Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i Artists & Illustrators

As the V&A gears up to stage Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, it felt rather fitting to have Antonio Segura Donat’s art on this month’s cover. The Spanish artist has created his own version of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, fantastical visions of candy-coloured worlds. There’s an underlying message to the work too, with endangered animals marked by targets, a sign that the fun won’t last forever. Antonio is also a reminder that it doesn’t matter where you start with art, it’s where you end up that counts. He was drawn to street art as a teenager but he channelled that enthusiasm and skill into his career proper. He still paints murals, but he also creates imaginative acrylic paintings too. I’ve really been enjoying reading about all of your artistic journeys too. We’ve…

1 RAPHAEL: PRINCE ALBERT’S PASSION 6 May to 6 September As part of the worldwide celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, this exhibition also tells the fascinating story of how the great Renaissance master captured the imagination of Prince Albert. In 1853, the Prince Consort embarked on a pioneering research project that collected some 5,000 prints and photographs of all known works by the Italian. As well as exploring the methods of these reproductions, there will be a chance to see some of the artist's original drawings, as well as Queen Victoria’s own sketch after Raphael. The Lightbox, Woking. www.thelightbox.org.uk 2 MAKING AN IMPRESSION: PRINTS BY MANET, PISSARRO AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES 27 April to 11 July This touring exhibition drawn from the Ashmolean’s collection explores the ways in…

1 USE WARM GROUNDS For many, the birth of Impressionism marks the dawn of modern painting as we know it. While the approach of these late 19th-century French painters has several precedents, not least in the work of pioneering British artists John Constable and JMW Turner, Impressionism nevertheless marked a turning point after which the prevailing trends in classical painting changed for good. One of the most notable changes was the decision to paint landscapes en plein air in a bid to capture a fresher, more accurate impression of the changes in weather and light conditions. This was aided by a switch from the darker grounds (the base layer of a canvas painting) of classical painting to the lighter base coats of the Impressionists, many of whom often used Lead…

It is a fact worth accepting that not every painting you make will turn out as you hoped. Sadly, some artworks are destined for the bin, not the framers. We all want to become better painters and I’m sure, like me, you are disappointed and frustrated when an expected masterpiece doesn’t work out. After the frustration has subsided, the natural reaction is to reach for another sheet of paper and start over again, putting the previous failure firmly to the back of the mind. However, the paintings that haven’t worked can often be, if used wisely, some of our most valuable. Plenty of useful knowledge can be gleaned from pictures that haven’t worked and, instead of throwing them away, we should take the opportunity to learn from them. Ultimately the…

1. NEGATIVE SPACE Inma Garcia-Carrasco: “If there is one tool that gets overlooked, it is the use of negative space as a compositional element. “Look at the abstract shapes of negative spaces and concentrate on representing those, rather than the positive ones. “Like a puzzle that comes together, you will see how the addition of those negative shapes means that the entire painting becomes the subject to be represented.” 2. PAINT REMOVAL James Bland: “Periodically scrape back the paint on your canvas. I use a palette knife for this, and sometimes my fingers or a cotton rag. “Doing this has many benefits. For one thing, it cuts down on unintended wet-in-wet mixing, which is especially problematic with mixes that contain a lot of Titanium White. “For another, it erodes passages…

A leopard with a unicorn horn thunders through a cloudscape of burnt oranges and moonlit blues, pursued by an emancipated big top, its guy ropes dangling and far from terra firma. Birds circle the leopard, who has a bullseye target on one side of its face, and a bell around its neck. It’s an arresting scene, so far from conventionality, but this extraordinary cast of characters, objects and motifs are par for the course for Antonio Segura Donat, the painter behind this dreamlike scene. All of his paintings are dramatic to behold, radiating a jewel-like kaleidoscopic quality and a menagerie of exotic creatures, from elephants and parrots, to big cats and rhinos. Antonio Segura Donat’s work can be found under his pseudonym, DULK. This is, of course, not his real…

The studio has been a second home for Ania Hobson of late. The talented young portrait painter is currently preparing for her first London solo exhibition and the deadline is looming. “I’ve been in here pretty much all week, from 8am to 5pm, and I’ll be standing all day,” she says. “It’s really intense, I think I’ve made myself ill a few times.” Of course, you’d never tell from the bright, breezy way in which Ania recounts all of this. If she is stressed, it doesn’t show. She works at Asylum Studios in Suffolk, a co-operative based at the former RAF Bentwaters. Her own space is tidy, high-ceilinged and filled with plants. “I love the space so much, I just want to make it like my home because I spend…

I am in the lucky position of travelling, tutoring and painting around the British Isles, Europe and beyond for about six months of each year. One of the most interesting aspects to this is that I get to see subjects that are different – but generally not completely different – to what I see back home in Northern Ireland and it is always a challenge to work out how to tweak my techniques in order to tackle them. One fundamental lesson I learned many years ago was that if you have a good, varied and basic palette of colours, these will be suitable for anywhere in the world. The mixes may need to be slightly different, but the pigments remain the same. In this series of six articles I will…

Leaving a white wall as completely blank paper can be very boring. A few splashes of light colour add interest without losing the idea that the wall is white. The colours in the painting are much warmer than they are in the photograph. The shift towards yellow furthered the contrast with the purple trees (think complementary colours), making them appear more vibrant. The background building was quite unattractive. I could have simply left it out but keeping it in helped to provide context and suggest we are in a town. The background trees were simplified to focus the attention on the jacarandas. Notice how in the photograph the jacarandas almost disappear into the background trees. Oh dear. I have positioned the lamp post almost dead centre. It is best to…

Emily Patrick For artists like Emily Patrick, the canvas appears to be less a place for defining statements and more a visual diary. Her paintings celebrate the joy and the poignancy of a poetic life lived to the fullest. And like all truly great painters, she creates images that seem bright and effortless, when the reality is perhaps far from that. Emily’s latest solo exhibition, A Collection of Paintings 2017-2019, is her first in three years and acts as a marker of what has happened in her life during that time. We join her at the beach, the breakfast table, and around the Christmas tree. There is spring blossom, winter snow and even – in a surreal twist – a blue sky indoors. Her past life features too. The reverence…

I must have studied colour theory at art school, but I never developed any love for it. As a student, hard finance taught me far more about colour mixing than any class: printing ink was expensive, and I was skint. I learned very fast how to mix all my colours using the primaries with as little wastage as possible. To this day, I mix new colours from leftover inks; a habit I developed to save precious materials, but one that gives my work a cohesive and subtle range of colour. “Hard finance taught me far more about colour mixing than any class” My grasp of colour may not be academic, but it is something I work on all the time. I am very careful to look at colour not only…

JACARANDA TREES 1 Using a mix of Quinacridone Magenta and French Ultramarine, I began by applying some random blobs, roughly suggesting part of the tree shape. Don’t paint all of the tree at this stage – we don’t want the wash to dry. 2 I’m painting this in much the same way I would for a green-leafed tree, but I’m using purple for the jacaranda. Variety always adds interest – here I varied the mix by adding a slightly different colour to the still-wet wash. 3 Using a 1/4” sword liner brush with a strong mix of Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine, I added simple suggestions of branches into the purple wash. Doing this while wet ensures that the areas blend together and that it isn’t clear where the branches…

The choice of colours will have a real impact on the mood of a painting and also the dynamic, exciting the eye with the visual impact. A basic knowledge of colour is essential to achieve successful mixes and combinations – a lot of time and paint may be wasted otherwise. Artists usually develop their own selection of colours that they prefer and then choose from them for specific paintings. My own basic palette is based around the three primaries: Cobalt Blue and Prussian Blue for blues; Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Lemon Yellow and Quinacridone Gold for yellows; and Cadmium Red, Quinacridone Magenta and Cadmium Scarlet for reds. In addition to this, I also use the following colours: Titanium White, Payne’s Grey, Raw Umber, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Dioxazine Violet,…

Born in Herefordshire in 1961, Gary Stinton didn’t have the most conventional start to his career after dropping out of art college in his late teens. He persevered, however, and is now one of the UK’s leading wildlife artists. Gary has been exhibiting work with London’s Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery for 25 years. He has also used his art to help raise awareness for wildlife conservation. In 1996 HRH Princess Anne unveiled a commemorative painting of his that was commissioned by the Gurkha Signal Regiment. Gary’s work is on permanent display in the Museum of Hounds & Hunting North America in Virginia, USA, and will also be on show from 25 June to 1 July at the London art fair Masterpiece. CAPTURING REFERENCE Art is about painting what you’re…