Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i Artists & Illustrators

I always thought that my mum’s love of gardening would somehow seep into me via osmosis, having spent countless hours as a child playing alongside her while she re-potted, dead-headed and pruned. Sadly, many years later, I can’t tell my ash from my hellebore, so I tend to use artistic references when I’m muddling my way through conversations about plants. The now-fashionable monstera deliciosa will forever be “Matisse plants” to me; calla lilies are “O’Keeffe flowers” and all manner of wild-growing seed heads are simply “Angie Lewins”. It was a pleasure then, particularly at a time when long walks are plentiful and Angie Lewins abound in the hedgerows near my home, to talk to one of these horticultural namesakes. Angie features in this month’s “How I Paint” feature, as she…

1 PAINTINGS CHOSEN BY YOU! 20 August to October (tbc) An original initiative from the York Art Gallery has placed the curation of its first postlockdown exhibition into the hands of the general public. Audiences had the chance to rate their favourite artworks online from the gallery collection, including pieces by LS Lowry, David Hockney and Henri Fantin-Latour. The top 10 will make it into the final showcase, while a further 10 were selected via social media polls. The 20 winning pictures will each be accompanied by labels revealing what they mean to the voters. York Art Gallery, York. www.yorkartgallery.org 2 ART NOUVEAU: THE NATURE OF DREAMS Until 31 December The art nouveau style has become so iconic it’s hard to believe it was once a cutting edge, controversial movement…

“Before you book, make sure that the course is what you want. Sounds simple but there are a wide variety of possibilities and you need to be sure that whilst your tutor will provide what you want, you are still open minded and happy to accept criticism and guidance. “Think about whether you want to be in a large class or a small group. What medium do you want to use? If you are experienced, then maybe you don’t want to try something new, but if you are a complete beginner you might well want the chance to try a variety of media. You might want to consider whether your tutor is also a teacher. How much tuition do you want? Do you want instruction or guidance?” Tessa Sulston, Director…

Last November, I began the Ask an Artist podcast with the portrait painter (and fellow Artists & Illustrators contributor) Peter Keegan. To help us record our conversations, we enlisted my husband, Ben, as our sound man. Podcasting is a popular and accessible way of reaching out to a worldwide audience and I thoroughly recommend it, whether you are dipping your toes in the waters of broadcasting or just tuning in. From the start, Ask an Artist had a clear goal. Peter and I wanted to use our experience of becoming professional artists to help others along the same path with down to earth and realistic advice. We chat about practical things, like pricing artworks and approaching galleries, as well as more personal challenges, such as dealing with self-doubt or managing…

A good paintbox is vital. If, like me, you use watercolour tubes, look for sufficient painting wells of a decent size. Paint dries quickly in smaller wells. A quick spritz of water will revive them, but a good steady supply of soft paint is much easier to work with. Also, if you use only eight colours, don’t buy a box with 20 wells – this just wastes valuable mixing space. Ensure the mixing areas are big enough for a generous wash. Beware of boxes with wells in both the lid and base – when you close the box, paint is likely to run everywhere. Using pans will avoid this problem of course but pans do take more effort when mixing large or dark washes. I designed and made my own…

Angie Lewin is one of Britain’s best-loved and most collectable artists and printmakers. She studied a BA in fine art printmaking at Central St Martin’s, followed by a postgraduate at Camberwell. She is a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, the Society of Wood Engravers, and the Art Workers’ Guild. In 2005, she and her husband Simon founded St Jude’s, a popular print gallery and fabric design company. Her illustration commissions include dress fabric patterns for Liberty and book jackets for Penelope Lively, Ted Hughes and more. Her latest collection of watercolour paintings, Nature Assembled, will be on display from 30 September to 24 October at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh. www.scottish-gallery.co.uk BOLDER COLOURS My husband and I live between Edinburgh and Speyside. Although we…

A NEW TWIST I have just spent half an hour removing the plastic “safety” cap from a bottle of paint medium. You know the sort: you push down and twist, then repeat endlessly. I’ll resume painting when my hands stop hurting. The need for safety with chemicals is clear but the current design of these bottles is dreadful, and most frustrating. Perhaps the painting fraternity can persuade paint houses to seek an improvement? It would be a major marketing coup for the first company to produce a safe but user-friendly design (with recyclable material, of course). Painters would flock to them. Ian Reilly, via email A GOOD EGG My twin daughters gave me a subscription to Artists & Illustrators for my 72nd birthday. The first arrived in lockdown time and…

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Illustrator SARAH MCINTYRE shares her top tips for creating a strong, sympathetic picture book character 1 Try to create a character that readers can connect with, who touches your heart, and who can potentially be used in further stories. 2 Try different ways of drawing the same character before you settle on one. When I was designing Unicorn in Grumpycorn, I tried various ways of dressing him, styling his mane and adjusting his proportions. For Morris the Mankiest Monster (the book I co-authored with Giles Andree), it took me about 140 drawings to make him loveable and revolting at the same time. 3 Think hard about the eyes. If your character isn’t working, try drawing the eyes differently or moving them around on the face – doing so…

Odilon Redon was a man of many contradictions. He was a fine artist nourished by scientific discoveries, who made copies of nature as a way of embarking on abstract flights of fantasy. He built his reputation on macabre little monochrome drawings, yet his portfolio soon exploded into a world of fantastical colour, as vast canvases were filled with allusions to philosophy, literature and spirituality. He was schooled in the French ateliers, yet his art owed as much to his links with the American South and his fascination with Asian culture. More than anything, however, Redon is an artist for our times: a man left troubled by the anguishes of war who found peace in his studio as he celebrated the wonders of the natural world. As our freedoms are restricted…

Art has provided a respite for many of us during the lockdown, but there’s nothing quite like attending a painting or drawing course in person to pick up new skills and fuel your creativity. As restrictions begin to ease up and longed-for opportunities edge ever closer, Artists & Illustrators has teamed up with West Dean College of Arts and Conservation in West Sussex to offer one lucky winner a £1,000 voucher to spend on a three-day or weekend-long art course. The institution’s new Autumn/Winter programme (October 2020 to April 2021) has just launched online and offers hundreds of short courses ranging from subject-specific tuition in life drawing, botanical art and portraits to medium-based workshops in watercolour, acrylic and oil painting. You could even try out basketmaking, ceramics, photography, calligraphy or…

When I planned this series, little did I know that my entire summer workshop programme would be cancelled due to the pandemic. I’m still painting of course, but much closer to home. Last year my most distant workshop took place in Vermont, USA. It is known as the “Green Mountain State” and I felt right at home in a landscape not unlike Ireland, albeit with clapboard houses and red-roofed wooden barns. On my journey back from a day’s painting to my hosts in the Landgrove Inn, I paused at the local cemetery. This one dated from 1810 and included several Civil War graves. What really caught my attention was the view of a red-roofed barn in the adjacent field, perfectly positioned and lit for painting. Viewed at almost any other…

Ishbel Myerscough is a British painter who studied first at the Glasgow School of Art and then at the Slade School of Art in London, where she now lives. Myerscough teaches at the Royal Drawing School and her work is primarily figure-based: sympathetic and meticulously observed oil paintings of her family and friends. Her portraits of the people she loves are direct, emotive, often tightly cropped on the face; her full-figure paintings are honest and personal, delighting in the surfaces of skin and hair – they are not allegories or illustrations, but people set in paint. Grief, Longing and Love was a moving exploration of relationships: between Myerscough and herself, between lovers, between the painter and her children, between friends. In amongst all these people were several small still life…

For acrylic and oil painters in particular, white is perhaps the most important pigment. While watercolourists will reserve the white of the paper for highlights, oil and acrylic artists use white extensively in most paintings, whether for lightening colours, creating more opaque qualities, or even greying down certain colours. Ever since the first attempt to create a synthetic white pigment 2,600 years ago, experiments and discussions about the best formula for white still continue to this day. Getting the right white is important: nobody wants to paint a beautiful landscape, only to find the white sky has yellowed after only a few years. When purchasing your white paint, you may be confused by the different names. A tube of “Flake White”, for instance, could contain a lead-based pigment PW1, or…

Liz Knox Ahead of her recent solo exhibition, the Kilmorack Gallery describe Liz Knox as “an artist who has lived and looked deeply”. It was hard to escape that though while looking at the 18 paintings that made up Mind’s Eye, the Inverness-shire gallery’s first post-lockdown display of new work. Though ostensibly a set of still life and landscape compositions featuring the requisite flower-and-fruit arrangements and desolate Scottish fields, there is so much more knowledge and understanding contained with their just-so compositions. “I work on a personal interpretation of experiences, objects and environments, and the sensations these evoke,” she explains of the exhibition’s title. “As seen from visual memory, through the mind’s eye.” The former Paisley Art Institute president begins each new picture with her source material – drawings, writing,…

An artist who mainly paints landscapes in watercolour is of course not a surprise in itself. However, it is somewhat of a revelation when you discover the artist was born and bred in London and studied at the capital’s Slade School of Fine Art where the emphasis was very much on painting still life and the figure in oil. The man who has carved out this trajectory from a city-dwelling, formally trained oil painter to a watercolourist renowned for his big, desolate landscapes is Simon Pierse. Now a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, Simon left art school in 1979 and began an Italian government scholarship in Florence. On meagre earnings, he bought a sketchpad and watercolour set and began to paint landscapes that caught his eye while travelling around…

Two colours are said to be complementary when they are opposite each other on a standard colour wheel. The theory is that a pair of opposites will offer the greatest colour contrast. Complementary colours will tend to fight each other for attention. Effectively they clash, making them appear brighter and more vibrant. Take a look at these two yellow squares below. They are the same hue and strength, yet the one on the right appears more vibrant and arresting. This is because it is surrounded by its complementary. In contrast to these are analogous colours, which may be thought of as harmonious combinations. Technically, analogous colours comprise three colours: a primary, a secondary and a tertiary. The latter is formed by mixing the first two. An example might be yellow…

WHAT IS GICLÉE PRINTING? With giclée prints, the first problem for many is pronunciation. A French verb, it’s pronounced zhee-clay and literally means “to squirt” or “to spray”. And this is exactly what the inkjet printer does – it sprays ink onto the paper to replicate a digital image of an artwork. The result is a superior fine art print that, if done correctly, is the closest an artist can get to matching their 2D artwork. It can be a useful option if you want to sell your art while holding onto your original. A giclée print is not to be confused with an original print, such as a linocut, etching or woodcut – these are hand-made originals, whereas a giclée print is a reproduction. WHY ARE THEY SO GOOD?…

Ishbel Myerscough’s drawings and paintings speak about the nature of surface. Through her work, you can feel her eye tracing the surface of her subjects and moving slowly over skin, hair, shells and leaves, giving attention to each part. “When I see the world, I see the little bits and the little bits make up the whole,” she said of her work in a 2018 interview. It is this granular focus that accounts for her drawings and paintings treading the line between visual accuracy and expression. The intensely observed elements of the image fit together with a slight proportional distortion that mark the work as the result of a human observer, not a mechanical eye. For this exercise, make a considered drawing of a still life subject and try to…

Take a piece of card and draw a double line across it. Add a small dollop of each white straight from the tube and use a clean brush to pull it across the double line. Finally mix a small amount of black to the white, which will help you judge whether the white is warm or cool. Leave the card to one side for a few weeks, ideally in a dark, warm, humid place to accelerate the aging process. When you retrieve the card, you will already see that some whites have yellowed and there is a clear sense of difference in terms of brilliance and warmth in tone. Expect to see whites ground in linseed oil to have yellowed the most. Less expensive brands are often the most brilliant…