Innholdsfortegnelse for December-January 2024/No. 154 i International Artist

Welcome to the December/January 2024 issue! As Adolfo and I reflect on 2023, we are amazed at the sounding board of the community we represent. Artist response in 2023 has been amazing in many ways. First, our artist subscribers (you) are increasing monthly in large numbers. There are more than 25,000 of us now. Our email news subscribers are up to 45,000, and social media now has over 65,000 engaged artists who use our content on a regular basis. If you don’t follow us on Facebook or Instagram, please do so. You are in for a plethora of inspiration. This issue has a great demonstration line up for you with nearly 10 artists. I want to spotlight the amazing Lavely Miller. Lavely is a master painter focused on large-scale figures…

FULL COLOR DIGITAL PRINT-OUTS Use the Official Entry Form over the page ONLINE Visit our website to upload digital files of the images you want to enter and pay for them using our secure server. www.internationalartist.com To upload your entries you need to prepare your image files to be at least 400 pixels at the shortest edge. Once you are in the Official Online Entry page simply select which challenge you wish to enter then follow the prompts and finally pay the entry fee via our secure server. There you can also see other entries received along with past winners of our competitions. CHALLENGE ENTRY FORM SCHEDULE AND CLOSING DATES HINTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR ARTWORK • Set your camera to the highest quality available.• Shoot your paintings dead square on and…

SCOTTSDALE ARTISTS’ SCHOOL: How did your teaching career at Scottsdale Artists’ School begin? JUDD MERCER: I was taking a workshop with Dave Santillanes at the Scottsdale Artists’ School and another student noticed some of my plein air work. I tend to go all in at workshops and do some plein air painting before/after class to make the most of my time. Thanks to a recommendation from a fellow student, I was able to teach my first workshop at the school and it was the start of my teaching career, which I am very thankful for. SAS: Have you always been inspired to paint plein air? JM: Yes! My first medium was watercolor, and I was drawn to works by Alvaro Castagnet and Joseph Zbukvic, who both are plein air painters, so…

Born in 2001, Elizabeth Ralph-Smith grew Bup in the picturesque landscapes of New Zealand. Her journey into the creative world began at an early age when she was introduced to the arts through the New Zealand Suzuki Institute. She learned to play piano at the age of 4 and performed in various locations throughout New Zealand. As she honed her piano skills, Ralph-Smith’s love for the arts continued to grow. She wasn’t content with just one form of artistic expression; she sought to explore other arts and was soon drawn to theatre and performed in plays and musicals in Auckland Theatres, including the Uxbridge Arts and Culture Center and Due Drop Events Center. In 2018 she graduated from Sancta Maria College as Valedictorian with scholarships awarded for her photography and…

Choose flowers and a vase you love Cand that inspires you to paint them. Carnations are a good choice as they are very long lasting and won’t move or change too much over time. Lighting is important and dictates a lot of the feel of the finished piece. Artificial light is easiest to learn by as it remains constant, and for my demonstration I have chosen to work in artificial light to keep things simple. I always paint on wooden panels as they have a smoother surface, which is easier for doing detailed work on. It’s important to choose a panel with the best proportions to suit the arrangement, so I always keep a stock of different sizes and shapes. Design the composition with the edges of the panel in…

My art moves between traditional and contemporary painting, developing an artistic style that allows me to show my vision and sensitivity to the world. With my works I always intend to suggest and leave an open field for the viewer—freedom of interpretation seems to me the most important thing in my work. Koi, water lilies and flowers are recurrent themes in my pieces and usually transmit a feeling of peace. At times, the contrast between warm and cold colors and the movement of the figures can also convey a more energetic feeling. The idea is that everyone can identify with the piece in their own way, based on their own experiences and feelings. Something very important to me in terms of painting is the search for beauty and enjoying the…

I am a French painter who has been exploring the multiple possibilities of watercolor for 30 years. Above all, I appreciate the concept of chiaroscuro—strong lights and powerful shadows, which bring out the dazzling whiteness of the paper. A lover of shapes, drawing, colors and the unexpected nature of watercolor, I look for worlds inspired by urban, industrial and artisanal life and by the beauty of certain landscapes. I like to share my vision of a familiar world—made of memories and sometimes nostalgia—through the light of a workshop, the ordinariness of an interior or fleeting memories. There are two major traits that I focus on in my painting. The first is drawing, which has always been my passion and my freedom. Once the drawing is in place, everything is more…

Scan for larger reference image: For artists, inspiration can strike anywhere at any time. In this section, we’ll present a different photo prompt in each issue for artists to use as inspiration for their next piece. Rather than a reference, this photo is meant to be interpretive. It’s a jumping off point—a means to spark creativity and get the imagination going. Capture the image exactly as you see it, or take elements of it to create something entirely new. Submissions can be fully completed artwork or rough sketches. Every approach is the right approach. In the following issue of International Artist, we’ll highlight several Editor’s favorites (including your Instagram username), along with the next photo prompt. Chosen submissions also receive a free six-month digital subscription to International Artist. Happy painting/drawing/sketching!…

As the holiday season draws near, the spirit of giving is in full force. That spirit could be directed toward a fellow artist friend who might love a new set of paints or brushes—or it could extend to yourself. And that is completely valid. It’s good to be nice to ourselves. In this December/January issue, we’ve created an entire section devoted to “Art Materials & Supplies” starting on page 45. Our contributors discuss topics like the unique painting medium of casein, brushes for watercolor painting, as well as understanding the labels on tubes of oil paints. So go ahead and reassess your art toolkit (or ask your friends what they’ve been wanting lately) and see where your imagination takes you. You may think of picking up an entirely new medium,…

ENTER OUR NEW ART COMPETITION CHALLENGE No. 140 Wildlife See your work published in International Artist magazine and also receive a 4-page Editorial Feature in American Art Collector, the prestigious magazine read by collectors and galleries looking for new art work in the world’s biggest art market. Winners and Finalists in our competitions don’t just win awards to hang on their walls. The real value of entering and being one of the winners is that your work will not only be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide but also by leading galleries and collectors in America, the biggest art market of all. Our Grand Prize Winners receive a 2-page spread in International Artist magazine and a 4-page Editorial Feature in American Art Collector. Publicity at this level is…

It is always my first glance at a scene that I remember most and try to capture in a personal and beautiful way through my paintings. My landscapes are most often about the Midwest and the Southwest, places I am very familiar with, having lived in Michigan, Arizona and Colorado. Sunsets, sandy beaches, rolling farmlands, wild flower fields, gorgeous mountains, rocky hillsides, flowers, and the desert are natural landscapes I love to express in my own way on canvas. A variety of simple, yet strong shapes work to weave my compositions together and help me navigate through a painting toward completion. Because shapes can so powerfully move the eye through the picture plane, their balance and interaction in the structure of a painting make a very important difference in the…

I enjoy the calm that painting animals gives me. It’s something that comforts me in such a way that I am able to escape from the real world and stay alone, with my watercolor, in perfect connection. Playing with color with all its nuances to get the lights, shadows and volume is something that overtakes me with each painting. My color palette is very wide, but I always use warm colors and their complementaries. Color exerts an influence on our emotions and allows us to express moods, and as an immediate consequence, provokes positive reactions in our brain when we perceive them. My style is quite loose, so I focus more on masses of color than on details such as feathers, hairs or scales. Although my style is fairly personal,…

When I first began working on this demonstration, I had no problem deciding on what I would paint: it had to be my spirit animal, the snow leopard. I’ve spent many hours watching documentaries on these beautiful reclusive animals, to learn and understand their habitats and breeding practices. I work nearly every day if I can in order to master fur on wild animals, giving them a true representation of their fur type, like the short hair of a lion or giraffe, or the longer tufts of a koala. If you are interested in beginning to paint animals in pastel and haven’t before, I would suggest starting with an easier subject like a domestic dog or cat and work smaller. You don’t need to have PanPastels, you can work with…

Grand Prize Susan Paterson Nova Scotia, Canada, Elegance, oil, 37 x 24" (93 x 60 cm) Grand Prize is a four-page editorial feature in American Art Collector magazine Beautiful Objects Canadian artist Susan Paterson is inspired by 18th-century Dutch still life, desiring to paint the beauty around us that we rarely take the time to notice. She looks to beautiful objects, especially antique silver, as subject matter inspiration for her still lifes. “My studio is filled with wonderful pieces I have collected or that were given to me,” she says, adding that lately she’s been working on more complex arrangements of these objects, always with a dark background to give it “a sense of space and mystery.” This can be seen in her Grand Prize piece, Elegance. Working from life…

Recently, the Portrait Society of America Rhad the pleasure of announcing the winners of the fourth annual The Future Generation Competition. This competition was created to acknowledge the work of talented, emerging artists who are 18 to 25 years old. Early recognition in art competitions can have an incredible and lasting impact on a young artist’s career as it once did for John Singer Sargent who, at the age of 23, won Honorable Mention at the Paris Salon for a portrait of his teacher, Carolus-Duran. Since the competition’s creation four years ago, we have seen a remarkable caliber of work submitted by the best and brightest the field has to offer. As Dawn Whitelaw said, “Each year, the winners of the Future Generation Competition are stellar, and we continue to…

I have been fascinated with painting water and figures in water for some time and have a series of paintings dedicated to this subject. Nothing liberates me more than the “excuse” to abstract shapes to create “reality.” To portray the feeling of water touching the figure and of being suspended in water, surrounded by myriads of reflections, I allow myself to distort the figure and find ways of morphing the skin into the water. Here is how Stasis was created: STAGE 1: Composition is by far the most important aspect of the creation process. The idea of this painting came from recognizing this strong diagonal of the head and body. Everything evolved around it. Before I start painting, I want to feel what my movement within the canvas will be.…

Asking a passenger to capture usable reference photos from inside your moving vehicle isn’t ideal, but driving around (especially during dawn or dusk) can yield surprisingly inspiring compositions. Pulling the car over won’t help much because the light and color you’re currently seeing can change 10 seconds down the road, and upon reviewing the image later it may be nothing like what you feel you had witnessed. From years of mining my subject matter from my RV travels with my family across the country, I’ve developed a rather idiosyncratic method of using inadequate digital photos altered by idyllic memories to inform my paintings, which for years were completed soon after in coffee shops. I have plenty of experience performing a start-to-finish painting in front of an audience with a minimum…

For over the past two decades I have painted with my fingers using acrylics. Recently, I’ve begun experimenting with a sort of adapted Flemish Method. Using layers of transparent acrylic glazes, sometimes upward of 100 separate applications of color, I’ve been able to heighten the realism, illusion of depth and smoothly blended surfaces of my final images. I often paint on paper sealed and glued to the canvas, as the paper contracts and expands in reaction to getting wet and being adhered, and a noticeable “crinkling” effect is created that can be seen throughout much of my work. The way I paint usually goes like this: 1. Seal and glue sheets of generic, office/copy type paper down onto canvas using an acrylic gel medium.2. Paint/sketch a basic outline of the…

As a contemporary portrait artist, my goal is to capture the complexities of human emotion by blending realism with creative color choices and the natural nuances of watercolor, celebrating the fluidity and unpredictability of the medium. I use bold brushstrokes, leave visible layers and let the watercolor drip, bleed and bloom—allowing the process to remain transparent and authentic. When I begin a painting I always start with a very precise drawing, as I find that allows me to be loose and carefree during the painting stage. As my palette is typically made up of transparent pigments, any pencil work will be visible at the completion of the painting unless erased early. I remove as much of the gesture lines from the sketch as possible before commencing the painting. I also…

Like many representational artists I have a deep love and respect for the work of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation.” While I’m amazed by the apparent effortlessness of his portraits, it’s the landscapes that have always inspired me most. He has a talent in capturing the essence of his subject, and the light upon it, in such an elegant, colorful way, that it inspires me to paint every time I see his work. Perhaps that’s the highest commendation an artist can achieve, that they make people want to be artists too. In this painting lesson I took my two all-time favorite Sargent paintings—San Vigilio. A Boat with Golden Sail and San Vigilio, Lake Garda, both depicting the same scene—and…

My art friends and I often traveled to wondrous countries throughout the world. Many times when we weren’t seeing the sites, we’d be painting subjects like there was no tomorrow. Those were days that inspired us beyond description. Our close friendships and talents pushed us to the limits. Home or abroad, we stuck together for continually remarkable decades. We were “The Tucson Seven.” The End of Envy I got rid of feeling jealous early in my career. That’s when I discovered Harley needs to be better than Harley. It actually happened overnight, the same as when I quit drinking and smoking. I had more appreciation for other artists’ works. Actually, I was fortunate to belong to art organizations where we’d take time to really look and experience each other’s art…

GISELLE This work was done one evening. And as Harley and I often mention: The artwork can say “that’s it, I’m complete!” Here, that sentiment is profoundly right. All her features are realized with her eyes fixed on you and me, or perhaps herself in a mirror. She may never turn away. Put this image of her in your studio so she can “keep an eye on you.” The background was done without forethought. It happened with the lines and curves just streaming from me. Joyfully moving forward, I’m not worried if this was right or that was wrong. Also, you can see this is a monochrome Conté drawing, but my hand grabbed a hot red pastel and put it in two places. Incidentally, many of you have already guessed:…