissors”. “To cut to the quick in colour,” he said, “reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors.” WHAT IS THIS COLLAGE ABOUT? The Snail (or L’Escargot) was completed a year before Matisse’s death and the original measures three metres square. The name comes from the spiralling composition – according to his daughter Marguerite, her father had grown fascinated with the concentric pattern…