Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Artists & Illustrators

As we see the devastating events unfold in the Ukraine, it’s hard to feel anything other than helpless. What can we do to help our fellow Ukrainian artists? Ann Witheridge, the founder of London Fine Art Studios, has been researching Ukrainian art and architecture, discovering rare and beautiful talent among them, four of whose work is shown above. Please do follow these artists – and London Fine Arts who will be posting more about Ukrainian artists – on social media to show your support. Meanwhile, the Artist Support Pledge founder Matthew Burrows MBE and gallery director Zavier Ellis have come together to launch the Ukraine Support Pledge. They are inviting artists to offer work and collectors to acquire for just £200. All proceeds will go to Global Giving’s Ukraine Crisis…

1 DAVID REMFRY: WATERCOLOUR 12 May to 30 July You'd be hard pushed to name a modern-day watercolourist as esteemed as David Remfry MBE. This makes the Royal Academician the ideal subject for the first exhibition at the new Royal Watercolour Society Gallery in London. Although Remfry doesn’t regard himself as a watercolourist per se, he has achieved a command of the medium unlike any other of his peers. With works ranging from his large-scale nightclub scenes, such as What The Night Tells Me [above] to his portraits of famous faces, including Stella McCartney and Alan Cumming, the retrospective suitably celebrates the artist in his 80th year. Royal Watercolour Society Gallery, London. royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk 2 REFRAMED: THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW 4 May to 4 September From empathy to voyeurism, the…

Founded in 2018, The Contemporary British Portrait Painters (the CBPP) draws together some of Britain’s most prominent contemporary portrait and figurative painters, exploring what it means to represent people in art today. This dynamic, not-for-profit collective was set up to foster connections between artists, and promote the intensely fascinating, timeless act of painting people in an era of disposable digital media. Members include some of Britain’s foremost portrait painters holding the highest accolades in the genre, ranging from prize winners of the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award to Sky Arts' Portrait Artist of the Year. As they prepare for their group exhibition featuring the work of over 45 members this June at The Department Store in Brixton, we caught up with founder and artist Ian Goldsmith and a selection…

Though most paintings have a subject, at least half of the content of a painting is the way it is painted. We might look at a painting of a railway bridge by Monet, but it’s not only about the bridge, it’s about the light and the way it is expressed in paint. In this painting I tried to let the paint play across the surface, emphasising the abstract qualities of the composition and letting the freedom of the brushwork define the feel of the picture. I’ve incorporated splashes and drips and even a bit of wonky drawing into the painting so that the process is as much a part of the subject matter as the jug of flowers. Although it looks like it was dashed off, it took a lot…

BOOK OF THE MONTH Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists by Lisa Slominski Hilma af Klint, the woman behind this abstract 1907 painting, is just one art outsider who gets a more nuanced reappraisal in this fascinating new book. Discover how self-taught artists factored into key movements of the 20th century – af Klint, for example, is said to have produced breath-taking abstract art before even Kandinsky or Mondrian. Plus, contemporary practitioners working outside of traditional studios also feature. Yale University Press, £35. yalebooks.co.uk STYLE ICON Fashion illustrator FRANCESCO LO IACONO shows how to recreate five challenging fabrics in watercolour 1 FURS To create the first layer of texture, apply the paint quite loosely with the tip of a mop brush. Use different shades of brown and ochre to…

“It’s been a huge privilege and writing this column has often helped me to clarify my own path through tricky decisions” This is a bittersweet column to write as it will be my last, but it’s high time for a change and I am leaving you in excellent hands. You can expect a brand new approach to this part of the magazine and I am looking forward to reading articles from a wide variety of new contributing artists. This column began in a place many of you will recognise; summoning up the self-confidence and nerve to pitch a new idea. It took me three long days to find the bravery to call the editor. I’m glad I did: I have written this column for seven years! A good example that…

Surrey-based Tracy Goldfinch Elson was eight years old and drawing a school friend’s portrait when she discovered her artistic talent. Self-taught, a central theme to all her work is family – her husband and two daughters often sit for her paintings – still life and femininity. Mostly working in oils, she also uses photography as an outlet for her artistic expression. Making the most of Instagram as a platform to sell her work, she recently collaborated with The Royal Ballet to create the Royal Ballet Renaissance series of prints and postcards. Drawing has been a passion of mine since early childhood. An early memory is of me drawing a portrait of one of my classmates at primary school. I remember it attracted quite the crowd of watchers, including my teachers.…

The Perth-based artist has long had a fascination in the cross over between advertising and art and how branding can be developed as a subject matter. Labels from her childhood feature heavily in her work, whose hyper-realistic finish is created using a mix of BIC crystal original ballpoint pens in just nine colours. She is also interested in having elements of humour, irony and satire in her work which has been exhibited in galleries across the UK and in France. She currently works part time as head of the art department at Perth High School but, if everything goes according to plan, she intends to reduce her teaching hours to spend more time as a practicing artist. The student’s loss will be the artworld’s gain. I can’t exactly remember when…

A fresh box of soft pastels is a treasure chest of raw colour; the crumbly sticks of bound pigment provide an accessible solution to anybody wanting to bring more colour into their figure drawings without the practical challenges of paint. The dry, powdery texture of soft pastels gives them similar properties to their monochromatic counter parts – charcoal and chalk – with which they can be sympathetically combined. Marks made in soft pastel are easily blurred and smoothed, making sustained pastel drawings susceptible to soft-focus sentimentality, but the timed environment of the life drawing class will encourage an urgency of mark making that will help keep your drawings dynamic and exciting. If you’re picking up soft pastels for the first time, there’s no harm in starting with cheaper materials. While…

TikTok is an exciting, candid style video-based platform in which you can share short videos of everyday life. I was first attracted to the site in lockdown, April 2021. It was my only real connection to the outside world. I started to post my process videos, which involved dipping objects in paint or dripping slime over avocados; people seemed to really engage with it, more than I had ever experienced on platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Video content offers fresh possibilities compared with word-based or image-led media because it takes you on a journey. It’s a form of storytelling and you are the author. It is an especially useful tool for someone like me who struggles with dyslexia. In a 15-second video I can take someone on a journey…

The first thing I remember painting was our cat sitting on the windowsill. When I was growing up, you could get these cardboard boxes with oil paints and brushes in, and my aunt bought one for me. I always remember the smell of linseed oil from this time. When I was a student at the Royal Academy, I went to the National Gallery every Friday afternoon. There are two paintings of Mrs Trip there by Rembrandt and I would go and copy one of them. It took me over a year to finish. The rules of the gallery are that your copy can’t be the size of the original; it must be at least an inch smaller. You can’t beat taking yourself off to a gallery and seeing the real…

Vincent van Gogh had his sunflowers. Claude Monet had his waterlilies and Georgia O’Keefe had her poppies. As for Portfolio member Dariia Mandziuk, her trademark flower is the tulip, bringing the bloom to life with carefully considered, soft, buttery strokes using a rainbow-load of cheerful pigments. But just like her floral-painting predecessors, the Ukrainian-born, London-based artist is not content to stick with just one signature bud. Browsing through her work reveals violas so joyful they are almost smiling, iridescent irises dancing in the late-afternoon sunshine and pink roses resplendent in their delicate beauty. Each flower Dariia paints comes complete with its own personality, and this fits with her aim to evoke a particular emotion, as well as to draw attention to the astonishing wonders of the natural world that unfortunately…

10-MINUTE PASTEL POSE Working in soft pastel can help you to reduce your reliance on line, helping you to transition from contour-led drawing to a shape-led process. For this exercise, make drawings in response to poses of between 3-10 minutes that establish shapes of dark, light and colour in broad, confident marks. Stage 1: Tonal shapes Start off by using a pastel that is darker than your paper. Separate your model into shapes of three broad categories: light shapes which we’ll deal with later; midtones which are already represented by the paper; and darker tones, often created by shadows and hair. Block in those darker shapes with the side of the pastel, avoiding both detail and outlines. Stage 2: Colour For the second stage, bring selective colour into the drawing.…

The painting of interiors has been a perennial topic for painters since Roman times. Seventeenth-century Dutch interiors created a vogue for views through rooms organised around the structure of both geometric and aerial perspective. The subtlety of colour changes in the fall of light in a room became a favorite subject for the French Impressionists. The modern world saw the interior growing as a subject for artists exploring flat patterns, and the interaction of colour shapes. For the student of art, as well as for the practising painter, small alla prima studies of the interior and its potential for capturing light, depth and expression continues to be a challenging and creative subject. It is an excellent way to improve the use of composition, colour, tonality and depth. This painting presents…

MESSAGE OF THE MONTH YASEMIN GUL My 13-year-old daughter, Melisa, recently received her first issue. Artists and Illustrators is her first subscription magazine. She took it to her room, read it thoroughly and then came up to me and declared “Mummy, I want to work on an art magazine when I grow up.” She loves art and reading and so has concluded that working for an art title would be her dream job. This painting is by her. Thank you for being an inspiration for my daughter. ALISON BYRNE As a lockdown amateur artist in my mid-fifties I have rediscovered my absolute joy in drawing and painting, something I haven’t done since GCSE art in the eighties. I started my journey joining Zoom classes, which have now translated into weekly…