Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 15 i Australian How To Paint

I was born and raised in Chandler, a suburb of Brisbane. I am the third child of seven. Every member of my family has artistic talent, either visually or musically. My mum saw in each one of her children potential of some sort and encouraged us to reach it. I tended to be crafty, always making something. I never thought of myself as an artist. In year 9, the art class received a drawing exercise. The teacher had cut up a black and white photocopy of a woman’s face into twelve squares. Each student was allocated one square. Mine was the right nostril and part of the lip. We were to reproduce this square in a tonal value charcoal drawing on a larger scale. The student drawings were reassembled. A…

MATERIALS • Canvases and Boards I use good quality Belgian linen, prepared on stretcher bars for larger works or sometimes I mount the linen onto a timber backing using acid free EVA glue, making the canvas surface firm, enabling me to paint the detail with more accuracy. For small to medium works, I tend to use triple coated Gesso boards. The smooth surface is great for painting technical subjects or finely detailed works. • Brushes – My favourite brush is the versatile Filbert. Sizes range from #2 through to #12 with most work being done with sizes #6 and #8. Good quality flat brushes, sizes #4 / #12 with medium to long bristles are used mainly for blocking in and applying good “meaty’ textural strokes. I keep cheaper flats and old scrubbers…

I was born in Cape Town -South Africa in 1967. With Dad working in the Prison Services we moved a few times and ended up in a town called Witbank in the Transvaal, (now called Mapumalanga) where I grew up, got married and had my children, Jean and Schenelle. We immigrated in 1996 to New Zealand and then move to Australia in 2000 where we now live in Wishart, South East Queensland. Art and craft have always been a part of my life. I am a bit shy and find it hard to make friends easily, so while everyone else was playing outside I was creating all sorts of crafts at home. From a very young age, I always liked to paint and draw; it has always been just another…

My vantage point for this painting was a public reserve behind the small group of shops that form the coastal village of Coledale, south of Sydney. The first four stages of the painting were done on location over two separate days. In order to cope with the vagaries of the weather, and changing tides, winds and cloud patterns, several photographs were taken. The photographs were used as reference material to complete the final two stages of the painting in my studio. MATERIALS • 12 x 18 inch canvas board. • Artists’ quality oil paints: Titanium White; French Ultramarine Blue; Cerulean Blue; Permanent Crimson; Cadmium Scarlet; Cadmium Yellow; Spectrum Yellow; Burnt Sienna; Light Red; Yellow Ochre; Raw Sienna; Viridian; Prussian Blue; Turquoise. • Brushes: Hog bristle – Number 16 577 Eterna…

I have always loved to draw, and have done so since early childhood. My Dad sketched, and I know that his interest and praise of my early attempts made me even more determined to practice. At seven years of age I won First Prize for my flower drawing for the local Floral Festival (Mildura, Victoria), and I felt so proud. I kept on drawing a lot, often to the annoyance of my teachers. I decorated every page of every subject in my class books. At the start of secondary school (Ballarat High) I submitted some drawings to the Ballarat School of Mines Art Department, and received an ongoing position to attend classes of my choice - what an opportunity! Geoff Mainwaring (Official War Artist in the Pacific, and then Head…

First I select my subject: in this case, a leopard with her catch. I want to share my experience with those who have never been there. She was lying in the shade under the tree when we found her by luck. We could only see her tail wagging. We stopped and waited for about an hour. Other vehicles also stopped and after a while she was getting uneasy. She got up into the tree with her catch and then went down and disappeared into the bushland. I paint from photographs as my subject matter is animals and unfortunately they will not stay still for very long and you have to photograph them while they are there at that moment, and you can’t always get the best light or shade or…

My plan is to create a story … an interaction between the horse, the man, the cattle, the dog, and the environment. The sunlight and textures will be important elements, and the lost and found edges will give the overall unity to the painting. I am familiar with the subject, having ridden horses with cattle in the Gippsland High Country. I have filled sketch books, and taken many photographs. I visualise the artwork in my head before I begin to work. I try to “see” the finished painting before I start. MATERIALS • Winsor and Newton Artisan Oil Paint • Canvas - fine weave • Mixed brushes, mainly synthetic flats • Acrylic Black • Acrylic Maroon • White coloured pencil • Reference sketches and photographs STEP ONE I tint the…

Born in Sydney in 1945, John’s early life was something of a Huckleberry Finn existence. Surrounded by large tracts of land, parks and rivers, he was relatively free to roam during his schooling years, and explored the surrounding areas extensively, developing a love of nature in the process, and a familiarity with many of its aspects. John’s early drawing skills were evident even at four years of age when he would attempt to capture many of the scenes that he saw on holiday, and around where he lived, on large sheets of butchers’ paper. By age 11 he was entering and winning art competitions at the local theatres and schools, winning free movie tickets for himself and his friends. Many of his holidays were spent with friends and relatives in…

MATERIALS • Watercolour Paper: 300 gsm Saunders, Rough. • Artists’ Quality Watercolour Paints – mostly Winsor + Newton. • 4B Pencil. • Kneadable Eraser. • Brushes – good quality Artists’ Brushes with nice points. STEP ONE Generally, I begin a work by making a sketch on paper using a fine felt-tip pen. The sketch looks a bit like ‘colour by numbers’ and in fact acts as such for me during the stages of the painting. This helps sort out compositional problems early, and before I have committed to paint; and this type of drawing is much more revealing than a photograph, despite being heavily edited. STEP TWO I decide on the scale. This work only needed to be small as it was a simple idea (with strong geometric shapes) and…

When Alan Slade was a child, he loved to draw. He would spend hours sketching cartoon characters from comics. He also made pencils drawings from life, using his brothers and sisters and subjects. He has a career background as a toolmaker in aircraft engine manufacture, and this has contributed to his skills in the technical aspects of drawing. His training as an industrial arts teacher also enabled him to improve his skills in freehand drawing … and towards the end of the time he spent teaching in New South Wales high schools, he became interested in oil painting. “In 1993 after seeing the work of Sydney landscape artist John Bradley, I joined his classes and attended regularly for more than two years,” he relates. “I then attended weekly portraiture classes…

STEP ONE After drawing the guide lines onto the canvas, the sky, sea and underwater rocks are blocked in. STEP TWO The beach and headland are blocked in and more work is done on the underwater rocks. STEP THREE I start to define the rocks and coral in the foreground. STEP FOUR A lot of detail has been added to the rocks, and coral and light ripples have also been added to the foreground. The beach rocks and headland have all been defined and clouds have been added to help the composition. FINAL STEP Some more work has been done to the sky with extra clouds added and then the final touch to the painting is adding the reflections of the sky and clouds to the surface of the water.…