Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Artists & Illustrators

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d just put together some nice photos on the cover this month, such is the jaw-dropping level of realism obtained by the various artists behind them. The shine of metal, the twinkle in an eye, the blur of parts seemingly out of focus; each meticulous detail demands you to ask: “What am I really looking at? And how did they do it?” During the 1600s, tricking the viewer was an increasingly popular pastime for artists and the resulting artworks were known as trompe l’oeil – literally ‘deceive the eye’. The paintings in our special should be viewed as a modern-day equivalent of Carel Fabritius’s iconic The Goldfinch, in which the bird’s perch appears to protrude in three dimensions from a still-painterly work. The one…

1. TAKE YOUR TIME “Oil painting offers endless possibilities for hyperrealistic painting, mainly due to the density of the colours. As they are slow-drying, oils enable you to work in the moment and adapt your approach.” 2. FOCUS ON THE SURFACE “Oils will allow you to introduce subtle impasto or make transparent veils of colour on the painting’s surface, which can give delicate nuances to the work.” 3. EMBRACE SIMPLICITY “Painting maintains a significant role in recording permanence of emotion and and memory. I avoid creating spectacular photorealistic images to create the objects that encapsulate us.” 4. DON’T BE AFRAID TO INTRODUCE LAYERS “Overlapping layers when using oils can be very effective. You can work in this mode both wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry, but Javier advises using a fast-drying medium for…

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STREET SCENES Re: London Landmarks, Issue 360 I was interested to see the Peter Brown series of iconic London buildings and wanted to share an image of my oil painting of a branch of the Halifax Building Society. I produced this as my part of a local art group project, in which each artist was asked to paint a shop front or building in one of two main streets in Fareham. All images were painted on the same size canvas and the idea was to depict life in this Hampshire town. The canvases were displayed together in an exhibition and offered for sale at a set price. The money from sales is now being donated to local charities. The artists gaining no financial reward themselves, just giving up their time…

1. LEARN TO DRAW WELL “I would advise people who want to paint realistically to first learn to draw well. When they’ve gained a good understanding of value, proceed to monochromatic painting. 2. PAINT IN MONOCHROME “The hardest part about achieving realism in painting is having a solid understanding of value. Doing a monochromatic underpainting helps me to establish values before worrying about colour.” 3. GRADUALLY ADD COLOUR “I don’t try to get colour perfect in the first layer, just close enough. In subsequent layers I can really fine-tune things, making subtle colour and value adjustments that could never be achieved in one pass.”…

1. PREPARE COLOURS FIRST Try mixing all the colours you intend to use at the start of a session. Gregory sets aside the first hour to create fresh, fluid mixes on his palette before work begins on the canvas. 2. USE MULTIPLE BRUSHES Avoid larger colour shifts becoming muddy by using a separate brush for each stage of the mix. “I often have four different brushes going for a single hue shift,” says Gregory. 3. JUXTAPOSE FOR IMPACT Some colours only stand out when contrasted with those around them. Gregory cites the silver-blue skies of French painter Camille Corot as a great example of this.…

WARM WHITE, NO. 137 Michael Harding says… “My contribution to artists who want a lead-like paint without the lead content.” Our verdict… Classically-trained oil painters still pining for the banned Lead White should immediately investigate this creamy yet equally opaque alternative. The addition of Yellow Iron Oxide provides a very subtle, sunny glow to mixes at all corners of the palette. WARM LIGHT YELLOW, NO. 226 Michael says… “Perfect for mixing colours [and] using in portraits, landscapes and non-figurative works.” Our verdict… Though pre-mixed from the same three pigments as Warm White, there is a peachy tint to this particular colour that makes it an ideal base for softer, fleshy hues. Despite the low oil content, it brushes on smoothly too. ALIZARIN CLARET, NO. 310 Michael says… “I specifically formulated…

WHEN IT COMES TO SECONDARY AND TERTIARY COLOURS, CONVENIENCE IS OFTEN A HUGE PART OF THEIR APPEAL After tackling the primary colours in our last article, I will be turning my attentions this month to the secondary colours: oranges, greens and purples. Basic colour theory has it that when any two primary colours are mixed, a secondary colour is formed. Allowing for both the traditional and modern ideas of primaries, this means that either red or magenta plus yellow gives us an orange, red or magenta plus blue or cyan gives us a purple, and blue or cyan plus yellow gives us a green. Tertiary colours (a secondary colour mixed with the adjacent primary on the colour wheel) complicate this further but for the benefits of this article I will…

The ‘atelier method’ is a system of teaching representational art techniques that dates back to the 19th century and was followed by the likes of Pablo Picasso and John Singer Sargent. Cast painting is a very important milestone for the atelier student, as it is the first point at which they are allowed to use paint. Oils are the most versatile yet also the most complex material in the repertoire of the trainee artist, as they combine the problems of drawing with the added complexities of hues, colour temperatures, application, material choices and much more. This exercise is designed to introduce you to a few of these problems in the safe, static environment of the cast-painting studio. When it comes to choosing your paints, there are generally two kinds of…

1. SURFACE Papers range in smoothness from ‘rough’ to ‘hotpressed’ (or HP) – see below. 2. WEIGHT Often measured in grams per square metre (gsm). Anything above 356gsm shouldn’t require stretching. 3. COLOUR Choose white paper for brightness or coloured papers for interesting tonal challenges. 4. SIZING ‘Sizing’ increases paper’s resistance to liquids and allows easier reworking of the paint. Stretching a paper will remove excess sizing. 5. STABILITY To ensure your paintings don’t discolour over time, choose a pH neutral or ‘acid free’ paper.…

Re: The Campaign for Cadmium, Issue 360 Your article about the campaign for cadmium was great news. I particularly liked the penultimate paragraph referring to recognition of the ‘artist fraternity’ as a community in its own right. This fraternity has existed for a little longer than we might think. I like to imagine the Paleolithic cave painters discussing the relative merits of iron oxides, manganese dioxide and charcoal (earth, clay, rocks and bones) or the various binders and ‘extenders’ (animal fat, blood, water and urine) that they might employ. The cave painters at Lascaux are believed to have travelled 25 miles for a reliable source of pigments – not those student-quality versions they could pick up in the local cave! Stewart Roberts, Hereford…

SUSAN ANGHARAD WILLIAMS Still life painters often like to fill their studios with potential subjects in the hopes that one day they will complete a composition and make everything just so. Occasionally, however, a beautiful object can prove impossible to slot into a composition – as was the case with Susan Angharad Williams and a silk dress covered in poppies. “I had been longing to use this in a still life painting for some time,” says the Kent-based artist, who was drawn to the colour of the flowers and texture of the fabric. “It belonged to a friend who could remember wearing it when she was young. Frustratingly, nothing worked, but it remained an ambition and continued to tantalise me.” It took the purchase of an Adams cup to finally…

1. BUILD IN LAYERS “Ballpoint pen ink is fairly translucent. With the appropriate amount of layering of two colours together, you can achieve a fairly wide range of hues. Not only that but depending on how much you layer a single colour, like yellow, you can get everything from a very light yellow to effectively orange.” 2. DON’T TRY TO ERASE “Ballpoint pen ink is absorbed by the paper and dries almost instantly so it is virtually impossible to erase without seriously damaging the paper. I either improvise and turn a mistake into something else which has a similar shape and colour, or I throw the drawing away.” 3. BE (VERY) PATIENT “Sometimes I have to stop drawing for two or three days just to think about how to solve…

“WHAT ARTISTS CAN DO WITH PENCILS NOW IS SO BEAUTIFUL WE CONSIDER IT ‘PAINTING’ RATHER THAN DRAWING” Congratulations on being named Portrait Artist of the Year. Given that you are primarily known as a botanical artist, was it nice to get some recognition in a different genre? Yes, it was. In fact, I was delighted because I used to do portraits many years ago but my botanical work took over. I’ve drawn several well-known people in the past, but my favourite was the late Wendy Richard, who was a dear friend. It’s lovely to draw people when I have the time. I especially like to draw their eyes and I do these first. If they don’t ‘speak’ to me then there’s no point in doing any more. Does this mark…

Having almost always painted from direct observation I have recently been working from my own photographs of gardens and flowers in situ. Last May I went to an open garden in Stroud Green near where I live in North London that belonged to the garden designer Peter Beardsley. I was very inspired by a dense mass of spring flowers in the central part of his plot – the apparently wild beauty of this planting was, of course, very carefully constructed and maintained, but I loved the messy complexity of the leaf and flower shapes, and the freshness of the colours. I have since painted a whole series of works using these photographs as reference. Taking a section of the garden and fitting it into a square format made for a…

ADÈLE’S MATERIALS SUPPORT Belle Arti oil-primed extra fine linen canvas, 40x50cm OILS Titanium White, Cadmium Lemon, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Terre Verte, Cerulean Blue, French Ultramarine and Raw Umber artists’ oil colours BRUSHES Rounds, sizes 2, 4, 6 and 8; Rigger, size 2 MEDIUM Refined linseed oil For many years, I have made drawings and paintings of musicians in rehearsal. I enjoy watching their complete focus whilst practising and also the fact that they are totally unaware of being observed or scrutinised in the way that a portrait sitter in the studio can be. When someone is totally absorbed in an activity there often isn’t that same level of self-awareness as they are lost in concentration, whether they are playing an instrument, reading a book or…