Artists & Illustrators June 2021

Artists & How to paint great portraits f rom photos

I L L U S T R A T O R S

TIPS • TECHNIQUES • IDE A S • INSPIR ATION

June 2021 £4.99

SPECIAL ISSUE

David Hockney

Studio secrets, the joy of spring, and staying creative at 83

Plus

•British landscapes •Sketchbook inspiration •Jake Spicer's new colour series

LEARN TO DRAW With Sky A rt Portrait Ar s' tist of the Yea r

Artists & Illustrators, The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ Tel: (020) 7349 3700 www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk EDITORIAL Group Editor Steve Pill Art Editor Lauren Debono-Elliot Assistant Editor Rebecca Bradbury Contributors Laura Boswell, Faye Dobinson, Rob Dudley, Martin Gayford, Norman Long, Luis Morris, Jake Spicer and Edward Sutcliffe ONLINE ENQUIRIES support@artistsandillustrators.co.uk

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Welcome

A FEW WORDS OF WISDOM FROM DAVID HOCKNEY The title of David Hockney’s new book, Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, is such a Hockneian phrase, if that is such a thing. It is by turns obvious yet revelatory, witty and wise, curious yet stubborn, profoundly basic and basically profound. Somehow in just four words he has conjured the essence of his art, while underlining his insatiable appetite for art, nature and life. (It is not, however, my favourite Hockney quote - that title belongs to something his mother Laura said during a first visit to see her son in California after he moved there in 1964. After spending several days poolside in the environment captured in his masterpiece, A Bigger Splash, she said with typical Yorkshire logic: “It’s strange, all this lovely weather and yet you never see any washing out.”)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy our big interview with the Yorkshire legend, written exclusively for Artists & Illustrators by his biographer Martin Gayford.

Elsewhere in the issue, other great artists wrestle with the beauty of nature in different ways, whether that’s Rob Dudley conjuring memories of a landscape or Halla Shafey’s rich tapestries of vibrant pastels. It’s been a tough time for many lately, but spring is here, galleries and flowers are opening, and change is on the way. Besides, as Hockney once said, “I prefer living in colour”.

Steve Pill, Editor

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Artists & Illustrators 3

Contents 62

Draw the line with Curtis Holder

70

46

REGULARS 5 Letters Tell your stories, share your art

6

Exhibitions

Making art is a solitary business and the pandemic has made us more isolated than usual – L AUR A BOSWE LL , PAGE 27

28 Art Walks

54 Colour Theory

Short tips, ideas and inspiration

Three outdoor strolls inspired by Lowry, Constable and Spencer

Draw Brighton's Jake Spicer begins a new series on the palette

14 Fresh Paint

36 In The Studio

58 Process

New works, fresh off the easel

The Pastel Society's Halla Shafey opens her Cairo home workspace

An alternative approach to working from sketches made on location

Get back in galleries in June

9

Sketchbook

17 Prize Draw Win online art courses from Newlyn

27 The Working Artist With our columnist Laura Boswell

82 Meet the Artist Illustrator Rob Biddulph, famed for #DrawWithRob lockdown classes

INSPIRATION 18 The Big Inter view David Hockney reflects on spring from his new French studio 4 Artists

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TECHNIQUES 40 Masterclass

62 How I Draw Portrait Artist of the Year Curtis Holder opens up on his methods

Build up a suggestive figurative painting in our lead demonstration

66 Demo

46 In-Depth

70 Project

Seven leading artists share their strategies for using sketchbooks

Follow this simple approach to painting from photographs

52 Quick Tips

74 Paint Surfaces

Improve your practice with our 10 ways to paint with real purpose

Our series on mark making looks at ways to load the paint on thick

Paint in the style of Eric Ravilious

if yin g Ident ps rs hel colo u m ix th e yo u m at el y a ccur e 54 – pag

Letters LET TER OF THE MONTH

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT LETTERS FOR PUBLICATION

MY ART STORY My art story is possibly not very exciting, but it feels special to me therefore I wanted to share it with you.

I am a nurse by profession and an amateur artist. During the first lockdown, encouraged by my friend, I started practicing yoga. I have not stopped since.

My love for art and yoga have joined in my yoga_and_art series of inspirational watercolours and ink sketches. I later chose to do a series of oil paintings too.

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that figurative realism could be something that I want to do or definitely keep exploring at this stage of my artistic journey.

Agnes Graja, via email

A JOINT PLEASURE My wife and I both enjoyed the recent Channel 4 show Drawers Off hosted by Jenny Eclair. Having both dabbled in watercolour and pencil drawing in the past we became hooked. There were some good artists and some that didn’t seem to have a clue but enjoyed it all the same. This spurred us on to have a go again, which led us to your magazine. We have found this a joint pleasure in these uncertain times. Thanks.

Paul Perry, Halesowen WHAT NEXT? At the start of 2020, I decided that I needed to improve my drawing and set myself the challenge of doing one sketch a day, every day for a year. When lockdown happened, it helped me no end to have something to focus on. I joined people on Twitter to post a #2020dailydrawing every day.

I started on 1 January with little sketches in my sketchbook, varying from household items and ornaments to birds, flowers, old

That’s very exciting news, Agnes, you shouldn’t feel otherwise.

Everyone’s artistic journey is equally important, whether you’ve found your audience yet or not. Making those creative decisions and pursuing what you love is what this is all about.

houses, holidays... Whatever I could think of. Often the biggest challenge was deciding what to draw.

However, I did complete my final daily drawing on 31 December.

I now have about six or seven sketchbooks full of 366 sketches and paintings. The question now is what do I do with them?

Hilary Needham, via email We’ve been thinking about just this same quandary recently, Hilary.

Hopefully Rob Dudley’s Painting from Memory feature on page 58 might encourage you to turn them into final works. Sky Arts' Portrait Artist of the Year Curtis Holder also has great advice on developing sketches on page 62.

A BIT OF A SCREW UP Reading the article on Dame Laura Knight [Issue 428], I find I can throw a different light on Katie McCabe’s interpretation of Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring. She says the painting “… shows the worker looking unbothered as the sparks from the grinding metal parts throw

light onto her face. Dotted in the background… women… scrubbing, toiling, fixing machinery…”

I think Ruby Loftus is cutting a screw thread on a lathe. The light comes from the lamp over the lathe.

There will be no sparks; you can see the cutting fluid splashing as it keeps the job cool and lubricated.

The lathe would be on auto feed, to match the revs to the feed, for the thread pitch. This is why, for a very short time, her hands are still.

The saddle would be set to stop feeding at the end of the thread.

As for the women in the background, they are clearly hand-finishing parts, presumably for Bofors AA guns. My mother would have been familiar with this type of work, as she spent part of the Second World War screw-cutting Typhoon rocket casings.

Barbara Payne, via email ENGAGING ORCHIDS Inspired by Simon Williams’ masterclass [Issue 428], I borrowed an orchid from a friend’s collection and got painting. I’ve been painting or drawing every day of February as part of my “lockdown challenge” and had intended to pack my materials away for a while, but Simon’s masterclass was something that I just had to engage with.

I enjoy Artists & Illustrators so much, there’s always something that gets my creative juices going.

Carol Kelly, via email

Write to us!

Send your letter or email to the addresses below: POST: Your Letters, Artists & Illustrators, The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ EMAIL: info@artists andillustrators.co.uk The writer of our ‘letter of the month’ will receive a £50 gift voucher from GreatArt, which offers the UK’s largest range of art materials with more than 50,000 art supplies and regular discounts and promotions. www.greatart.co.uk

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Artists & Illustrators 5

Exhibitions JUNE'S BEST ART SHOWS

CHANTAL JOFFE: STORY

11 June to 26 September We all know how important it is for our art practice to draw every day – even if we don’t always get round to it – and, as it turns out, so did the Dutch and Flemish masters.

Inspired by the saying “no day without a line”, the likes of Rubens, Van Dyck and Jan Brueghel the Elder were encouraged to draw daily. The results collected here vary from quick pen-and-ink preparatory sketches to highly finished watercolours.

Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. www.barber.org.uk

ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/© HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2021

MAKING A MARK: DUTCH AND FLEMISH DRAWINGS FROM THE ROYAL COLLECTION

4 June to 31 July Although Chantal Joffe rose to prominence with her figurative artworks based on found imagery from mail-order catalogues and magazines, the contemporary artist has since spent her career painting those closest to her.

True to form, the American-born Royal Academician’s latest exhibition features portraits of her mother, Daryll, as she explores how the relationship between mother and daughter changes over time. Expect to see women depicted in Joffe’s trademark distinctly understated yet powerful manner.

Victoria Miro, London. www.victoria-miro.com

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© CHANTAL JOFFE. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND VICTORIA MIRO

21 May to 27 February 2022 From modern abstract carvings to iconic strung sculptures to large-scale bronze works, Dame Barbara Hepworth’s legacy spans more than five decades.

On display alongside her iconic sculptures will be plenty of 2D work, including early life class drawings, a post-war series of paintings capturing surgeons at work, and lithographic prints inspired by a visit to Greece.

The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire. www.hepworthwakefield.com

© BOWNESS, HEPWORTH ESTATE PHOTO: JERRY HARDMAN-JONES

BARBARA HEPWORTH: ART AND LIFE

Dates may change during the Covid-19 restrictions Always check gallery websites beforehand

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, THE MODERN INSTITUTE/TOBY WEBSTER LTD., GLASGOW AND GREEN NAFTALI, NEW YORK

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS ART COLLECTION. © ANGELA VERREN TAUNT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2021

BEN NICHOLSON: FROM THE STUDIO

26 June to 24 October Once immortalised, the objects that inspire still life paintings are often forgotten about.

This clever exhibition brings to the fore the distinctive striped jugs, Mochaware mugs and glassware seen in the works of Ben Nicholson, the modernist artist and second husband of Barbara Hepworth.

For example, a real 19th-century jug will go on show alongside Nicholson’s first representational painting of it, 1914 (The Striped Jug). To add an extra layer of intrigue, it will sit beside a second, later abstract work in which the jug’s pattern remains but its form is reduced to a flat, rectangular plane.

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. www.pallant.org.uk

WALTER PRICE: PEARL LINES

21 May to 29 August Stickers, tape and metallics are not usually associated with fine art, yet the offbeat materials crop up throughout the work of the young American painter Walter Price, as he seeks to disrupt what is considered conventional in the art world.

In his first major UK show, the former military man gives a masterclass on blurring the lines between figuration and abstraction with his thick application of paint, bold exploration of colour and recurring motifs that invite interpretation.

Camden Art Centre, London. www.camdenartcentre.org

Artists & Illustrators

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PART TIME DAY & EVENING COURSES

Heatherley School of Fine Art Chelsea

A range of courses for beginners as well as more experienced artists ALSO: Full time Diploma courses in portraiture and sculpture Enrolling now

HEATHERLEYS

Established 1845

020 7351 4190 info@heatherleys.org www.heatherleys.org

SKETCHBOOK

June TIPS • ADVI CE • ID E A S

CONTOUR DRAWING LEO NARD O PE RE Z N IETO suggest s a simple daily sketch exercise Fasten a sheet of inexpensive paper to a drawing board with rubber bands or clips. Sit on a chair, resting the lower edge of your board on your legs with the upper part on the back of another chair. Position your subject in front of you.

Observe the contour of your subject, its silhouette. Pick a point on that silhouette, any point. Place the tip of your pencil on the paper to start drawing the outline, focusing your vision on the location where you want to begin.

Move your eye slowly around the silhouette, while at the same time drawing the contour with your pencil without looking at your drawing. Move the pencil

over the paper as if it were connected to your vision, slowly.

Draw the contour of your subject at the same time you look at the different parts, not before or after.

Imagine your pencil is actually on the object, and that it moves over the surface as you advance your eye. Try to stop as little as possible and don’t lift the tip of the pencil from the paper. If you arrive at a dead end and need to come back to draw another feature, don’t raise the pencil tip. Just back up and draw another line.

If at any point you feel lost, look at your paper and find where you are. Place the tip of your pencil where it should be to

continue the drawing, and then continue with the exercise, slowly moving your eyes around the contour, drawing the line at the same time. Don’t erase.

Don’t rush. Give yourself 10 or 15 minutes for each drawing.

Do this each day until you have at least five hours of practice, even if you feel like you “get” this exercise sooner. You’re not trying to get a beautiful drawing, or to understand the exercise.

You’re working on practicing your perception and coordination.

This is an extract from Leonardo’s new book, Basics of Drawing: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners, published by Sixth & Spring. www.sixthandspringbooks.com

Artists & Illustrators 9

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SKETCHBOOK

TO SEE TAKES “TIME, LIKE TO HAVE A FRIEND TAKES TIME

”

— Georgia O'Keeffe

MASTER TIP John La Farge was a masterful 19th-century American illustrator, famed for his stained-glass windows in Boston and New York. The flower in Nocturne, painted around 1885 and

TEA-BREAK CHALLENGE © METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/ISTOCK

7. FOLLOW THE FORM Take a pencil and sketchbook. Find yourself a subject with some interesting shapes and natural forms: a figure or a bowl of fruit, say.

As you draw, focus on the planes of your subject. Rather than making uniform marks, concentrate on creating lines that follow the forms. Mimic curves and draw lines in the direction of different planes. This will help you think about form and replicate it.

influenced by his love of Japanese art, appears equally lit up.

Three white gouache marks were laid over a variegated watercolour wash that shifts from a warm cream (probably Naples Yellow) to a cool lilac blue.

British Art Prize

The shor tlist f or the Viking Cr uis e s British Ar t Prize 2021, the new Ar tist s & Illustrator s annual comp etition , has b e en announce d. Head to our web site to view the f inal 50 ar t work s and vote f or your f avourite to win the reader s’ choice prize – a £ 1,0 0 0 voucher f rom Zieler. (O ur last winner, Kir st y O wen’s Tusk , picture d) W W W. A RTI S TSA N D I LLU S TR ATO RS .CO.U K

Artists & Illustrators 11

SKETCHBOOK

The Diary

BOOK OF THE MONTH Joan Mitchell by Sarah Roberts and Katy Siegel While abstract paintings benefit from being seen in the flesh, the beauty of a lovingly curated monograph such as this is that when dozens of images are accrued in one place, the subtle shifts in execution and the development of an artist’s visual language becomes clearer. Joan Mitchell emerges as a fascinating character and underappreciated 20th-century talent.

Yale University Press, £50 www.yalebooks.co.uk

6 JUNE Entries close for the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize, which culminates in a July exhibition in Hampstead. www.hollybush paintingprize.com 24 JUNE Submit by today for The Society of Women Artists’ annual show.

Online only this year, there are still £4,000 worth of prizes. www.society-womenartists.org.uk 27 JUNE Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair is holding an open call for printmakers wishing to exhibit in November’s event. www.woolwich printfair.com

NEW HUES COBALT TEAL Discover a new colour ever y month This intense, pure turquoise has origins in ancient Egypt, yet the modern opaque hue is made from a mix of oxides. Use neat for tropical seas and Hockney-esque skies, mix with Transparent Red Oxide for subtle grey-greens, or make use of the high granulating quality of most watercolour versions to add a patina to weathered materials.

Why not try…

Tri-Art Sludge If you want to apply a neutral ground to a surface, here’s a cheap and eco-friendly option.

Canada’s Tri-Art recycles waste acrylics to create this gesso alternative. While the colours vary from batch to batch, it is still 100% pigment and retails at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent tub. www.tri-art.ca

Most watercolour tubes show a “staining” rating, but what does it really mean?

Simply put, a heavily staining pigment is hard to remove from the paper, making it ideal for building layers of colour. Meanwhile a low or non-staining pigment will lift off more easily, useful when picking out highlights. Get to know your paints and you can enjoy greater control.

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THINGS WE LOVE… Landscape artist Sarah Evans has taken time out from her commissions to paint tiny seascapes on teabags. “I love the texture of the material,” she said of the bags. “I find it similar to watercolour paper.” Sarah has also painted on matchboxes and antique spoons. www.sarah-evans.art

ISTOCK/SARAH EVANS/TRI-ART

Why staining matt ers

TRADITION & INNOVATION MADE IN GERMANY www.davinci-defet.com

WAYNE’S TOP TIP “I use a lot of Alkyd medium, diluted with solvent, depending on how fluid I need the paint”

RIGHT Wayne Attwood, The Fetch of a Wave is Defined by the Distance Travelled, oil on canvas, 101x101cm 14 Artists

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Fresh Paint

Fresh Paint

Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

Wayne Attwood When we last caught up with artist Wayne Attwood, he’d been reacquainting himself with his native Birmingham in paint; quite the shift after seven years sailing the Mediterranean on board a 35-foot yacht. He’s since been elected president of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) and embarked on a series that he’s calling Ghosts of the Memory of Feeling. These larger, more ambiguous figurative pieces play with themes of nostalgia and human relationships, which has given them added resonance this year. “I started this series quite a while before lockdown, but it was pointed out to me recently how many of the paintings depict people connecting: hugging, kissing, and so on,” he explains. “Not being able to physically connect with our friends and family has added an unintended dimension to the work.”

As one might expect from an RBSA president, Wayne is a big believer in the need to experience paintings in the flesh and his new larger canvases are a reaction to art being increasingly consumed via small phone screens. The Fetch of a Wave is Defined by the Distance Travelled, for example, measures a metre square and has changed the way that he applies the paint. “Larger canvases allow me to work freely, keeping the active paint layer alive without being forced to tighten up,” he says. “I also want the integrity of the paint passages and intersecting marks to remain distinct, even when viewed at a distance in a gallery or home.”

While The Fetch of a Wave… appears to have a fresh, alla prima finish, this contemplative painter actually spends plenty of time deciding which elements need to retain sharpness or be knocked back. He manipulates oils with various implements, ranging from traditional brushes through to old credit cards, squeegees and grouting tools.

“Improvisation is fundamental to my process,” he stresses.

With a suggestive finish such as this, it is hard to avoid overworking things. Wayne says it takes confidence to know when to say enough is enough. “I don’t particularly consider my works ultimately ‘finished’ anyway – they either get exhibited and sold, or I just stop applying paint,” he says. “When a painting comes back from an exhibition and sits in the studio for a while, I will quite often add new layers or rework areas.”

A great artist’s work truly is never done. www.wayneattwood.com

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Fresh Paint

Richa Vora Evoking the rich, vibrant and colourful atmosphere of an Indian festival in a painting of a quaint London lane may sound like a rather incongruous ambition. Yet Portfolio Plus member Richa Vora has deftly merged these two seemingly opposed worlds in her recent oil painting, Gail’s.

On a hot July day walking through north London, the artist was struck by how similar the harsh sunlight, dark shadows and bustling, narrow streets of Hampstead were to those found in her native Kolhapur. She duly set out to capture this rare moment.

Richa began her painting by laying down a neutralcoloured wash and blocking in the main masses with a big bold brush. She then worked alla prima, using energetic brushstrokes to bring the paint surface to life.

“I find the details that were done fast and with a few touches of paint are the most lively and artistic,” she says.

“In this particular painting, it was quite bland and flat until I added in the people sitting outside the bakery.”

The London-based artist has studied at Southwark’s Art Academy and usually finishes her paintings in a few hours, finalising the composition at the last possible 16 Artists

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moment. This leaves her room for some “spontaneous ABOVE Richa Vora, decisions”, yet a lot of planning is still involved in every Gail’s, oil on finished painting. “I do lots of black-and-white and canvas, 51x41cm three-tone colour sketches before I start to help me understand temperature and value.”

Such preparation pays off.

Whether she’s capturing the Every month, one of our Fresh Paint harsh light of a midday sun, the artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus, shadowy folds of an unmade our online, art-for-sale portal. For your bed sheet or a strong direct chance to feature in a forthcoming light hitting a life model’s face, issue, sign up for your own personalised the play of light in Richa’s art Portfolio Plus page today. You can also: is incredibly arresting, • Showcase, share and sell unlimited “The secret lies in the middle artworks commission free tones,” she reveals. “When you • Get your work seen across Artists & have harsh sunlight and very Illustrators’ social media channels dark shadows, if you get your • Submit art to our online exhibitions middle tones correct, the • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more luminosity always comes.”

Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ illustrators.co.uk/register richcompose

£950 WORTH OF ONLINE ART COURSES Celebrate the first ever Penzance Arts Festival with virtual workshops from Newlyn School of Art Technology has proved a lifeline for many over the past 12 months, with online art courses and live drawing demos keeping us all connected and creative. Excelling in this department is Newlyn School of Art. Based in the historic artists’ colony in West Cornwall, this dynamic and innovative art school provides a wide range of high quality and exciting short art courses in disciplines such as painting, drawing and printmaking.

And this summer, the popular institution will be bringing its digital offerings to the first ever Penzance Arts Festival.

To mark its involvement with the festival, Newlyn School of Art is offering one lucky Artists & Illustrators reader the chance to win £950 worth of virtual art tutorials.

The winner will be able to pick from a selection of four-day short courses, ranging from “Abstracting the Landscape” to the “Modern Portrait”, but all led by some of the best art tutors in the UK.

Also on offer are weekly two-hour life drawing classes led by a roster of awardwinning artists. At just £9 a session, the prize voucher is enough that you could book up one a week for the next year and still have credit left over to spend on a few short courses, costing £145 each. The prize also includes two tickets to a livestreamed Andy Warhol talk.

To find out more about Newlyn School of Art, browse its catalogue of courses and buy tickets to the Andy Warhol talk, visit www.newlynartschool.co.uk

THE PRIZE One winner, selected at random, will win: • £950 to spend on online life drawing classes and online short courses at Newlyn School of Art • Two tickets to a livestreamed Andy Warhol talk by Tate Modern curator Fiontán Moran at 6.30pm on 19 June 2021, worth £4 each

NEWLYN PRIZE DRAW Name: Address:

Postcode: Email: Telephone: The closing date for entries is noon on 11 June 2021.

Please tick if you are happy to receive relevant information from The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd. via email , post or phone or Newlyn School of Art via email

HOW TO ENTER Enter by noon on 11 June 2021 at www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ competitions or fill in the form and return it to: Newlyn Prize Draw, Artists & Illustrators, Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd., Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London SW3 3TQ

TERMS AND CONDITIONS Prize is non-transferable. No cash alternatives. Courses are subject to availability. For full terms and conditions, visit www.chelseamagazine.com/terms

Artists & Illustrators 17

THE B I G INTERVIE W

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THE B I G INTERVIE W

THE BIG INTERVIEW

David Hockney Writing exclusively for Artists & Illustrators , author and art critic MARTIN GAYFORD speaks to the great Yorkshire artist about the joys of spring, his enduring inspirations, and how his latest French studio has given him a new lease of life – and cured his limp!

F

© DAVID HOCKNEY

or the last two years, David Hockney has been living in a novel location. From the Hollywood Hills, he’s moved to La Grande Cour, an old farmhouse in the countryside of Normandy, France. It looks, as he says approvingly, like the cottage “where the seven dwarves live in the Disney film… There are no straight lines; even the corners don’t have straight lines”.

David’s life and work, as well as the thoughts that existence in rustic seclusion have brought him, are the subject of a forthcoming book we wrote together, Spring Cannot be Cancelled, published in March by Thames & Hudson.

Because David is an artist who paints and draws for much of the day, every day, this change of place meant, first and foremost, he needed

a suitable studio there. Accordingly, before he moved to Normandy in early March 2019 (and immediately after the opening of the Hockney – Van Gogh exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam), a spacious and airy working space was created for him inside the ancient wooden beams of an old barn on the grounds of his new dwelling.

He was delighted by it. “Right now, I need to be somewhere like this.

When I signed the lease on the second Bridlington studio a decade ago, I felt 20 years younger, and the same thing happened here. I feel revitalised.

It’s given me a new lease of life.

I used to walk with a stick, but since I came here, I’ve forgotten about it!”

David had two studios in East Yorkshire. The first was in the attic of his house near the seafront at

Artists & Illustrators 19

THE B I G INTERVIE W

The studio’s given me a new lease of life.

I u sed to walk with a stick, but since I came here, I’ve forgotten about it!

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The Norman studio was also devised

by Jean-Pierre, but its scale and feeling are quite different.

As David explained in the summer of 2019: “When Jean-Pierre first came here, he told me, he realised that we wouldn’t have to drive anywhere, whereas in Bridlington I had to get in the car to go to my subjects. That’s why we got [this

ABOVE David Hockney, No. 180, 11 April 2020, iPad painting LEFT David in Normandy last spring

PREVIOUS SPREAD David Hockney, No. 599, 1 November 2020, iPad painting

© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: JEAN-PIERRE GONÇALVES DE LIMA

Bridlington; the second – the one he signed that lease for – was located in an industrial estate on the edge of the town. It was huge, more like a film studio than a painter’s workshop.

This was conceived and arranged with the enormous pictures he was making at that time in mind by the artist’s principal aide, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima (known affectionately as J-P).

studio]. It makes an enormous difference because I get to know the trees a lot better. I’m always looking at them. Always. This afternoon I might draw the apple trees and pear trees again because now they have fruit on them, hanging there.”

Every artist’s studio is different because it is a reflection of their personalities, habits, and, above all, what they need to do: their work.

Some are huge, others tiny; some are orderly, others chaotic. Each of David’s studios that I have seen (this is the fifth) has had its own particular qualities. This new one in the French countryside is a studio immersed in a subject, amongst the trees, in the midst of silence and living plants.

So, the principal models for David’s recent work are growing all around: those apple and pear trees he mentioned are among them. They and others – a favourite cherry tree, for example – feature now in many of his pictures and will soon be familiar to the thousands of visitors who are likely to see The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, his forthcoming exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, which opens in May. “Trees are fascinating things,” observes the artist. “They are the largest plant. Every one is different, like we are; every leaf is different.

In Yorkshire, one day a guy asked us why we were always filming the trees; he thought they were all the same.”

These days, David is taking the advice famously offered by Voltaire’s character, Candide, in his 1759 novel of the same name: “We must cultivate our gardens”. However, he is doing so artistically, which makes a big difference.

What a painter finds interesting will not delight every eye (“willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork” were on the great English landscape painter John Constable’s list of his favourite things).

THE B I G INTERVIE W

HOCKNEY SPIRIT THREE WAYS TO CREATE, INSPIRED BY THE YORKSHIRE ARTIST LEARN TO LOOK As a child in Bradford, Hockney would run upstairs on buses, always keen to get the best view. That curiosity has stayed with him throughout his career and much of his work is his way of communicating that time spent looking.

He often tries to do so as simply as possible. Whether painting on canvas or drawing on the iPad, saturated colour is blocked in first, often with a second layer of pattern or texture applied on top. Other details are kept to a minimum, save for occasional contour lines to describe forms and separate colours.

TRY SOMETHING NEW Reflecting on his famous 1967 painting A Bigger Splash ahead of a Tate Britain exhibition 40 years later, Hockney concluded that there was no fixed way of making a masterpiece. “If there was a formula, there’d be a lot more memorable pictures,” he joked.

Challenge yourself to try something different with each new painting you make, whether that’s as drastic as changing your whole way of working, or just something simple, such as adding a new colour to your palette. A change will keep you present and engaged, while freshening up the results.

PAINT THE WORLD AS YOU SEE IT Although Hockney often relied on his trusty Polaroid camera, he also thought most colour photography was a bit dull. The artist didn’t see colour like that, hence the bright hues in his own work. Colour, like all aspects of painting, is subjective and must be adapted accordingly.

Likewise, Hockney always painted his environment, attaching an importance to his chosen subject in the process. In his eyes, Bridlington is every bit as important as Los Angeles. Staying true to that belief has resulted in great artworks produced with real conviction.

Artists & Illustrators 21

THE B I G INTERVIE W

I started drawing on the i Pad again.

You can make wonderful textures if you build the pictures up in layers

22 Artists

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them stay there like that, because they look like hands clapping or something. It’s the same with those trees with the mistletoe, which kills them eventually. But I think they are wonderful to draw, because they set up a plane. Even in the winter they do.”

After overseeing the conversion of the old barn into a studio, Jean-Pierre went on to oversee the surrounding grounds. Just as the first was tailor-made for David to work in,

ABOVE David Hockney, The Entrance, 2019, acrylic on two canvases, 91x122cm each

RIGHT Vincent van Gogh, Farmhouse in Provence, 1888, oil on canvas, 46x61cm FAR RIGHT Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée 0, 1983, oil on canvas, 263x200cm

© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: RICHARD SCHMIDT

So, arranging a garden for an artist to paint is different from making one for a horticulturalist, a tree fancier, or a lawn lover.

Conversely, what makes for a good painting or drawing is not necessarily the sort of prime specimen that would please a landscape architect or arboriculturalist.

“The three big pear trees are all dead at the top; that’s why there are no leaves on them. But I want to let

the latter was arranged specifically for him to depict. In other words, it was a specialised place: a painter’s garden, like Claude Monet’s at Giverny on the other side of Normandy. With this in mind, Jean-Pierre ignored much advice from landscape gardeners, who told him: “This should come out and that should come out; it’s got no value”.

“They want to replace the trees with better, nobler ones,” Jean-Pierre complained. “But I know that for David, visually it’s the shapes and forms that count. He can make a bit of gravel with some weeds growing on it interesting. They don’t see that.”

When the artist began his new life in France in March 2019, he was supercharged by three recent encounters with supreme draughtsmen from the past.

THE B I G INTERVIE W

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON/© ESTATE OF JOAN MITCHELL

FRENCH EXIT FOUR OTHER ARTISTS WHO WENT IN SEARCH OF LA BONNE VIE VINCENT VAN GOGH The Dutch master’s reputation largely rests on the many masterpieces he created during his final two years in Provence [see 1888’s Farmhouse in Provence, right].

Arriving in Arles in search of light, he found sunflowers and starry nights before his suicide at Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890.

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH Growing disillusioned with his architecture practice, the Glasgow art nouveau pioneer spent four of his last five years living a peripatetic life in France. He produced more than 40 large graphic watercolours of the local landscape during this period. After his death in 1928, his artist wife Margaret scattered his ashes in Port-Vendres.

PABLO PICASSO After enjoying many summers on the French Riviera, the Spaniard eventually moved there, living in various grand villas in Antibes, Vallauris (where he practiced pottery) and Mougins. He was buried privately at the family estate in Vauvenargues.

JOAN MITCHELL The great American Expressionist painter swapped Manhattan for Paris in 1959, later buying a cottage and two-acre estate in Vétheuil, next to where Claude Monet once lived. Though she never loved France unconditionally, the lifestyle suited Mitchell, whose abstract works included the 21-painting La Grande Vallée suite, inspired by a valley in Brittany.

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THE B I G INTERVIE W

In Amsterdam he had been showing his own work beside that of Vincent van Gogh, while simultaneously there was a glorious exhibition of masterpieces by another of his heroes, Rembrandt van Rijn, at the city’s Rijksmuseum – All the Rembrandts welcomed more than 450,000 visitors. The previous autumn David had made a journey to Vienna to see Once in a Lifetime, a great retrospective of Pieter Bruegel at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

So, the spring of 2019 was a spring of drawing on paper, often like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, with a reed pen (and using dots similar to the ones Van Gogh was fond of, to represent the gravel paths that Jean-Pierre mentioned).

“There’s a particular line you get from a reed pen,” said David.

“Everything makes a different sort of line. And I’ve always enjoyed making different kinds of lines.”

There were affinities in the kinds of marks he was making with the works of both of those great Dutch artists.

But there were also fresh, and characteristic, Hockney ingredients: several of the drawings he made were 360-degree panoramas, executed on sketchbooks which pulled out like a concertina. And they were often drawn not in black or sepia, but in coloured inks.

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Leeds to make a new version of the Brushes app, which I think is very good, even better than the previous one, which is now unobtainable.”

With the iPad, the artist found, “you can make wonderful textures if you build [the pictures] up in layers”.

Shortly afterwards lockdown descended on us all, but Hockney was undismayed. Indeed, he thrived on the consequent lack of interruptions and opportunity for deep concentration. By the end of spring, he had created a hundred works using the enhanced range of effects offered by his improved iPad app. By the end of the year there were 200 – and still they keep appearing.

The harvest from the Norman farm has been marvellously fruitful.

David thinks so too. “I think these iPad works are much better than the last lot I did. There is more detail in them; I’ve done it more thoroughly.”

Just now the 83-year-old artist is poised to begin again in spring 2021.

Martin and David’s new book, Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy, is published by Thames & Hudson. www.thamesandhudson.com.

The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 runs from 23 May to 26 September at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. www.royalacademy.org.uk

ABOVE David Hockney, No. 316, 30 April 2020, iPad painting TOP RIGHT David Hockney, No. 556, 19 October 2020, iPad painting

LEFT David contemplates his latest canvas with Ruby the dog in his Normandy studio RIGHT David Hockney, No. 340, 21 May 2020, iPad painting

© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: JEAN-PIERRE GONÇALVES DE LIMA

24 Artists

By 2020, however, David returned to the iPad, a medium of which he famously made great use around a decade ago. He explained the change to me in an email at the beginning of last spring: “I have started drawing on the iPad again as Jonathan [Wilkinson, Hockney’s assistant in all technical matters] has got a man in

THE B I G INTERVIE W

Trees are fascinating things… Ever y one is different, like we are – ever y leaf is different

© DAVID HOCKNEY

READER OFFER Spring Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art’s capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator.

Artists & Illustrators readers can enjoy 25% off the cover price, a saving of £6.25. Simply use the code CHELSEA25 at www.thamesandhudson.com

Artists & Illustrators 25

Atlantis Art, Unit 1, Bayford Street Industrial Centre, Bayford Street, London E8 3SE Tel: 0207 377 8855 | www.atlantisart.co.uk | office@atlantisart.co.uk

COLUMNIS T

Social media groups are invaluable when you need a mystery tool explained

Artist The Working

Our columnist LAURA BOSWELL loves the community and support of online art forums – could now be the time to find your tribe too?

ABOVE Laura Boswell, West Coast Summer, woodblock print, 29 x45 cm

S

ocial media can be an effective place to grow an audience.

It can also be a great forum for selling artwork, but have you thought of it as a means to find your tribe?

Making art is often a solitary business and the pandemic has

meant that most of us have been even more isolated than usual.

If you haven’t considered using social media to join – or perhaps build – a community of likeminded artists, now is the time to give it a go. Joining an established group is a good place

to start. Whatever your technique and interests, there will almost certainly be a suitable group to join.

You may like to sign up to several groups for a broader perspective, or to gain an insight into a range of techniques or subjects. I belong to several printmaking forums and their content and atmosphere differs widely, ranging from the deeply intellectual to the fun and playful.

Remember you can engage by showing work, commenting, or just observing. Check the rules of any group you join and whether they have mediators who will intervene if the group goes off topic. In my experience, mediated groups are friendly and supportive places where everyone’s work is embraced and celebrated.

In most bigger art groups, members range from absolute beginners to professional artists, and they are often spread across the globe.

Groups are valuable places for asking questions. From finding a good supplier to asking for a friendly critique, you’ll have fellow specialists ready to help. These groups are also invaluable when you need an artwork identified or a mystery tool explained.

Someone somewhere will pop up with an explanation and there’s often a fascinating back story included.

Do remember that these are open groups so be cautious when it comes to sharing personal details, however.

If you keep the focus on the artwork, you can enjoy the chat without compromising your privacy.

Groups grow and change all the time. Splinter groups often arise to address specialist interests within main groups and then develop a life of their own. Don’t be shy if you want to instigate a new thread or subgroup; you may end up finding your own special network of artist friends.

Laura co-hosts a podcast, Ask an Artist.

Listen to new episodes at www.artists andillustrators.co.uk/askanartist

Artists & Illustrators 27

A R T WA L K S

The Art of Walking Discover the landscapes that seduced three of the nation’s greatest artists with walks through verdant valleys, beside the riverbanks of the Thames and along the rugged coast of north east England

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A R T WA L K S

©NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/JUSTIN MINNS

Willy Lott’s Cottage on the River Stour in Suffolk, which is featured in several John Constable masterpieces

Artists & Illustrators 29

A R T WA L K S

John Constable, The Leaping Horse, 1825, oil on canvas, 142x187.3cm

CONSTABLE’S Key Dates 1776 Born in East Bergholt, Suffolk 1799 Entered the Royal Academy Schools 1802 Started exhibiting at the Royal Academy of Arts 1816 Married Maria Elizabeth Bicknell 1819 Moved to London 1821 Exhibited The Hay Wain 1824 Moved to Brighton due to Maria’s ill health 1829 Elected to the Royal Academy of Arts 1835 Died and buried in Hampstead 30 Artists

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JOHN CONSTABLE’S

Suffolk

A gentle walk through the heart of “Constable Country”, crossing the Dedham Vale and following the River Stour, reveals scenes that remain largely unchanged from when John Constable immortalised them in his iconic oil paintings more than 150 years ago.

The landscape painter held an unbounded affection for his native Suffolk countryside and there is much to uncover when exploring the area on foot.

Willy Lott’s Cottage Of all the artworks by John Constable, The Hay Wain is probably the most well-known.

Painted in 1821, it depicts a harvest wagon crossing the River Stour and, on the left, Willy Lott’s Cottage – a house

Flatford Mill

that belonged to the painter’s father, Golding Constable, and still stands today.

The artwork formed one of Constable’s seminal six-foot canvases, comprising views on the River Stour and painted to impress the Royal Academy.

Another in the series is The Leaping Horse, pictured above.

Bridge Cottage

A R T WA L K S

I associate my ‘careless boyhood’ with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful

© THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON; ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS; NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY

Flatford Mill Next to Willy Lott’s Cottage is Flatford Mill, another property owned by Constable’s father and depicted in Flatford Mill (Scenes on a Navigable River).

Some say the artist’s flair for accurately painting clouds stems from having to closely observe the skies to predict the weather while he worked at this redbrick watermill as a teenager.

Bridge Cottage A prosperous miller, Golding Constable also owned Bridge Cottage in Flatford. Tenants would have collected tolls from barges passing through the lock, but today it’s home to a tearoom and exhibition on the artist. You can also see the cottage in Constable’s 1813 painting Boys Fishing.

Dedham Vale Now designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty,

Dedham Vale’s charms did not escape Constable’s attention.

The view in his artwork The Vale of Dedham can be seen from Gun Hill, looking towards Dedham Church.

With its thick application of white paint that enhances the shimmering light, this painting prompted Constable’s election to the Royal Academy in 1829.

Willy Lott’s Cottage

Another church not to miss is St Mary’s in Dedham, as on display inside is one of John Constable’s three religious artworks, The Ascension.

The church’s 131-foot tower also appears in some of Constable’s other paintings.

For more details on the area and a map of the walking tour, visit www.nationaltrust.org/flatford

East Bergholt Constable was deeply attached to his birthplace, East Bergholt House, and it appears in his c.1809 painting of the same name. Demolished in the early 1840s, today a plaque marks where the house once stood.

Across the road is St Mary's Church, where his parents and Willy Lott are buried and where his wife Maria Bicknell's grandfather was once a rector.

Also nearby, in Cemetery Lane, is Moss Cottage, the first studio the artist rented for fourand-a-half old pennies a year.

St Mary’s Church, Dedham

John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas, 130.2x185.4cm

Artists & Illustrators 31

A R T WA L K S

LOWRY’S Key Dates 1887 Born in Stretford 1905 Studied at the Manchester School of Art 1910 Became a rent collector for the Pall Mall Property Company 1915 Began evening classes at Salford School of Art c.1935 Made his first trip to Berwick-upon-Tweed 1939 First solo exhibition in London 1952 Retired from the Pall Mall Property Company 1955 Elected as an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Arts 1976 Died at Woods Hospital, Glossop, Derbyshire

LS Lowry, On the Sands, Berwick, 1959, oil on canvas, size unknown

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LS LOWRY’S

Berwick-upon-Tweed When you think of LS Lowry, industrial scenes of northwest England are bound to come to mind. But less well-known are the seascapes and cobbled lanes the artist painted while visiting Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Lowry first travelled to the Northumberland town in the mid-1930s, after his doctor suggested he take a break from the strain of looking after his bedridden mother. He would return many times.

To see 18 local sites related to the artist, simply follow the town’s three-mile Lowry Trail.

Town Hall and Marygate

Dewar’s Lane and Sally Port

Depictions of quiet, cobbled lanes are a rarity among Lowry’s work, yet he was fascinated by the ancient alleyways of Sally Port and Dewar’s Lane. On the trail’s 18 interpretation panels, you can see how the artist drew and painted scenes such as these.

Elizabethan walls In Sally Port, you can spot an archway passing under the town’s Elizabethan walls, also of interest to the artist due to

Sally Port

A R T WA L K S

I’ve always been fond of the sea...

How wonderful it is, yet also how terrible

the way they encircle Berwick.

You may have already noticed the low walls, fences and other barriers in the foreground of many of Lowry’s paintings.

© ICEBOOM13; THE ESTATE OF LS LOWRY; THE LOWRY COLLECTION, SALFORD; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY

Town Hall The Georgian Town Hall’s 150-foot tower appears in works such as A Market Place, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Old Berwick (Strother’s Yard). The latter’s composition [seen in the panel pictured below] with the lone tower – a common motif in his work – is thought to symbolise Lowry’s loneliness.

With its harsh geometry and mysterious figures, the painting exudes an air of apprehension, despite it being one of Lowry’s favourite corners in town.

Bridge End The town hall’s tower also appears in Bridge End, which,

alongside Old Berwick (Strother’s Yard), appeared in Lowry’s first London solo show in 1939. The painting is based on a pencil sketch the artist drew while sat on the parapet of Berwick’s Old Bridge, and with flashes of red (known as his favourite colour), lively figures and pets, it evokes a much more upbeat mood.

Tweedmouth Busy, enclosed yard scenes were a go-to subject for Lowry and he captured one off Main Street (across the river in Tweedmouth) in his 1943 painting Old Property. The flagpole and smoking chimneys appear to be products of the artist’s imagination, while the solitary observer separated from the action by the kerb resembles Lowry himself.

The Pier From Pier Road, Lowry sketched Berwick’s pier and lighthouse in 1956 and the scene remains much the same today. Behind the pier there is a red-roofed pavilion, the setting for On The Sands, Berwick-upon-Tweed.

The artist once said: “Poverty and gloom. Never a joyous picture of mine you’ll see.” Yet this jolly seaside scene is one exception.

Spittal Lowry had a lifelong fascination with the sea, and would walk along the Spittal promenade seeking inspiration for works like 1960’s Spittal Sands – a joyful, impressionistic beach scene painted with pastel hues and thick encrusted paint.

It’s here he also set his 1964

LS Lowry, Seascape, 1952, oil on canvas, 39.5x49.3cm

painting, Girl in a Red Hat. Despite enjoying the coast, he was rather unnerved by the sea. This attitude may explain his empty seascapes (1942’s The Sea and 1952’s Seascape) which capture the ocean’s mystery and infinity.

For more details on the Lowry Trail and to download a map visit www.visitberwick.com

Artists & Illustrators 33

A R T WA L K S

Sir Stanley Spencer, The Resurrection, Cookham, 1924’27, oil on canvas, 274.3x548.6cm

1891 Born in Cookham, Berkshire 1908-’12 Studied at the Slade School of Art 1915-18 Enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps 1925 Married Hilda Carline 1927 First solo exhibition at Goupil Gallery in London 1932 Moved back to Cookham 1937 Divorced by Hilda and married Patricia Preece 1940 Commissioned as an official war artist 1945-’59 Lived at Cliveden, Cookham Rise 1959 Died at Canadian Memorial Hospital, Berkshire 34 Artists

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© TATE; NATIONAL TRUST/CHRIS LACEY/HUGH MOTHERSOLE; ESTATE OF STANLEY SPENCER; STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY

SPENCER’S Key Dates

STANLEY SPENCER’S

Cookham

When Stanley Spencer studied at the Slade School of Art, he earnt himself the nickname “Cookham”, such was his adoration of the Berkshire village in which he was born – and spent most of his life.

The visionary painter set many of his acclaimed biblical scenes among the Cookham streets and along the banks of the Thames, and these spots can be visited while on an hour’s walk through the village.

Ferry Hotel The riverside lawn of the Ferry Hotel was the setting for the artist’s colourful painting Dinner on the Hotel Lawn.

It forms part of a larger series which portrays the resurrection in the context of a regatta.

Odney Club In the wall near the entrance to the Odney Club are two round, porthole-like windows that form a backdrop to the 1939 work, Girls Returning from a Bathe.

Cookham Church The young Stanley Spencer was said to be fascinated by the churchyard, and it was here that he set one of his key artworks, The Resurrection, Cookham (now on show as part of Tate Britain’s “Walk Through British Art” display).

A stone angel still in the churchyard appears in 1953’s The Angel, while inside the RIGHT Sir Stanley Spencer, Swan Upping at Cookham, 1915-’19, oil on canvas, 148 x116.2cm

Fernlea

A R T WA L K S

church is where a 15-year-old Spencer drew the now famous pen-and-ink drawing, Roy.

1921, it commemorates (among others) the death of Spencer’s brother Sydney.

The River Thames

High Street

Sitting in church one Sunday morning in July, Spencer could hear the annual Swan Upping ceremony taking place outside on the riverbank. It inspired his painting Swan Upping at Cookham (on show as part of Tate Britain’s Stanley Spencer display), which he started in 1915 but could not finish until back from the war in 1919.

Halfway up the High Street, a blue plaque marks Fernlea, the house where Spencer was born and lived with his family for many years. The artist looked upon the road as the nave of a church and made it the setting for many of his paintings, such as 1920’s Christ Carrying the Cross and 1933’s Sarah Tubb and the Heavenly Visitors.

Cookham Moor

Berries Road

This idyllic area is the site of several of Spencer’s artworks, including 1936’s Cows at Cookham and 1937’s Cookham Moor. In his later years, the artist painted landscapes here for commercial necessity.

Off the High Street, this road is where Spencer painted the view of Cookham in his 1936 artwork Bellrope Meadow and you can also see the tree that appears in 1938’s The Magnolia Tree in the front garden of Westward House.

Cookham War Memorial

Stanley Spencer Gallery

Holy Trinity Church

Converted from a chapel the artist attended as a child, the Stanley Spencer Gallery faces the Tarry Stone (depicted by the artist in 1929). Many works mentioned above are on show here, making it a brilliant finale to a walk around the village.

For further details, visit www.cookham.com and www.stanleyspencer.org.uk

Cookham Moor

The war memorial is depicted in 1922’s Unveiling Cookham War Memorial and 1937’s A Village in Heaven. Built in

When I left Slade, and went back to Cookham, I entered a kind of earthly paradise

Artists & Illustrators 35

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IN THE STUDIO

IN THE STUDIO

Hall a Shafey

2

The winner of the Artists & Illustrators Award at the Pastel Society’s annual show talks to REBECCA BRADBURY about prompting a pastel renaissance from her home studio in Cairo

S

1

witching careers is never a decision to be taken lightly, especially when trading more than 25 years of experience as a high-flying professional for the unpredictable path of an artist. Yet a mid-life occupation switch was a risk that Halla Shafey was willing to take.

After a successful career as an economist, she is now a full-time artist – and that gamble has paid dividends. Not only has the Cairobased artist won numerous awards for her wonderfully textured, multicoloured artworks – including the Artists & Illustrators Award at the Pastel Society’s recent annual exhibition for her painting, A Walk in the Fields – but she has also been praised by Egyptian critics for revolutionising the medium.

Firstly, Halla’s art is abstract – a subject that is by no means ground-

breaking in the wider art world but is rarely seen among the international pastel community. While most stick to the medium’s realist roots, Halla works spontaneously, responding to observations, emotions and colours.

On top of this, the artist experiments with non-traditional media. Despite protestations from pastel purists, she works over acrylic paints, linocuts and monoprints creating textures so lifelike that some of her paintings look like patchworks of rich fabrics.

Although appearing slightly uneasy with the notion she’s led a pastel rebellion, Halla is clearly not afraid to break the so-called rules – “I am always experimenting with different techniques and trying to push the boundaries of pastel” – and notes how her global success has instigated a renewed interest among Egyptian artists. “Pastel hasn’t been very

1 Halla’s

award-winning pastel, A Walk in the Fields 2 Her studio

in Cairo is filled with books and family photos

Artists & Illustrators 37

IN THE STUDIO

I’m a risk-taker… I want each painting to be a completely new experience popular in Egypt,” she explains.

“There’s definitely been a renaissance after people have seen my work and my international exposure.”

Growing up in Egypt, Halla loved painting and drawing as a child, but with no art department at the American University in Cairo, which she first graduated from in 1987, becoming an artist was not on her radar – hence her academic route.

When the artist turned 40, however, she felt an overwhelming urge to be creative again, taking lessons in photography, writing, pottery and, of course, fine art. It was while attending the atelier of renowned Egyptian artist Magd El-Sagini, son of the great sculptor Gamal El-Sagini, that she was first introduced to pastel. “I started really falling in love with it,” she recalls. “The reason why, I think, is the immediacy of it. The luminosity of colour is unparalleled.”

While nature has a huge part to play as a source of inspiration for Halla, colour is what she values above all else. Viewers may unearth legions of organic-like shapes within her compositions, but it is the hypnotic combinations of exquisite hues that hook you first. “Colour is the most important thing for me as a person,” she explains. “For me it’s a language.

I can’t live without colours. I’m drawn to colours, I express myself in them.”

With no other media quite able to match pastel’s saturation, it seems obvious this self-declared colourist would be drawn to the medium. After those initial workshops, she soon began immersing herself in all things pastel, working hard to develop her own style. In 2012 she was ready to commit to the life of an artist and has been working from her home studio on the outskirts of Cairo ever since.

“I have bigger rooms I could use,” she says, “but I don’t like big spaces, I feel lost, so I like to work in a small intimate space.”

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3

3 This work

was shown at Cairo’s Nile Art Gallery in 2020

4 Halla’s love

4

of pastels even extends to her choice of cup!

IN THE STUDIO

5 Another

pastel from her Cosmic Messages show

6 This untitled

piece is part of her Rivers of Paradise series

There’s definitely a cosiness to Halla’s studio, with orange walls adorned with certificates and awards, shelves packed with books, and family photographs dotted about.

Beautiful sunlight floods in through a huge window and behind her desk are trays brimming with pastels – arranged by colour, not by tone.

The French brand La Maison du Pastel probably has the edge, though the artist enjoys collecting pigments from her extensive travels, which have included attending workshops with the Pastel Society of America and our own Pastel Society – and she is now an elected member of both.

A day in the studio begins by turning off her phone. “I don’t like any interruptions, especially when I’m starting to work,” she says. “It needs clarity of mind and a hell of a lot of concentration to get the first thing going. Then it’s easier after that.”

Some of Halla’s paintings begin by throwing colours onto a support; others start out with a printed layer, often linocut or a monoprint. In the example of A Walk in the Fields, acrylic marks were added to a linocut base to create a background of “beautiful, spontaneous and haphazard textures” before the pastel mark making began.

“The painting starts to have an identity of its own, it starts taking you on its own path,” she says of this stage. “Then there’s always a process of stepping back and analysing it, making sure there’s balance.”

From vein-like constellations of ridges to gritty passages of colour to soft, buttery lines of detail, the textures are many and varied.

Are they practiced beforehand or do they come spontaneously?

“Both,” Halla replies. “We have to keep ourselves open to happy surprises when we’re working, and we have to be risk takers. I’m a risk-taker – I have nothing to lose, I want each

5

6 painting to be a completely new experience.”

“I don’t like repeating the same colour palette or repeating the same design. I like diversity, so I give myself a chance to make mistakes,” she adds. “Very important to me is actually enjoying the process of discovering and experimenting.” Settling for the status quo is not an option for Halla.

Over the last decade, she has made artists on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as back home in Egypt, reconsider the role of the pastel painter. “Everybody said you’re crazy, you can’t do that,” she says, recalling the time she told her friends she was starting out as an artist, “but I’ve never looked back.” www.instagram.com/hallashafey

Artists & Illustrators 39

Expressive FIGURES MASTERCL ASS

Royal Institute of Oil Painters member LUIS MORRIS shows how working from a sketch and mixing up a range of colours early can allow a more creative, painterly finish

40 Artists

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I

find drawing a figure from life exciting but intimidating. One is presented with such a wealth of visual information – and so little time in which to gather it. Success depends upon the ability to decide what is important, and to leave the rest out. I like taking sketches made in life sessions and using them as the basis for a painting.

The drawing is my only record of my subject.

With no tempting photo to copy, the studio painting is free to take on a life of its own.

As with a lot of my figure studies, I am looking to capture something of the essence of the form using a minimum of detail.

I do this by shedding bright light on a few selected areas and allowing the rest to be cloaked in shadows. I want my figure drawings and paintings to have a certain mystery about them. For all the abstraction and stylisation, the end result needs to have a sense of warmth and animation if it is to be successful.

It is important that the reference sketch has an essential quality that can be brought out in the final painting. The challenge then is to make sure this chosen quality doesn’t get trampled on during the course of making the painting. In this case I felt my initial sketch [pictured left], made in pastels across a 90-minute session, had an overall sense of calmness and poise. I was also very happy with the colour relationships I’d found in the body and was keen to enrich those in the painting [pictured right] to create a more vibrant picture that celebrated the way natural light bounced off a human body.

Luis's materials •Paints Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine, Viridian and Titanium White, all Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colours •Brushes Pro Arte Sterling Series 201 short flat brush, size 4 •Support Colvin & Co stretched cotton canvas, 30x23cm •Low odour thinners •Palette knife •WypAll Industrial Wiping Paper

MASTERCLASS

2 1

Mix on t h e p alet te

For me, the palette is the oil painting’s driving force. I started by mixing each of my colours with Titanium White to form bright, saturated tints. I then mixed a black from Ultramarine, Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow, which I then mixed with white to give shades of grey.

These greys in turn helped create more subdued versions of the highly saturated colours.

My first mark on the canvas was a patch of warm golden brown. This light vertical swipe was my first guess at where the central axis at the front of the stomach belonged.

L et colo ur s v ib rate

From here onwards, all other colours, shapes and marks must relate to that first keynote. The next hue added was a pinkish lilac to represent light reflected from the left hip and thigh. I chose a tone similar to the golden brown and felt these two initial colours vibrated together in a pleasing way.

I also used my fingernail to reiterate a line for the front central axis of the body, with its gentle backward slope, as well as a vague indication for the back of the ribcage.

Top tip

Try using a piece of blue WypAll Industrial Wiping Paper wrapped around your finger and dipped in turps or low-odour thinner to rub out or adjust the positions of shapes on the canvas

3

Lo ok f or ex t r em e s

With two mid-tone colours down, it was important to find extremes. I traced the line of the left arm using a warm pink and a dull orange separated by a warmish grey for the lower bicep. The darkest colour then denoted where the arm ended and the background began. I also ran the left thigh to the bottom, anchoring the figure within the canvas.

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4

Push t h e colo ur s

A tutor once described the process of painting as a search “for where one colour ended and another colour began”. When one sees a painting as a set of abstract marks jostling for position on a canvas, one doesn’t get so attached to an individual mark. This makes it a lot easier to rub them out and reposition them. Using a piece of blue WypAll paper dipped in low-odour thinner, I pushed back the line of the model’s left hip, allowing a new colour to be introduced.

MASTERCLASS

5

B r o a den t h e sp e c t r um

7

Take it to t h e top

I continued setting out extremes of colour by adding patches of fresh, clean hues of widely varying temperatures: a patch of French Ultramarine mixed with Titanium White to go behind the upper arm, and a hot pink transitioning into an orange for the model’s right arm.

Against these strong chromatic colours, I added a silvery ochre mix, made with a pale grey and Cadmium Yellow, to redefine the left hip bone. I also scraped and drew with my fingernail and the edge of the brush to find the collarbone and the angle of the right arm.

Using the axis line as a guide, I added light orange for the right breast and a deeper salmon pink for her right shoulder. These shapes were given definition by a patch of blue similar to the one behind the figure.

Parts of the hair were made as dark as anything else on the painting and then wiped off the top edge of the canvas to complete a pleasing, symmetrical composition. I also drew some simple vertical shapes to hint at background pillars and window elements.

8

6

Fin d t h e h e a d

I had really started to find the figure on the canvas and needed to make a decision about the placement of the head. I drew a light line that sloped gently from below the ribcage to the collarbone, in order to continue that central axis up the front of the body.

I drew some of the essential angles of the head and neck using a combination of warm ochre, hot pink and cooler purple mixes.

I also added more background colours in the bottom corners to further connect the figure with the edges of the canvas.

M ake a djus t m ent s

I realised the shoulders and upper torso were too narrow, so I began repositioning the basic shapes around the model’s left shoulder and ribcage to make her shoulders appear thrown back and her upper body more substantial.

I used a small tick of dark olive green to define the armpit, the front of the upper arm, and the shadow on the ribcage. Similarly, I used a vertical line of deep purple to define the front of her left forearm. A constant process of checking and readjustment is required so that the drawing and painting happen at the same time.

Artists & Illustrators 43

MASTERCLASS

9

L e ave light an d sp a ce

I wanted to leave a lot of white canvas showing to create the feeling of daylight flooding through large windows behind the subject, illuminating the figure in some places and casting shadows in others.

It was important to suggest this while keeping the background at least as abstract as the figure itself, so that the painting of the model could stay pleasingly abstract without looking unfinished.

11

10

D evelop t h e draw in g

I made some basic adjustments to the overall shape of the figure here. For example, I moved the edge of her right hip slightly to the right, which helped to accentuate the overall curve of her body.

I also added a little more mass to the lower half of the painting, meaning that the majority of pure white canvas was now in the upper half of the picture.

Ke ep it s u g g e s t ive

I made a few refinements, including a little more work on the head. Although it needed to be convincing, I wanted the head to be painted as simply as possible so as not to be out of keeping with the rest of the figure.

I hoped that the figure as a whole might convey something of the personality and bearing of the model, without having to make a detailed study of her face. To this end it helped that the head was, for the most part, silhouetted against the light of the windows.

44 Artists

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12

Kn ow wh en to s top

Knowing what you wanted to achieve – the statement you wanted to make or the feeling you wanted to convey – helps you to know when to stop painting. In this piece I had wanted to capture the light and space in the studio, and the calmness and poise of the model. I felt I’d achieved this economically so it was time to put down the brush.

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ARTIST’S TALE ART FOR ALL AGES

You don’t have to be Picasso to become an artist. All you need is your imagination.

In An Artist’s Tale, British author and artist Sue Exton offers a journey into the joy of art.

Focusing on the use of watercolour pencils, specifically Inktense, a new collection by Derwent, she shares how to get started creating your own drawings.

In this work, she presents a collection of a variety of her drawings from flowers, to landscape, to abstracts.

Exton discuses the creation of each piece and gives tips, tricks, advice, and techniques for creating on your own.

An Artist’s Tale includes more than sixty colour pictures accompanied by short stories, encouraging people of all ages to pick up a colour pencil and get started scribbling.

Bristlene is a fully synthetic version of a traditional Hog or Bristle brush, designed for Oil and Heavy Acrylic painting. Joining the ‘Prolene’ and ‘Sablene’ stable, this is a brush that fulfils its brief superbly.

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This book can be purchased from Amazon for £32.11 plus most other booksellers or direct from lulu.com Artists & Illustrators 45

Sketchboo k IN-DEPTH

STRATEGY Although you only tend to see finished work, a sketchbook is often a key part of the process.

We asked seven top artists to open their books and share their methods

Rose Dufton

ARTIST AND PRINT DESIGNER

“I use my sketchbooks for a few different reasons, and I have several on the go at once. My favourite would have to be Moleskine’s watercolour sketchbooks, they come in varied sizes and are landscape in format. I have also just bought some Royal Talens’ Art Creation ones, which I am enjoying working in for a change as they are portrait format. I mainly use watercolour paints, as well as brush pens and gouache.

“I sometimes use sketchbooks to make thumbnail sketches for larger paintings. However, the main use would be to experiment in. I like to see them as mini journals of ideas, rather than curated places with pretty pages. Don’t be scared by a sketchbook. Try not to keep them precious and perfect as if you do you will never use them. In my opinion, sketchbooks should be played with and used as a place to let ideas flow, as that is when the best kind of accidents happen that can spark incredible ideas.” www.rosedufton.com 46 Artists

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IN-DEPTH

Jen Russell -Smith ILLUSTRATOR AND AUTHOR OF THE JOY OF SKETCH

“How I use my sketchbook varies a lot. I aim to do a quick sketch – anything I’m thinking about or that has caught my eye – each morning before I start work, but that often doesn’t happen. Those daily sketches are always my favourites, though, because they turn into an illustrated diary that has captured that moment in time. And because they’re not themed or planned, I often end up with something a little different to my usual work. I also use my sketchbooks to test out colours and techniques that I’m planning to use on commissioned pieces. I primarily work in Moleskine or Pink Pig sketchbooks as both have good, robust watercolour paper options. I use waterproof black Platinum Carbon ink with watercolours for the most part.

“My book, The Joy of Sketch, has lots of tips for beginners but my primary tip would be to draw what you love – don’t force yourself to draw flowers if you find them boring. Use your sketchbook as a moodboard for noting decorating ideas, compiling outfits you want to wear, capturing quick sketches of your children or pets – whatever you like looking at and are excited by.” www.jenrussellsmith.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 47

IN-DEPTH

Robin Olsen ABSTRACT ARTIST

“My sketchbooks are primarily a place for testing and exploration. I consider them a place to try out ‘what-ifs’.

What if I mix ink and coloured pencil? What if I try stitching on top of paint? What if I cover most of my collage with white paint? They are a place where I can play with ideas and experiment fully.

“As an abstract painter, I refer to my sketchbooks frequently as a source of ideas to try in paintings. They often are the impetus I need for a new series. They also serve as a reference. When I want to make the perfect shade of pale, ocean blue, I check my colour charts to see which colours to use. When I make a colour chart, I often do a small sample painting next to it to see how the colours relate. It’s a quick reference for future paintings.

“The important thing about sketchbooks is having everything in one place to refer to easily later, but that doesn’t mean it has to be created in that place. If you struggle to experiment freely in your actual sketchbook, or consider the pages too precious, work on separate sheets and glue or tape them in afterwards. The important thing is to record all your ideas, but it doesn’t really matter how they get there.” www.robinolsenart.com

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IN-DEPTH

Megha Kapoo r VICE PRESIDENT OF THE WATERCOLOR SOCIET Y OF INDIA “My sketchbook is an important part of my life. Earlier they were only for practising anatomy, figure drawing and everyday sketches. But now they have become an integral part of my life’s journey. They are like a journal of my life.

The moments I come across or everyday experiences.

“I love the Art Creation sketchbooks from Royal Talens.

I bought a few of them from a store in Spain and I loved them. And now I buy them online through Amazon. I love to use watercolours and inks. I have a beautiful collection of nibs that are quick and handy for capturing the moment.

“My tip would be don’t try to make a perfect piece of artwork in your sketchbook. I think that's the best place where you can be yourself. Just be free and journal each moment of your life in them. They will become the bestest friends.” www.meghakapoorart.com

Jill Leman

PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL WATERCOLOUR SOCIET Y, UK

“My sketchbooks are a visual diary – I enjoy drawing.

I use sketchbooks for drawing something I might want to put in a painting later – this might be flowers, china, a view through a window or in the garden, or other bits and pieces.

“I often use sketchbooks that are roughly A4, spiralbound ones can be useful if you are out and about as they are lighter. When I am working in them, I tend to use 2B or 4B pencils, pens, coloured pencils or paint – watercolour usually.

“The one piece of advice I’d give a fellow artist is this: don’t think your sketchbook has to look perfect!”

Jill's work features in Chelsea Physic Garden, which runs 12-30 August at Bankside Gallery, London. www.jillleman.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 49

IN-DEPTH

Andrea Hentze ABSTRACT PAINTER

“My sketchbook is my sacred place to explore and let my art flow freely through me. When I started out, I felt like there was a friction within me: the longing to create abstract art and these niggling questions of what it will be all about. My sketchbook gave me the room to just explore without constantly wanting to answer this question. The white page of a sketchbook is less frightening than a blank canvas. Knowing this creates the freedom to explore art and listen to my heart’s desires instead of wanting to figure it all out with my mind.

“The key to find this focus for me is daily practice.

It’s like I write a story in my sketchbook every day. Over time I can see how themes emerge, created day by day, but discovered in reflection afterwards. I reflect a lot after my art sessions: what do I like? What was fun? What associations come to me? This reflection ties everything together and over time, you look back and you see themes arise and threads are weaving together beautifully.

“Limiting the endless possibilities makes it so much easier to start. You might like to choose a special theme (such as ‘black and white’) or use new materials.

Nevertheless, stay flexible and change the limitation up if you feel like it. It’s your sketchbook and you are free to explore whatever comes to your heart so trust that.” www.andreahentze.com

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XXXXX

Robb ie Wraith

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIET Y OF PORTRAIT PAINTERS

“My advice is to always have the habit of carrying a sketchbook, and never be afraid to try a subject, even if you think it might not work. My sketchbooks have been a constant companion for more than 50 years, I’ve had one in my pocket every single day.

“I always draw from life, never photographs – the essence of drawing, especially in a sketchbook, is your reaction to the moment. Your state of mind becomes part of the sketch: the changing light, the unpredictable and fast-moving subject. My sketchbooks are packed with these moments, from lunch with Nelson Mandela to dustbins in Dunstable.

“Every sketch is an experiment: your subject leaves the restaurant, the light changes, someone yells at you for staring at them across a crowded pub (that’s happened more than once...). It might well not work to your satisfaction, but even so it is an honest drawing.

“I have a huge variety of old sketchbooks, but nowadays I use a Moleskine book with watercolour paper, usually a couple of Schneider’s Slider Edge ballpoint pens, a fountain pen with Noodler’s ink, a tiny watercolour box (both for watercolour sketches and also more manageable monochrome washes), and a pencil or two. My jacket pockets are always loaded and ready.” www.robbiewraith.com

Artists & Illustrators 51

Paint with Purpose QUICK TIPS

Newlyn Art School’s popular Defining Practice course will soon be available online.

Tutor FAYE DOBINSON shares 10 tips to help you become a more focused artist

1. NOTICE WHAT YOU NOTICE Whether you are a painter, a printmaker or even a sculptor, gently instigating a regular drawing habit will feed your practice enormously.

Quick sketches of anything around you, whether in your home or out in the environment, will soon show you what it is that your eye is drawn towards and where your gaze naturally falls.

2. GATHER YOUR INSPIRATIONS Making time to research artists that resonate with you is both inspiring and validating. You can begin to think of yourself as part of a lineage and themes that you might not be able to see clearly in your own work may emerge in that of the artists to which you are drawn.

Trust your instincts. Keep a sketchbook, a folder or a Pinterest board and collect inspiration from magazines, books or the internet.

3. CALM YOUR INNER CRITIC

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LAURA ADAI/UNSPLASH/EMMA GRIFFIN/NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART

Our internal critic can run roughshod over our dreams and our enthusiasm, leaving us questioning good ideas when we have them.

Before you dismiss your next idea, try to give it a form first – be that as a drawing, a gathering of objects, or a note in a sketchbook. In doing so, it is easier to look at the idea from all angles, so that you can ask questions of it, and decide whether you wish to pursue it further.

Dismissing anything in its tender phase does the creative conversation a great disservice.

XXXXX

4. LET THE PROCESS LEAD

7. WORK IN SERIES

I am what I would call a very “process led” artist. This means that rather than working towards a specific idea, I lay out the materials and mediums that are resonating with me and then I begin to make, letting those materials begin their own journey towards a finished piece.

If you struggle to settle on an idea or a subject, why not try this approach.

By establishing a fertile space where inspiration and “happy accidents” can occur, I end up creating things that I never could have planned.

A wonderful way to take the pressure off yourself and your current painting is to work on more than one at once.

Far from diluting the results, it enables concerns, decisions and imagery that we might pour into one piece to be explored in several.

Pieces developed simultaneously often begin to speak to one another, gelled together through proximity and a particular method. You’ll be more productive too, able to work on one while another dries.

5. MAKE WORK ABOUT WORK Try viewing a problematic piece that you are working on as a source for other artworks. If a painting feels unresolved or intriguing yet unsatisfying, try making a drawn study of it, or a collage based upon it.

Viewing your art through the filter of a different process pushes you to respond in a different way and not just look but really see.

LAURA ADAI/JASON LEUNG/UNSPLASH/NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART

6. REMEMBER YOU ARE USEFUL The arts have had a rough time of late. One thing I’ve taken great heart from has been the restoring of the role of art and creativity into the lives of many through these testing times.

Art is a language and a means of expression that speaks to people on emotional and psychological levels; it can uplift, restore and inspire. We, as artists, must not forget how useful we are in reminding people of that.

8. TRY NEW WAYS OF MAKING Sometimes we tire of our own artistic language yet don’t know how else to express ourselves. A comfort zone is necessary and even restorative sometimes, yet a foray into another way of making can also refresh us and our work.

At Newlyn Art School, we often encourage students to use photography to look at ideas of place and landscape. This can help them to notice that their way of seeing the world is as individual and valid as everyone else’s.

9. DON’T TRY TO FINISH EVERYTHING Think of each piece that you make as a stepping stone to the next. Holding this truth allows a little more freedom within – and a little less pressure upon – our creative process.

If you get easily disheartened when a piece has not turned out the way you had imagined it might, avoid berating

yourself and try to see it instead as one that needed to come out – one that cleared the way for the next.

10. FOLLOW ENTHUSIASM There is an idea that great art only comes from suffering. While that can be true, it can also come from joy, exuberance, tenderness and enthusiasm.

Follow your enthusiasm and curiosity for they are your wayfinders, your creative GPS. Think of them as a huge well of energy that will sustain you on the (often rocky) road to making great art.

Faye is a leader on Newlyn Art School’s year-long Defining Practice course.

An online version will be available from May 2021. www.newlynartschool.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 53

CO LO U R THEO RY

1. COLOUR LANGUAGE

JAKE SPICER begins a new four-part series on understanding colour by showing us how the use of more accurate descriptions can help us better identif y and replicate hues

T

he language we use to describe colour affects our ability to represent it accurately. Take the robin redbreast [above] as an example. On many Christmas cards, the demonstrably orange-breasted bird is depicted with an eponymous red bib and most children would reach for a red felt-tip if they came across one in a colouring book.

This imaginative distortion of the robin’s colouring no doubt happened because the nickname “redbreast” was given to the bird prior to the word “orange” even entering the English language.

The word “orange” initially appeared in reference to the fruit, only later being used to describe a discreet hue from the 16th century onwards.

PRE-16TH-CENTURY COLOUR CATEGORIES

Yellow

Red

Lacking the linguistic category of orange, our predecessors were forced to use either red or yellow instead.

In fact, when Geoffrey Chaucer tried to write about a fox in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale two centuries prior to that, he had to call it simply a colour “betwixe yelow and reed” [sic]. Such descriptions echo through our visual culture and lead to the miscolouring of small birds on seasonal greeting cards in the 21st century.

I give this example to show how we are prone to misrepresenting colours if we do not have the adequate vocabulary to describe them. It is only by first broadening and clarifying our written and spoken language that we can learn to visually represent the full spectrum more accurately. In this new four-part series, I’ll be looking at how we can use an understanding of the fundamental properties of colour to look at the world around us and create more compelling artwork.

MODERN COLOUR CATEGORIES

Yellow

Orange

Red

Colour categorisation has improved over the years and that changes how artists imagine and represent those colours.

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C O L O U R T H E O RY

Fundamental colours

LOOKING AT COLOUR To describe colour, and ultimately to represent it accurately, we must learn to look at colours specifically.

In day-to-day life we use colour language to refer to the local colour of a subject, its fundamental colour.

We say, “I will wear red socks today” or “pass me my blue coat”.

However, if the sun is going down, shining a golden light upon one half of that coat and casting the other half in shadow, we don’t then say “pass me my yellow and grey coat”, despite the shift in our visual experience.

The skill of extrapolating fundamental colour from a perception altered by changing light and shadow patterns is a complex one that we have developed unconsciously, but it is also one that we as artists must reverse in order to better represent the colours of the world in our paintings, drawings and prints.

The first step towards a better perception of colour is to be specific – you must learn to see each jigsaw puzzle piece of your subject in isolation, described and depicted as its own unique colour.

Don’t just focus on the local, fundamental colours of the subject [top left]; try instead to distinguish between discreet areas of different hues [below].

Observed colours

Artists & Illustrators 55

C O L O U R T H E O RY

DESCRIBING VARIETY Once you have isolated an area of colour in your subject, try to describe the colour that you see. Finding the right words to describe what you see will help you to mix the right paint or pick the best pencil with which to represent it.

While colour theorists like Albert Munsell attempted to codify colours with numerical values, I find it better to combine both the objective qualities of a colour – the hue, saturation and tonal value – with the subjective colour language that we are often most familiar with. After all, the ability to perceive colour varies

from person to person and our application of it in art is poetic, so a malleable language reflects our experience of colour better than a completely objective system.

While we are all familiar with the language of hues (red, green, blue, and so on) people often confuse tone (how light or dark a colour is) with its saturation (how bright or dull it is).

Also note that the common categories of “pink” and “brown” – prevalent in our skin tones and therefore our imaginations – are not hues but rather catch-all terms for pale reds/ magentas/purples and desaturated reds/oranges/yellows respectively.

HUE Hue describes the position of a colour along the spectrum of visible light. We often describe a colour in relation to the neighbouring hue – contrasting a red-orange to a yellow-orange, for example.

TONE The tone of a colour can range from light to dark – all colours have a value of tone that can be ascertained intuitively, or by turning an image black and white.

Mid-tone, desaturated red-orange (like terracotta)

SATURATION The saturation of a colour describes its intensity, ranging from bright (saturated) to dull (de-saturated).

Mid-tone blue-grey

Dark, desaturated red-brown 56 Artists

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Describing the differences between similar colours using a mixture of objective and subjective language will help you practice your colour distinction.

Mid-tone, dull yellow-green (olive-like)

C O L O U R T H E O RY

Mid-tone, saturated green (grass-like)

Dark, saturated blue-green (like ivy)

Exercise 1

Winsor Yellow Light, saturated yellow

Name game

We’ll delve more deeply into colour mixing over the next few issues but the first step towards better colour mixing is to understand the properties of the media you are working with by applying the same principles of perception and description that you applied to the subject itself.

Paints are often named for the pigments from which they derive (Titanium White, for example) or else they have more poetic descriptions, such as French Ultramarine, which refers to French chemists’ lab-made replacement for the expensive lapis lazuli pigment that was mined in Afghanistan beyond the sea – or ultra marinus.

While these subjective paint and pencil names might create helpful associations, they are not universal.

It is important to be able to simply see the colour in isolation and make a judgement about how well it will match. To help with this, take all of your colours and make swatches of them in a sketchbook, noting both their tube or pencil names and the colour properties that you perceive in them, as I have done on the right.

Yellow Ochre Mid-tone, dull yellow

Burnt Sienna Dull red-orange

Winsor Red Saturated red

Alizarin Crimson Dark, saturated purple-red

Winsor Violet Dark, saturated purple

French Ultramarine Mid-tone, saturated blue

Winsor Blue Dark, dull blue, tending to green

Winsor Green-Blue Saturated blue-green

Sap Green Dull yellow-green

Light, saturated yellow (like an unripe lemon) Saturated yellow flowers

Exercise 2 Colour notes

All learning should begin with curiosity and the best way to develop your appreciation of colour is to start to notice it around you. Make a collection of visual notes, recording the colours in objects, spaces, people and artworks in your sketchbook, using whatever coloured media you have to hand – paint, ink, or coloured pencil – alongside written notes.

Draw from life when you can to avoid the colour distortions of your camera’s settings and even when you do not have time to make a drawing, start to give names to the colours you see, describing them to yourself as you go about your day. www.jakespicerart.co.uk

Pale, lesssaturated yellow petals

Buds of pale, desaturated magenta

Dark, dull-green leaves

Next Month:

Understand hues with a neat new exercise

Artists & Illustrators 57

Painting from PROCESS

memory

After a year in lockdown, our visual memories are more important than ever. ROB DUDLEY shares a method that will help you utilise them to create more artistic paintings

S

ome landscape painters work on location, others from references back in the studio. I have done both over the years. Working en plein air in oils or watercolour, I would essentially paint or draw what was in front of me.

I would then take these notes and sketches back to the studio and develop them into more “finished” pieces. For many years this has been my process when painting the landscape and I’ve had very little reason for it to change as it had served me well.

Recently, I learnt of an artist who had a very different approach to landscape painting. He began much as I did: working on location, sketchbook and camera in hand, before returning to the studio armed with numerous photos and sketches.

The difference being that he would then put these reference materials away in a drawer and proceed to make a painting without looking at them. The studio painting process would rely instead on his memory and experience of the location.

The reasoning behind this approach was that his memory would, to a large

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part, inform what the painting would be about. It acted like a filter, sifting out all unnecessary elements and leaving only the strongest as a basis for the painting. This approach was very different to my own but one that lockdown gave me the perfect opportunity to try.

I was less stringent though.

I decided to work from my memory of the location for as long as I could, at least until the plan for the painting was almost complete. Only then would I refer back to sketches – and only if I deemed it essential to the painting’s progression. Otherwise, I was more than happy to paint without them.

If you look at the following case studies and compare my final “memory” paintings with the photos of the actual locations, you’ll see they are similar yet lacking topographical accuracy. However, as artist friends have suggested, the paintings seem to be more concerned with the spirit of the location and I find that to be most encouraging.

While painting from memory might seem tricky, I would suggest that it is beneficial on a number of levels to all

Final painting

Location sketch

artists, regardless of experience.

It can sharpen the visual memory and also help you filter out unwanted or unnecessary elements of a composition in the process, allowing you to produce more artistic results. www.moortoseaarts.co.uk

PROCESS

Original scene

Case study 1

The Stour near Dedham , oil on board, 30x18cm The Stour near Dedham was inspired by an afternoon at Flatford Mill in Suffolk. I took a few photos and made some drawings of the river and fields. I also made sure I committed to memory many of the things that I had noticed while out walking that afternoon.

Back home in Devon, I set about planning a painting.

I produced a number of small drawings, focusing on my memories of that afternoon and trying to distil the essence of a summer walk by a rather beautiful river. I found it to be quite freeing to draw without the sketches or photos in front of me. The lack of reference allowed me to concentrate on what the scene was about; how I felt towards it became as important as how it looked.

It was only with planning underway that I began to refer back to my sketches and notes. Notice how the location drawing and final painting are similar in some respects – and quite different in others. For instance, I failed to include the fence and the cattle turned out to be geese!

However, the painting more closely resembled the mood I wanted to convey, so I was satisfied with the outcome.

Memory sketch

Memory sketch

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PROCESS

Case study 2 Mist on the Marsh , oil on board, 30x20cm

This very simple oil study was the result of a visit to a rather misty bird reserve in south Devon. An atmospheric scene such as this is almost perfectly suited to this process of painting from memory, particularly as the light was changing so quickly. After a few hurried sketches and photos, I retreated to the studio to make a painting.

When comparing the location work to the finished memory painting, notice how I simplified the complex tree shapes in the distance and the grasses in the fore- and mid-grounds, concentrating much more on their overall shape rather than fussing over the detail. I also clearly remembered the near pool to be much wider than it was, which helped to lead the eye into the painting, particularly without the fence acting as a barrier.

If you tend to slavishly copy a subject, this method of memory painting can help you get away from that. Even a good memory is selective and so the process forces you into making artistic decisions that will in time improve your practice – and your paintings.

Original scene

Location sketch

Final painting

Memory sketch 60 Artists

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PROCESS

Original scene

Location sketch

Memory sketch

Case study 3

Moorland Stream , Harford, watercolour on paper, 22x29cm I recently spent the best part of a spring morning walking across the southern parts of Dartmoor. Although I know the area well, I still discover new things. On this occasion a stream that was normally a trickle was more like a small river after heavy rain. I took photos and made sketches, noting the sparkles on the water and the turquoise colours of the granite boulder.

Back in the studio, I drew several small thumbnails to test my composition ideas before making a painting, all from memory. The stream, the boulder and the small tree became the focus of the painting, while the colours were those that I associated most closely with my experience of Dartmoor on a clean and crisp spring morning.

This time, I didn’t look at the reference material until

Final painting

the studio painting was finished. I realised I had completely overlooked the fallen tree in the stream. It was in my location drawing, but my memory had filtered it out of the finished watercolour. Perhaps it was for the best as including it would have taken something away from the stream and the bright spring sunlight falling upon it, making this a very different painting.

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H OW I D R AW

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H OW I D R AW

Curtis Holder The winner of last year’s Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year shares his techniques, his honest approach to portraiture, and his shameless art shop confessions

C

urtis Holder was born in Leicester in 1968.

He completed a foundation year, prior to his BA in graphic design from Kingston University. A postgraduate diploma in character animation from Central Saint Martins followed in 2005.

While working as a primary school teacher, Curtis entered and won last year’s seventh series of Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year. His winning commission, a portrait of dancer Carlos Acosta, is now part of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s collection. www.curtisholder.co.uk

Art as therapy

LEFT Family, coloured pencil on paper, 120x120cm

Self-portraits are strange things.

I’ve had to get into using photography, which is better for me because I have to really think about what it is that I want to draw. Drawing an individual is about a conversation, it’s a two-way thing. With a self-portrait, it’s hideous.

It’s like going to see a therapist.

Why put yourself through that?

That’s one of the questions I’ve been asking myself. I think to be a good artist and have a good life, you need to keep asking yourself questions

about who you are, what you are, and where you want to go. Before entering the Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year, I was a primary school teacher. I got to a stage where I thought, ok, either I’m going to be a headmaster or I’m going to be selfish and embrace that part of myself that I’ve ignored. I said, right, I’m going to stop teaching and I’m going to give this a go. It was time to flex a muscle I thought was there, but I wasn’t sure. What the show has done has fast forwarded my practice.

I did have a stint as an illustrator, but I didn’t put myself out there and say this is what I do, take it or leave it.

I would be asked to emulate other people’s styles and that made me embittered. I had to stop before I confused that anger with a lack of love for the craft and all things creative.

For me, drawing has been my oldest companion. It speaks to me in a way that nothing else does and it reveals to me more about what is going on inside my brain than I could

do sitting with a therapist. At times I find it difficult to articulate what I’m feeling through words, so I feel that my language is best expressed through the marks that I make. There’s a direct line from your eye to your brain to your arm and out through the pencil. There’s an immediacy and a comfort to that.

An honest approach I’m in a same-sex relationship, and being black and male in a primary school is an unfamiliar situation for a lot of people anyway, so you have to have discussions at home that someone who wasn’t all of those things would probably take for granted. Most teachers, especially primary school ones, will bring their home life and private life into their teaching without a second thought.

I had to think, right, what kind of teacher did I want to be? I didn’t want to be someone who holds things back because, for one, children can sniff that out in a second. I decided

Family is one of the most difficult drawings I’ve ever done... I had to trick myself to make that piece Artists & Illustrators 63

H OW I D R AW

I had to be very transparent about everything. At first it was very scary, but in the end very freeing. I think that openness spilled out into my art.

A portrait usually starts with a conversation – it’s about making a connection. And then turning those

Drawing reveals to me more about what is going on inside my brain than I could with a therapist

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conversations into portraits starts by sitting and unpicking how I’m feeling.

I then make marks in a sketchbook that interpret that feeling, just basic marks, scribbles. Over several small drawings, that grows into something more substantial and slowly it will transform into a composition.

Family was probably one of the most difficult drawings I’ve ever done.

I basically had to trick myself to make that piece. I’ve been with Steve for 18 years and I’ve only drawn him once.

I find it really difficult drawing someone who is really familiar, because your brain messes you up and makes you

draw those things you think you see.

I had to understand what I wanted to say with it. I had conversations with myself about what it meant to be confined with this person that you’re in love with and you’ve been with for a long time, and it made me question what was “family” – what was my “family” – and what that meant to me, and how was I going to show people who looked at this piece.

When I’m doing a larger piece, I tend to work with Derwent Lightfast coloured pencils. I use different ones for different circumstances. I don’t tend to vary the pressure of the

ABOVE Caron in Sunshine, coloured pencil and acrylic gouache on paper, 120x115cm

LEFT Friday, coloured pencil on paper, 85x105cm

marks; I use similar strokes to build up the tone instead.

I don’t like to be precious when I’m working. Buying a single sheet of paper constrains me so I like the convenience of paper on the roll.

I can draw as big as I want and then if I need to trim it down, I trim it down.

I use a 200gsm roll of Fabriano paper – it’s substantial and it has just enough bite to the surface.

I will begin with a very rough under-drawing, usually in a shade of red because I draw a lot of people and it feels quite fleshy. It’s also something that I can work on top of.

I like to leave all the lines there,

because I like to show people the start, the middle and the ending.

Shameless experiments The yellow wash in Caron in Sunshine came about through trial and error.

I knew exactly what I wanted in my head. I wanted flat colour, but I needed to draw on top of it and also see the drawing underneath it.

I experimented a lot with different types of paint and application.

I love talking to staff in art shops, especially Cass Art, because they’re all artists. I have very little shame, so I will go in there and say: I don’t know anything, this is what I want, how can

I do it? I eventually arrived at acrylic gouache. I then started experimenting with an airbrush too – I watered down the acrylic gouache and it dried to a matt finish. I’m also experimenting with liquid graphite and liquid charcoal. I love the quality of those mediums. I don’t want to move away from drawing: I want them to enhance the marks I’ve made, not take over.

One piece that I fought with a lot was Friday. It was about three months from start to finish. In my initial sitting with Martin, we had a conversation about many things: connections, love, the past… He was going to visit a new partner overseas and they didn’t know each other very well.

After the sitting, he got the all-clear to go out there and he’s fallen in love.

I thought, this picture is not finished, this doesn’t have the complete feeling. At one point, I thought I would have to discard the drawing, but I felt I needed to get the rest of this story first and see how it feels, see if we can work that into this piece.

I don’t know whether “complete” is ever a word I would use with a piece.

But my mantra from start to finish is: what is the feeling I want from the piece? I will keep going if I can make that feeling more pronounced.

Once I’ve got it, I will stop.

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t n i a P LIKE RAVILIOUS DEMO

Eric Ravilious’ intricately cross-hatched watercolours recall his training as a wood engraver. In this exercise, DAVID CHANDLER employs his method to explore contour and texture

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DEMO

David's materials •Watercolours Payne’s Grey, Phthalo Blue, Forest Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, Vermilion and Chinese White •Brushes Round brushes, sizes 2, 4, 8 and 12; short flat brush, 3/4” •Paper Cold-pressed 300gsm watercolour paper •3H pencil •Mixing palette •Water pot •Scalpel

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E xamine the s ource

From the rural idylls of his early years to his wartime airplanes and battleships, Eric Ravilious’ intricately crosshatched watercolours recall his training as a wood engraver.

By the time of 1940's Submarines in Dry Dock, it was still the “dot and speck and dash and dab” (as his biographer, James Russell, called it) of the wood engraving that informed his work.

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D r aw lightl y

Rounded, mechanical forms like Ravilious’ submarines were on my mind for this painting and the beached fishing boats at

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Smeaton’s Pier in St Ives seemed ideal. Like Submarines..., I have attempted to channel the viewer’s gaze between the beached fishing boats and towards the brickwork of the pier. Start by drawing your design lightly onto the paper with a 3H pencil. If your boats have registration codes, mask these with masking fluid.

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B lo ck in grey s

With the size 8 round brush, paint dilute Payne’s Grey on any surfaces that will be dark or in shadow – in my example, this was the pier, the coastline, the boats and the shadow under the boat on the right. On the cabin of the

boat on the left, I scrubbed the Payne’s Grey on using a dry size 4 round brush. With the same brush, I drew parallel lines across the sea (top right corner) and radiating lines over the sand in the foreground.

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Intro duce detail

With a dry size 4 round brush and a scrubbing, dotting stroke, darken shadows where necessary on the boats and on the pier.

I’ve also added fine detail on the distant coastline using the size 2 round brush. Then, once the Payne’s Grey is dry, paint the sky with dilute Phthalo Blue using the size 4 round brush.

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DEMO

Top tip

important to Shape was a carefully Ravilious, so awing dr ed execut re he y ke is

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D e ep en s hadow s

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Add new colour s

Adjust the values where necessary. I added more Payne’s Grey to the boat on the left, more Phthalo Blue to the sky, and a mix of the two to the boat on the right.

With a round size 12 brush dipped in dilute Yellow Ochre, paint the sand in the foreground.

Allow the colour to fade as you move towards the sea. When this is dry, darken the foreground by scrubbing and dabbing on more of the same colour with a dry size 4 brush. Paint the hull of one of the boats with thin strokes of the size 2 round brush in Forest Green.

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Cro s s contour s

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T id y up detail s

With the size 2 round brush, crosshatch the hull by placing more strokes of Forest Green at 90 degrees to the previous ones.

With the same brush, paint the boat on the right with thin strokes of Phthalo Blue, following the contours of the hull. Add ripples of Burnt Sienna and Phthalo Blue where the water turns transparent on the shore. Use the No.4 round brush to darken the shadows under the boats with dilute Burnt Sienna, then dry the brush and scrub more onto the foreground.

Now add finishing touches.

My lifebuoy is pale Vermilion and the fishing floats are pale Vermilion and Lemon Yellow. The seaweed-covered rope is Forest Green. Take care not to make your colours too bright. Darken the hulls, if necessary, and peel off the masking fluid. Tidy up any uneven letters or numbers with a scalpel blade and Chinese White.

Use the size 2 round brush to paint brickwork and shadows with Payne’s Grey. I added radiating lines on the sand in pale Burnt Sienna.

This is an edited extract from David’s new book, Tate: Master Watercolour, published by Ilex Press. www.octopusbooks.co.uk

PROJECT

Painting FROM PHOTOS Former BP Travel Award winner EDWARD SUTCLIFFE shares his simple seven-step plan for making striking realist paintings from your source pictures

RIGHT Nora, oil on canvas, 170x110cm

PROJECT

W

hether you are a beginner or have been interested in art for a period of time, below are seven principles, skills and philosophies that, if followed, will make you a more accomplished realist painter.

I guess there’s only one caveat here: that the responsibility for putting these principles into practice is down to you. There is no “silver bullet” when it comes to painting; it will make demands of you and you will find it difficult. However, if you enjoy the act and if you put in the hours over a period of time, then there is nothing stopping you creating wonderful art. While this piece has been written from the perspective of painting from photographs, many of the principles can be equally applied to working directly from life.

1. STATE YOUR INTENT At the beginning of each painting, write down a very short statement of intent: one or two sentences about what you want your artwork to say and do. This will give you clarity and help you to avoid the creative cul-de-sacs that many painters find themselves drawn down.

Think about how you want to work.

Most paintings, regardless of their originality, are in some way attached to a genre or style. Do you want to be a photorealist? An impressionist?

An expressionist or work in a traditional academic style?

It’s also worth thinking hard about how your painting will be interesting and engaging to other people when they see it. Good art is packed with

emotion; it tells honest stories from the artist’s own experience. People will want to see your story, your observations and your experiences interpreted in paint, so write them down first to give you a focal point when creating.

2. LEARN HOW TO LOOK Your eyes are your biggest asset when painting. Just as a chef must cultivate an ability to taste and a musician to listen, a painter must learn how to look. Start with some exercises. The next time you are out in your garden or go for a walk, take a close look at the trees. Notice the textures and subtle greens that exist within the bark and think for a moment about how this would translate to paint.

The act of looking is in many ways the most crucial aspect of any realist painting. Before you even get to looking at the photo, your subject matter should be burned on the back of your retina! The more you have looked at your chosen subject, the easier it will be for you to translate it into paint. If you make a habit of looking in this way, the effort will be repaid. And if you are always on the lookout for interesting things in everyday life, you will often find the inspiration for your next painting hiding in plain sight too.

Creating paintings from photos can make the practice of looking easier.

Colours and tones are locked into the image; they will always be consistent and won’t change. This makes the job of finding them and mixing them precisely on your palette an achievable skill.

3. USE GOOD TONES Painting from photographs requires a good source image. Try to take or choose a photo that has a clearly defined tonal structure – in other words, one made up of distinct areas of light, mid- and dark tones.

Using a photo of a well-lit subject with a clear tonal structure does a lot of the work for you and actually makes it easier to translate the subject into paint. You are also able to edit the image by adjusting the contrast, exposure, saturation and so on.

If you are working from a photo, or even from life, and you are struggling to see the full tonal structure, get yourself a sheet of green or red acetate and hold it in front of your source. Blocking out the full spectrum will help reveal the range of tones.

4. MAP OUT SHAPES Before starting a painting, you are usually confronted by a white canvas or sheet of paper. However, white isn’t always the ideal surface to work on because it is too bright. If not dealt with properly, it can make the colours and tones of the resulting painting lack richness and depth.

It’s always best to “kill” a white surface with a thin wash of neutral paint (either acrylic or oil, though the former dries quicker). This needn’t be too dark or thickly applied, just enough to ensure you are not painting on brilliant white. Then it’s time to start drawing.

The choice of drawing tool isn’t a concern – it’s what you draw, not what you draw with that’s important.

Any realistic painting is made up of a patchwork pattern of colours and

Artists & Illustrators 71

PROJECT

RIGHT Gridding up your reference photo and canvas can help you see things accurately

your drawing should aim to delineate the edges or contours of this patchwork. Forget details for now and try to construct a map that you will later fill with colour. Remember to look hard and search for those shapes.

Sometimes a grid can help with accuracy. Draw a simple grid on your photo and do the same on your canvas or paper, varying it according to scale. The shapes and contours of a subject are easier to see accurately with grid lines to judge against.

5. COLOUR A PATCHWORK

OPPOSITE PAGE On Assi Ghat, oil on canvas, 55x40cm 72 Artists

Now you need to fill your patchwork pattern with paint and for me this is where the fun starts. Locate a colour from your source, mix that colour in paint, and put it down on your canvas in the correct place. I say “put down” because it’s best to avoid any mixing or blending of paint on the canvas; if you do this, your painting can become a muddy mess and will lack definition.

Mix colours on your palette instead.

Having the ability to mix any colour you see is simple, but it will take time to master. Avoid having too many pigments on your palette. I’ll usually have Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, French Ultramarine and Ivory Black.

Mixing colours can be a challenge, which is why working from photos can simplify matters. Having the image and the painting next to each other and within your field of vision will enable you to get a quick measure on the accuracy of your colours.

Try this approach out. Locate a specific colour in your photo and make a rough mix of it. Now look hard at it and ask yourself questions. Is it too light? Add yellow or white. Is it too dark? Adjust with blue, black or earth colours, perhaps. Now stop again and look at what you have made. Should it be more yellow, red or blue? Add the required paint.

Now loop around and repeat the whole process again, first changing the tone (the relative lightness or darkness) and then changing the hue. Keep looking and continue with this looping process until you have a colour match. If you repeat and practice this loop of assessments and adjustments, you’ll eventually be able to mix and put down any colour.

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6. GLAZE FOR DETAIL Try to get as good and as convincing a likeness as you can with your initial painting. However, it is possible to create more detail and richer colours through a technique known as glazing [see Issue 429].

If, like me, you’re using oil paint, the glazing stage is when you should start adding linseed oil to the mix.

This makes the paint more translucent and gives it a rich gloss. (If you’re using acrylic paint, add acrylic medium and water instead of linseed oil.)

Before beginning to glaze, allow your painting to fully dry. Look hard at your photo then turn to your painting.

Search for the details and nuances in the photo that you can’t see in your painting. Once found, start adding them into your painting as thin glazes.

It takes time to master but persevere – glazing gives paintings a rich lustre.

7. ENJOY THE PROCESS I love working from photos as I never really have to worry about light conditions or models not turning up.

That in turn allows me to lose myself in the act of painting. It’s important to stress that you must find a process that you enjoy. This enjoyment will act as a fuel to power you to improvement.

Find a way of working that you enjoy and keep going. Feel free to take out and add things to the methods that I have written about. It’s important that you make paintings that give you a sense of excitement and anticipation.

That will breed confidence and help your work engross other people too. www.edwardsutcliffeart.com

PROJECT

Artists & Illustrators 73

2. Super Impasto PA I N T S U R F A C E S

Our former Artists of the Year winner Norman Long continues his look at how to create interesting surface textures with a guide to a thicker form of impasto painting

O RIGHT Arjun, oil on canvas, 51x51cm 74 Artists

ne of the biggest obstacles to creating a great surface is a reluctance to use generous amounts of paint.

This month’s challenge should shock you out of any restricting habits.

I am suggesting that you use frightening amounts of paint, more than you have ever used before.

I often ask my students to test the limits of their taste in painting.

How much strong colour before your stomach turns? Can you make some really ugly brushstrokes and leave them in? That push to excess extends

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to paint quantity. What may look like frightening mounds of paint to you or I would be mere stains to someone like George Rowlett, the Scottish impasto artist.

There are certain obstacles to this approach, not least of which is the cost of oil paint. If you get hooked on this technique, I suggest searching online for the best price on large tubes of inexpensive paint, such as those from Winsor & Newton’s Winton range. Oil painters have also devised ingenious ways of saving paint from one session to the next, the rationale being that if you never waste any

PA I N T S U R FAC E S

paint, you can paint like a millionaire.

It’s not just clean piles of paint that are worth preserving. At the end of a session, I scrape my “palette mud” into distinct piles of neutral colours for use in the next painting. When I find myself overrun with saved paint, those muddy colours are ideal for making textured surfaces on which to paint. Creating these grounds of various colours and textures without concern for subject matter is tremendous fun. Once dry, you simply have to wait for the perfect marriage of surface and subject.

An interesting ground can save a lot of work. I find that some subjects can be teased out of a canvas covered in random smears of leftover paint, while Arjun was painted on a mottled surface that I had applied with a palette knife. I was able to drag paint across the surface to produce some lively textural effects in places, while also leaving large areas untouched. If you really want to pile on the paint, a heavily textured surface also provides good “tooth” onto which the subsequent layers of paint can attach.

This “super impasto” is a truly liberating technique of working with large quantities of paint. Armed with a heavily loaded brush or knife, we are forced to interpret the subject in terms of simple shapes, letting the paint itself fall into the most surprisingly delicious accidents.

How far you take things is up to you. I developed my landscape in the demo over the page to a certain level of realism, but equally I could have left it at an earlier stage for a more expressionistic feel.

Artists & Illustrators 75

PA I N T S U R FAC E S

HOW TO MAKE… A TEXTURED GROUND 1. To create a thick, textured base layer, I spread leftover oil paint over a gesso-primed board using a palette knife.

2. I could have stopped there, but I decided to add further texture by lightly dragging a soft brush through the paint.

3. I added a stippled effect in places by “tonking” – lightly applying paper to the wet paint and lifting it off.

DEMO

Loading up the surface Autumn by the Ribble was painted en plein air, using a brown oil ground [see above] which I had prepared a few weeks before. When painting outdoors, I like to bring boards of different shapes, colours and textures and select the most suitable for the subject. My clear, horizontal palette was laid out with colours around the edges, including multiple piles of primaries and white (1). This allowed for strong, clean colour mixes at the outset, which naturally muddied themselves as the painting progressed. Piles of “palette mud” saved from previous sessions were placed inside the pure colours.

On the left are reddish neutrals moving down to bluish neutrals.

On the right, warm to cool neutrals, with a few greens at the bottom.

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The trick to good thick impasto painting is to load the canvas with as much paint as possible, as soon as possible – think of it as “paint first, draw later”. I took the time to make a rapid thumbnail sketch in my sketchbook first, then placed just a few lines on the canvas to indicate the major divisions before mixing large batches of colour with a palette knife. Mixing with a knife is slower than a brush, but it is easier to generate larger quantities. Avoid mixing pigment on your palette too thoroughly, however, if you want to leave some interesting streaks in the paint application.

After about 40 minutes of piling on paint with a palette knife and large brushes (2), it was time to slow down and assess what was needed. Canvas

PA I N T S U R FAC E S

and palette were both covered in thick paint, so carrying on at this pace would lead to mud. I cleaned the palette instead and refreshed it with piles of clean colour, which also provided a useful break from looking at the painting. When I was done cleaning, I turned the painting upside down, stood well back and assessed the progress in a pocket mirror.

What struck me was that the surface was uniformly thick and rough (3). As I continued to work on the shapes and colours of the painting, I also wanted to consider the balance of textures. Using a knife to flatten the impasto in recessive areas of the subject helped to reinforce the sense of depth and also created variety (4).

Paint application can occasionally be made to mimic the texture of the subject itself. The sky and water were relatively smooth, the foreground grasses were thick and jagged, while the finest branches were suggested with a scratchy brush (5).

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PA I N T S U R FAC E S

EXERCISE

Recycling your paint Aim This month’s exercise gives you three ways to beef up the surface of your oil paintings.

Materials • A selection of affordable oil or acrylic paints • A selection of paint brushes and palette knives • A hard-wearing support (try a wood panel or flexible linen canvas) • Cling film • Sandpaper (optional)

Subject

ABOVE Loading the canvas with paint early on can guarantee a rich and sensual surface RIGHT Oil paint preserved in cling film parcels can be re-used as a ground 78 Artists

Choose a subject you can both paint from life and also have a strong emotional connection towards – these elements will encourage you to be more expressive with the paint.

What you will learn Have you ever finished a painting, only to be disappointed by the meanness of the surface?

This exercise will show you simple ways to save wastage, which will free you up to be more generous with your application later.

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Next month:

any primed support (though try to avoid extremely dark Bring abandoned mixtures).

Enjoy experimenting paintings to life with the application, using by reworking the knives, brushes and paper surface to achieve your own distinctive textures. The palette knife is also useful for flattening areas that become too pronounced. Try preparing a few supports in one go and let them dry for at least three weeks before you paint over them.

Before painting on your dried oil ground, rub the edge of a palette knife or a sheet of sandpaper over the surface to remove any loose ridges of paint. If the texture is too smooth, use rough sandpaper to create some “tooth”. If the surface is too rough in an area of your painting that you want to be more delicate (such as a face), you can also sand it smooth. Remember you will be painting over dried oil paint, so if you need to dilute the subsequent layers, use a medium including oil not just solvent.

When you finally start painting from your subject, challenge yourself Process to load the canvas with prodigious This exercise begins at the end of amounts of paint in the first hour. your previous painting session. Get in That way, no matter what the the habit of saving leftover paint by outcome, you will guarantee a placing it on a piece of glass inside a rich and sensual surface. tin and storing it in the freezer. If the Norman’s book, Oils: Techniques and freezer’s full, make cling film parcels Tutorials for the Complete Beginner, that can be easily cut open instead. is published by GMC Publications.

That leftover oil paint can then be www.normanlongartist.com used to create a coloured ground on

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ART FOR SALE pegasusart.co.uk

Jacqueline Midgen Artist

PEGASUS ART

Commissions and products

Finest Art Materials since 2005 www.pegasusart.co.uk

jackiemidgen@hotmail.co.uk 07854 734 290 www.jacquelinemidgen. wordpress.com

Workshops - Art Classes- Canvas Making - Stretcher bars 01453 886560 info@pegasusart.co.uk ARTISTS WANTED

Visits by appointment only at Studio 126, Wimbledon Art Studios or Couture Collective, 659 Fulham Road

RANDOLPH KELLMAN CONTEMPORARY ARTIST Visit my online galleries www.rakeart.co.uk www.artists.de Telephone 020 8889 4714 Mobile 07979842456

www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk

To advertise here please call 020 7349 3702

THE CLASSIFIED DIRECTORY COURSES

Watershed Studio Celebrating our 20th year!

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• Painting and creating is your escape • Please stay safe and keep well Call Allison for details:

THREE DAY PORTRAIT WORKSHOPS

01255 820466 Email: allison@watershedstudio.co.uk

Drawing/painting a live model, anatomy, colour theory/mixing.

All abilities welcome.

St Clere’s Hall Lane, St Osyth, Clacton on Sea, Essex, CO16 8RX

www.lindyallfrey.co.uk

www.watershedstudio.co.uk

Anne Barnham Friendly & Inspiring

Oakhill Hotel, Derbyshire Tues 8th - Thurs 10th June ‘21

Dedham Hall, Essex

Sat 9th - Tues 12th Oct ‘21 annebarnham@hotmail.co.uk

www.annebarnhamsart.com 01526 320626

HOLIDAYS UK & BEYOND

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big sky art Luxury residential art breaks in North Norfolk with superb tutors

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based at The White House near Burnham Market situated in beautiful countryside fabulous food inspirational coastal locations airy onsite studio non-painting partners welcome

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bigskyartcourses.com +44 (0) 7785 439727

PRINTING www.eyeswidedigital.com Giclée Fine Art Printing Greeting Cards Canvas Prints High Quality Reproductions Produced From Original Artwork Or Digital Files 01306 875 150 • • • •

info@eyeswidedigital.com

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Making Art Work

Fine Art Giclée Printing Service Hahnemühle Papers & Canvas Photography and Scanning Service Greeting Cards and Postcards Professional and Friendly Advice No Set Up Fees & Free Art Guides Call us on 01656 652447 www.geminidigitalcolour.co.uk

... Salt of the Earth Giclée Print Service ...

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For more information call John on: 01747 852 221 or visit our website:

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To advertise here please call 020 7349 3702

THE ART SHOP DIRECTORY DEVON

LONDON

SOUTH WEST ART

RUSSELL & CHAPPLE

Old Fore Street Sidmouth EX10 8LP Tel: 01395 514717 info@southwestartmaterials.co.uk www.southwestartmaterials.co.uk Quality fine art materials, gallery and picture framing.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE PEGASUS ART – suppliers of the finest art materials Griffin Mill, London Road Thrupp, Stroud, Glos GL5 2AZ Tel: 01453 886560 info@pegasusart.co.uk www.pegasusart.co.uk

GWENT THE ART SHOP & CHAPEL

8 Cross Street Abergavenny NP7 5EH Tel: 01873852690 admin@artshopandchapel.co.uk www.artshopandchapel.co.uk Fine art supplies, exhibitions, workshops, talks, concerts and creative food from our Chapel kitchen.

LONDON JACKSON’S ART

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ATLANTIS ART MATERIALS – UK’s largest and one of Europes biggest art stores Unit 1 - Main Shop Unit 6 - Office & Warehouse Unit 7 - Paper Department Bayford Street Industrial Centre Bayford Street, London E8 3SE Tel: 020 7377 8855 www.atlantisart.co.uk Car parking, open 7 days.

INTAGLIO PRINTMAKER

The Specialist Supplier of Fine Art Printmaking Products 9 Playhouse Court, 62 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 0AT Tel: 020 7928 2633 Fax: 020 7928 2711 info@intaglioprintmaker.com www.intaglioprintmaker.com Wide range of tools available to try in our store (near Tate Modern).

STUART R. STEVENSON Artists & Gilding Materials 68 Clerkenwell Road London EC1M 5QA Tel: 020 7253 1693 info@stuartstevenson.co.uk www.stuartstevenson.co.uk

The Canvas Specialists 30/31 Store Street, London WC1E 7QE Tel: 020 7836 7521 Fax: 020 7636 8733 www.randc.net Custom canvases, linens, cottons and stretcher bars.

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19th century shop near The British Museum Pigments,Gilding & Etching supplies, tubed colour, brushes, paper, pastels.

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LONDON GRAPHIC CENTRE

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SOMERSET/ DORSET ART4ALL & ARTYCRAFTY

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Development continues at a pace.

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SUFFOLK / NORFOLK GOSLINGS

50 Station Road, Sudbury, Suffolk C010 2SP Tel: 01787 371932 A family run business specialising in Bespoke Picture Framing and Artist Materials

NORTH YORKSHIRE THE ARTIST’S PALETTE

1 Millgate, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 1AA Tel: (01845) 574457 Independent artist-managed stockists of quality materials by Winsor & Newton, Sennelier etc; Crafts, kits and models.

WEST MIDLANDS HARRIS MOORE

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ONLINE CASS ART

www.cassart.co.uk The UK’s leading art supplies retailer - the world’s best art brands at the most affordable prices.

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Quality Artist Products made in Canada Shared with the world tri-art.ca

Artists & Illustrators 81

My advice is don’t be too self-conscious… Just draw for the love of drawing When I was five, I entered a drawing competition.

I drew a picture of children dancing around a maypole and I remember the day the headteacher came into class to tell me I’d won. It was a formative moment.

I also loved reading anything by Richard Scarry. His illustrations were packed with detail. I could pore over them for hours and spot something different every time.

Rob MEET THE ARTIST

BIDDULPH The children’s book illustrator famed for his world record-breaking online draw-alongs.

Interview: REBECCA BRADBURY

During my art A level, I became obsessed with Stanley Spencer. The skin tones in his figurative works were revelatory to me. He used greens and blues that really made me look beyond the surface level of colour.

After my degree I worked as a junior designer at Just Seventeen magazine. The job was super glamorous, we went on photoshoots with the Spice Girls.

I had an epiphany while looking through an Oliver Jeffers book. I thought maybe I could create a picture book too, so I wrote a story and got an agent straight away. It took me another four years to get published.

A lot of my inspiration comes from my own children.

One of my books is about a boy who has an imaginary friend called Kevin. His name and the way he looked all came from my daughter – he was her imaginary friend.

Writing doesn’t come so easily to me. I write in rhyme and I’m very pernickety about it. Drawing comes much more naturally. I can draw away happily listening to music but when I’m writing I have to be alone in silence. #DrawWithRob began just before the first lockdown.

I thought if I filmed my draw-alongs and stuck one up online a few times a week, I could provide respite for parents. Monday I recorded my first video, Tuesday I put it online, and Wednesday I was on BBC Breakfast.

Last May, I broke the world record for the largest online art class. I needed 16,000 households to break the record and in the end I had about 46,000.

I’m a big fan of Kuretake brush pens. I use them for all my #DrawWithRob illustrations. I absolutely love the different textures you can create by pressing harder.

People think there is a right or wrong answer when it comes to drawing – but there isn’t. My advice is don’t be too self-conscious, just draw for the love of drawing.

Rob’s latest book, Draw with Rob: Build a Story, is published by Harper Collins. www.robbiddulph.com

82 Artists

& Illustrators

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