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E H T N I JO !

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The only thing you need to dilute Cobra with is water!

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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 Acting Art Editor Andrea Lynch Assistant Editor Rebecca Bradbury Contributors Hashim Akib, Grahame Booth, Alvaro Castagnet, Fabio Cembranelli, Rob Dudley, Al Gury, Jason Morgan, Kate Osborne, David Shevlino, Jake Spicer, Ann Witheridge ADVERTISING Advertising Manager David Huntington (020) 7349 3702 david.huntington@ chelseamagazines.com Group Sales Director Catherine Chapman Advertising Production www.allpointsmedia.co.uk MANAGEMENT & PUBLISHING Chairman Paul Dobson Managing Director James Dobson Publisher Simon Temlett Chief Financial Officer Vicki Gavin EA to Chairman Sarah Porter Subs Marketing Manager Bret Weekes Group Digital Manager Ben Iskander

SUBSCRIBE Easy Painting is brought to you by the makers of Artists & Illustrators magazine. To subscribe and receive a new issue every four weeks, simply contact us here: Tel: +44 (0)1858 438789 Email: artists@subscription.co.uk Online: www.subscription.co.uk/ chelsea/solo

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Welcome to Easy Painting! This is your 116-page guide to creating great pictures.

Almost everyone enjoys making art when they are children, yet as you get older it is easy to put it to one side when life gets in the way. Returning to painting – or even just picking it up for the first time – should not be something scary, however, but rather something to be celebrated. If you are holding this magazine in your hands, you've made a great first step to reconnecting with your creative self and enjoying making your mark with paint once more.

Easy Painting has been designed to guide you through the basic building blocks required to develop your knowledge and technique. You will find guides to selecting the right materials, sketching out subjects, mixing colours, creating textures and suggesting depth. You will also find a whole host of inspiration along the way in the form of our step-by-step demonstrations and in-depth case studies, which allow you to find out first hand how some of Britain's leading artists create their paintings.

Many of the articles contained in this Easy Painting compendium first appeared in Artists & Illustrators magazine. Artists & Illustrators is the UK's biggest and best selling magazine for artists and art lovers, providing a regular dose of visual inspiration and practical advice every four weeks. If you've enjoyed the work of the artists within these pages and you're keen to learn more techniques and tricks, then Artists & Illustrators is the magazine for you. You can find details for how to subscribe to Artists & Illustrators on page 103 or you can pick up a copy in all good supermarkets and newsagents.

Steve Pill, Editor Easy Painting

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Contents 6

MATERIALS

We begin by opening the store cupboard and talking through the tools you need to make great paintings, from choosing brushes to selecting a balance of colours

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CASE STUDY 1

To provide a little inspiration, the case studies provide a chance to discover the work of four leading artists, beginning with Kirsten Britt’s layered approach to portraits

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BASIC SKILLS

Three quick guides to important techniques: how to sketch a subject, how to mix a palette of colours from just three pigments, and how to vary the marks you make

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CASE STUDY 2

Former set designer Lesley Dearn tells us all about how she turns her deep love of the Welsh landscape into a series of beautifully textured abstract paintings 4

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HOW-TO GUIDES

Right, it’s time for a deeper dive into techniques… Here are five articles looking at trickier topics such as painting fur, suggesting depth and sketching creatively

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CASE STUDY 3

For our third portfolio review, we look at the floral paintings of Petula Stone, who favours a more graphic approach than one might expect from a watercolour artist

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COLOUR WORKSHOP

Colour dominates almost every painting you will make, so take advice from academy tutor Al Gury in this in-depth, four-part workshop

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CASE STUDY 4

Famed for his expressive approach to classical figurative painting techniques, Alan McGowan reveals how he is staying true to the Old Masters while carving his own creative path

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STEP-BY-STEP

To finish, it’s time to peer over the shoulder of five leading artists as they create new masterpieces in these in-depth, step-by-step painting guides Easy Painting

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Paint colours

T

here are many different types of paint on the market. Understanding how each type of paint is formulated and how it is used is crucial for getting the best results.

It also helps to know the benefits – and difficulties – that come with each type of paint so that you can find the right one to suit your style, temperament and requirements.

Fundamentally, every type of paint comes down to two elements: the colour pigment(s)

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and the binder that holds them together. It is common for the same pigments to be used across a variety of paints, yet it is the binders in which the pigment is suspended or embedded that have the greatest bearing on the character of the paint. The binder can affect the drying times of the relevant paint, as well as qualities such as viscosity, solubility and mixability.

Below are some of the most common types of paint you will find in traditional art shops.

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Before we begin painting, it is important to get to know your materials. Over the next 12 pages we will look in depth at different tools, starting with your paints

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WATERCOLOUR Watercolour is perhaps the most common painting method for artists who are starting out, yet it is also one of the trickiest mediums to master. Watercolour paint consists of finely-ground pigment suspended in a binder that is usually made from gum Arabic, wetting agents and other additives. It is applied in fluid, semi-transparent layers that allow previous layers and indeed the colour of the unpainted paper beneath to shine through and provide much of the luminosity.

Watercolour is commonly available in two forms: either a liquid paint sold in tubes or small dry blocks known as pans. These pans also come in two fairly universal sizes – half-pans and full-pans – so replacement colours can be easily slotted into an old palette or mixing tray.

For the best results, watercolour needs an absorbent surface and so paper is the common choice. Watercolour is occasionally used on other surfaces, such as card, wood, canvas, and even vellum – a type of parchment made from calf skin – though these are quite unusual choices.

OIL Oil paint is a slow-drying medium with a rich sheen, favoured by the Old Masters for its excellent blending qualities. Here the pigments are held in a drying oil, most often linseed oil.

Unlike watercolour – and indeed any water-based paints – traditional oils can't be mixed with water. The properties of the paint must be altered in other ways: thinned with a solvent (usually turpentine), thickened with beeswax, or given added transparency with extra linseed oil. Though more expensive, this gives oil paint great versatility, as it can be applied in thick strokes, known as “impasto”, or diluted into thin washes, known as “glazes”.

There are two variations of oil paint on the market. Alkyd oil paints are a more affordable option, which use a resin binder in place of oil and speed the drying times; water-mixable oil paints, meanwhile, can be thinned simply with water.

All oil paints tend to be sold in liquid form in paint tubes, though more traditional art shops will sell powdered pigments that can then be mixed with linseed oil or other oils as required.

Oil paints are suited to a wider variety of supports, including canvas, MDF, wood, plastic, metal and thicker papers. Natural supports require the surface to be prepared first with an oil paint primer, such as gesso.

OTHER TYPES OF PAINT

ACRYLIC For ease of application, you can’t beat acrylic paint.

It combines the water-soluble nature of watercolour with the buttery goodness of oils. Acrylic paint works well on canvas or thicker paper, as well as other surfaces such as wood, fabric and metal if the correct primers are applied first. Acrylics are also quick drying, thanks to the pigment being suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion, as well as a mix of preservatives, stabilisers and other additives.

Heavy body acrylics are available for anyone hoping to replicate the thicker, buttery consistency of oil paints, while retaining the blend-ability of acrylics.

You may also see acrylic inks for sale, which are usually interchangeable with traditional acrylic paints.

The main difference is that the inks are suspended in the most fluid of resin binders, allowing you to create opaque washes more easily or apply the colour with airbrushes.

Gouache – pronounced “gwarsh” – is similar to watercolour paint, yet it is traditionally opaque rather than transparent or semi-transparent.

As such, gouache is often used in conjunction with watercolour to create highlights or correct mistakes, as it can be painted over layers underneath.

You may also see acrylic gouache, which is a different type of paint. While traditional gouache can be wet again to reactivate the pigment, acrylic gouache is a matt version of acrylic paint that is waterproof once dry.

Egg tempera is another traditional medium you may spot mentioned on the gallery captions of medieval and early Renaissance paintings. Rarely used today, this method involves the pigment being bound with egg yolk and perhaps a few drops of vinegar.

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O

nce you’ve decided which medium best suits your needs and the pictures that you want to make, you can now start to pick out the individual colours that will make up your palette.

When you visit an art shop or search online, the wealth of options in every range can make you think that you need one of every colour. In truth, quality pictures can be painted with just a limited palette of colours, provided you choose ones that complement and contrast with each other well.

Ultimately, an artist’s palette is an expression of your personality and how you view the world, so it is important that you choose colours that feel right to you and that you remember that there is no “right” or “wrong” answer when it comes to choosing paint.

Nevertheless, below are a few things that you might want to consider when picking out paints.

PIGMENT QUALITY In Renaissance times, certain colours were prized because they were so rare. Rich reds and deep purples were hard to source and expensive to buy, so used sparingly. While many more paints are more readily available, certain pigments remain cheaper than others and so price can be a factor when buying paint. That said, unless you are after prized colours, like true Ultramarine, prices within a range are relatively steady.

Most tutors will recommend buying the best quality materials that you can afford. Many brands sell multiple ranges of paint, catering to both the top end of the market – often call “artists’ quality” – as well as more economic, “student” friendly ranges.

Proceed with caution with the cheaper ranges. Not only will they

tend to include cheaper pigments, but some less reputable brands may also include fillers in there to bulk out the paints.

Also take note of any colour with the word “hue” in the title – such as Cadmium Yellow Hue, for example.

What this means is that an approximation of the colour has been achieved using pigments not usually associated with the true version of that paint. Fine in practice, yet for every hue that you use, it can mean you are adding two or more pigments to your mix, rather than just one.

The more pigments in a mix, the more variables and the harder it is to control your colours.

COLOUR CHOICES The number of colours on your palette is not important – it is what you do with them that counts. Impressive paintings can be made with just four original pigments, as our guide to colour mixing on page 26 shows. In fact, you can even make great paintings with just three (a warm, a cool and a white, for example) or even two colours (a dark and a light).

However, most leading artists will tend to have between six and 10 colours in their basic palette. The most common strategy is to choose warm and cool versions of each of the three primary colours (red, yellow and blue), plus a white and the odd extra colour depending on the subject. With those primaries, you might for example choose a cooler, almost green-biased Lemon Yellow and a warmer Cadmium Yellow that leans towards oranges to give you a better range of potential mixes.

BLACK AND WHITE While the general spectrum of colours has a limitless range of possibilities, we tend to give little thought to black and white at the extremes of the scale.

In fact, there are many varieties of white pigment available, particularly in oil paints.

Titanium White is the most popular, a good all-rounder and a crisp, bright hue. Cremnitz White offers a creamier, often thicker white ideal for impasto marks. Zinc or Transparent Whites have lower tinting strengths, meaning that they require more adding to a mix and allow for more subtle shifts. Flake White contains lead so has been discontinued, though replacement versions have a similar stiffness, ideal for leaving visible marks.

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When it comes to black, some artists will swear against using a true black pigment, preferring to mix their darkest hues with two already-dark complementary colours – Ultramarine Blue mixed with either Burnt Umber or Transparent Red Oxide, for example. Much of the fear of true black pigment comes from its high tinting strength, which means it can easily overpower any mix that you wish to make. Ivory Black is a prime example of this, the blackest black in most ranges and yet tough to mix. A softer Lamp Black can be a good alternative, less powerful when mixed.

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UNDERSTANDING TERMS If you look closely at paint tubes or read up online, you will notice several terms with which you may be unfamiliar, yet they can make a huge difference to the properties of each.

We touched on the idea of “tinting strength” earlier, which determines the extent to which a paint will affect the other colours in a mix.

A “lightfastness” rating is also common, essentially a reference to

how well these colours hold up in sunlight – something especially relevant when painting thinly on paper.

A “colour index” or “pigment” code with a selection of letters and numbers refers to the individual pigments used within a shop bought colour – PW101, for example, refers to a synthetic iron oxide red pigment that appears in colours as diverse as Burnt Sienna and Mars Violet Deep.

Did you know?

Paints w ith the s ame name c a n dif fer fr om brand to brand

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Paint brushes

When choosing the perfect brush, there are lots of unexpected factors to consider. Find out all you need to know to help you choose the right tools for your next masterpiece

MEDIUM The first question to ask is a simple one: with which paint medium do you intend to use the brushes?

Art materials manufacturers will often tailor brushes to suit oils, acrylics, watercolours and more, so it pays to know up front.

Watercolour brushes tend to have shorter handles to suit artists sitting at a table or inclined board, whereas acrylic and oil brushes have longer handles designed for standing at an easel and allowing the whole arm to be used. Broadly speaking, oil and acrylic brushes are stiffer too, as you don’t want them to soften in warm water, whereas watercolour and ink brushes need to have a good “snap” so that they spring back into shape.

HAIR The big choice when it comes to brushes is whether to opt for synthetic or animal hair. Of course, synthetic brushes are usually vegan-friendly, but that’s not the only difference.

A synthetic brush is often cheaper, more hard-wearing and holds a point better than animal hair. Acrylic artists in particular tend to go for synthetic brushes, as they can withstand the regular cleaning required of that medium. The downside is synthetic fibres – often made from nylon or polyester – don’t tend to hold and distribute the paint as well as animal hair.

Animal hair paintbrushes vary in quality and, much like buying meat, it pays to obtain them from a good source and enquire about provenance.

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Bristle brushes made from ox or hog hair are a common choice for acrylic and oil painters, as the hair is much coarser so it will scrape the paint more, resulting in textured, often broken strokes. The stiffer bristles tend to pick up huge amounts of pigment too.

Sable brushes are widely considered the best for watercolourists. The Kolinsky sable is the best of the best, taken from an animal native to Siberia, so the hair is supple and resilient to survive the area’s harsh conditions. Kolinsky sables are among the most absorbent and smooth brushes available, though this is reflected in the price.

Squirrel hair is a cheaper alternative to sable: soft, absorbent, though less likely to hold its shape.

Goat hair holds moisture so is suited to blending and larger applications of colour. Badger hair is coarse yet soft, perfect for more textured work. If you see brushes advertised as camel hair, don’t get the hump. They aren’t taken from the hoofed mammals, but rather from a range of sources – often of varying quality yet priced accordingly.

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HEAD There’s a huge variety between the many different shapes of brush head.

Here are the most common ones explained in full… ● Round For round, read all-rounder. This is your workhorse brush type, able to lay down a variety of marks thanks to a decent body and pointed tip.

Choose larger rounds for broadly drawing with paint in the early stages of a picture and smaller ones as you tend to finer details.

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● Flat Thick, consistent strokes are possible with the rather square head of flat brushes. In watercolour, a larger flat brush is useful for laying down quick washes and painting expanses of water, skies and plain backdrops. ● Filbert Think of filberts as the mid-point between a round and a flat. They have the same wider head as a flat,

but with a curved tip that results in smoother, more even strokes.

As such, they are a good starter, favoured by many acrylic or oil painters. ● Bright Sometimes known as a “short flat”, they are just that – a flat brush with shorter bristles. The stubby head is useful for dabbing small, controlled strokes, much like the Impressionists. ● Rigger These long thin brushes first became popular among marine artists who used them to paint the intricate rigging on ships – hence the name.

They tend to be synthetic and produce elegant, wispy lines. ● Sword

liner If you struggle to control the thin head of a rigger, try the sword liner instead. This angled wedge still comes to a sharp point, allowing for fine details as well as sweeping, calligraphic marks.

● Fan With its spread of bristles like a peacock’s tail, the fan brush is the most appealing to look at. The broad scattered strokes are useful for hair and grass, for example, though take care to avoid repetitive marks with a fan as they can look unnatural.

Did you know?

The meta l part of a paintbru sh is kno wn as the “ fe rrule”

● Wash and mop You may see mention of these two bigger brush types, which are designed to carry large quantities of water or dilute paint – ideal for laying down washes. While a wash brush has a flat head, a mop has a round brush with a fine point. ● Hake Used primarily with ink or watercolour, these wide, flat-headed brushes also have flat handles. They are great for wetting the paper or applying large washes, and they are based upon traditional brushes used in Japanese and Chinese ink painting traditions.

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SIZE It is important to realise there is no universal brush size, so a size 2 or 10 may vary slightly from brand to brand.

Most artists will tend to keep at least two or three sizes of their favoured main brush to hand while they paint.

Only looking at masterpieces reproduced in books or magazines can convince us that detail is everything, yet next time you are in a gallery try looking up close at the surface of a favourite painting.

You may be surprised at the size of the individual strokes, and in turn the size of the brushes that the artist must have used.

Our instinct is to reach for smaller brushes in a bid to create better, more controlled paintings, yet often that results in works that focus on detail and miss the bigger picture.

Larger brushes encourage us to make artistic decisions. As a good rule of thumb when choosing your largest brush, find one you feel comfortable wielding and then go one size bigger than that. This will encourage a more painterly, economical approach.

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HANDLING

Remember that a brush is not a pencil, so don’t grip it like one

Hold the brush a few inches from the end for more sensitive strokes

An overhand grip allows greater pressure to be applied

Hold loosely like a conductor’s baton to encourage using the whole arm

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Much like skinning a proverbial cat, there’s more than one way to hold a brush. While it is important that you are comfortable handling your chosen brush, being conscious of how you wield it can help vary the marks that you are able to make and the pressure that you can apply.

It may feel natural to tightly grip the end of a brush, like you would a biro when writing, yet moving your hand further from the bristles a little and extending your forefinger will allow for more intuitive strokes.

An overhand grip is useful for applying greater amounts of pressure.

Hold your hand over the brush and use your forefinger to press down on the handle firmly. This is particularly useful when holding flat or filbert brushes side on, producing much thinner controlled marks.

One final method to try is a looser hold further down the handle, much like an orchestra conductor might hold a baton or a drummer holds a drumstick. This method makes it easier to rotate the wrist and bring your whole arm into play, resulting in expressive gestural strokes.

Take some time to practise all the marks that you can make with your brushes on a spare sheet of paper or board first to familiarise yourself with the new possibilities.

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ABOVE The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver is a good way to revive brushes

CLEANING

PHOTOS: STEVE PILL/ISTOCK

Good brushes can be expensive, so it makes sense to take care of that investment – and it is far easier to prevent damage to your brushes than it is to restore them afterwards.

Watercolour, ink or gouache can easily be cleaned with fresh water, while a sheet of kitchen roll or a cloth is useful to absorb excess water so the brush tip can be reshaped with a quick twirl.

Oil brushes can be dipped in turpentine or another thinner and wiped on a rag before using again, though it pays to give them a thorough clean every few weeks with a dedicated soap, such as The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver.

Acrylic brushes need properly cleaning after every session, however, as the paint dries quickly and can compromise the shape of the head.

Use clean water and washing-up liquid or soap for a thorough rinse.

Take extra care to remove paint build up from inside the ferrule as this can also push the bristles out of shape.

STORAGE Leave brushes to dry properly before storing them away. Avoid standing brushes on their head, as this can cause them to become misshapen;

ABOVE Never store brushes bristle side down like this as it can damage the head

keep them horizontal or bristles facing upward in a jar.

If your brush tip has curled or splayed after excessive use and dried out of shape, Rosemary & Co recommends trying to revive them with the “boiling water” trick.

Simply pour boiling water into a suitable container, immerse the brush head for 30-60 seconds, then reshape and allow to dry naturally.

Top tip

After cleaning, twirl the head of a brush between your fingers to help reshape it

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Paper

Choosing the right type of paper for the job will improve your paintings or drawings in an instant.

Here are some of the key factors for you to consider…

MATERIAL Most papers are made from one of two substances. Cotton is the most stable and so 100% cotton papers are perfect for finished artworks of a professional standard. Papers made from wood pulp, meanwhile, are a good economical choice, particularly for prep work.

more realist finish. Rough is selfexplanatory, the most textured surface available and one designed to maximise the granulation properties of watercolour paint as it settles in the tooth of the paper. “Cold pressed” or NOT paper (literally meaning “not hot pressed”) is a midpoint between the two, a good all-rounder.

WEIGHT

PRODUCTION

The weight of paper is measured in pounds or grams per square metre (lbs or gsm). The medium you intend to use is a good guide to what weight to choose. Pencil drawings can be made on lighter papers, whereas 160gsm (75lb) is a good starting weight for more expressive pastel work. Painting with water-based media requires heavier papers – either 300gsm (140lb) if you intend to stretch them or 425gsm (200lb) and above if you don’t.

Top paper manufacturers will often state whether a paper is “mould made” or “machine made”. The former are more stable, often heavier papers, easily spotted by their deckle edges and sometimes even a watermark. The latter are usually cheaper and boast a more uniform texture.

TEXTURE

PHOTO: ROB DUDLEY

Surface texture has a direct bearing on the marks you are able to make.

HP or “hot pressed” is the smoothest surface, ideal for precise marks and a

FORMAT Good quality paper is obviously available in either sketchbooks or individual sheets, although it is worth considering paper blocks if you intend to use water-based media. The sheets in these blocks are glued down on all sides, saving the need to stretch the paper before you paint.

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Canvas

PHOTO: ISTOCK

From texture to absorbency, the type of canvas you choose can drastically alter how you paint. Here are five factors to think about when choosing your next support

1. STRETCH For many artists starting out, a ready-primed canvas already pulled across stretcher bars is the quickest and easiest way to get painting.

However, if you want to create a picture in an unusual shape or have greater control over the surface you paint upon, consider buying canvas off a roll – it is usually priced by the metre. When calculating the size, allow enough overlap to go around the bars at the back and still give you something to grab with your pliers.

2. FABRIC There are two main types of artist’s canvas on the market. Linen is more expensive and harder to stretch, but it was the choice for many Old Masters

as it is far more durable thanks to its stiffness and longer flax fibres.

Cotton by contrast is the more economical option, while being easier to stretch. Other materials sometimes used by artists include the tighter, more uniform poly-cotton and the coarser textures of hemp or jute.

4. WEAVE

3. WEIGHT

5. FINISH

The weight of a canvas refers to the amount of fabric used in a fixed area (either grams per square metre or ounces per square yard), so it varies according to the weave, the finish, the fibre thickness and the material.

So, while a heavier canvas implies a surface that will take rougher treatment, there is no exact science here.

Artist using acrylics should look for unprimed supports, as the paint won’t adhere otherwise. An oil painter should ‘size’ – or seal – the canvas first though. Pre-primed canvases save time here, but experienced artists may wish to apply the size themselves for greater control. Likewise, vegans may wish to prime their own canvas to ensure no rabbit-skin glue is used.

The weave of a canvas has a profound effect on the finish. A pronounced weave will result in a rough surface that can snag unexpected touches of colour, whereas a fine linen gives a smoother finish, ideal for portraiture or photorealist painting.

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Drawing too ls

Whether you’re sketching out a possible composition or adding precise details to a finished artwork, drawing tools are a vital component of any painter’s kit bag COLOURED PENCILS Coloured pencils can too often be dismissed as a drawing material for younger artists, yet they have many useful applications in painting – particularly with watercolour or acrylic works on paper. While coloured pencils can be a cheap way to creating an artwork in its own right, they are also very useful when used in conjunction with these water-based paint media as they can be used to pick out highlights, emphasise line work or subtly alter hues and tones on a dry painting.

Coloured pencils come in three main categories: wax-based, oil-based and water-soluble.

While the latter are useful for line and wash work, it is the other two that work best in conjunction with paintings. Choose wax-based if you want chalkier, softer marks or opt for oil-based if you prefer a less crumbly, more forgiving drawing tool.

PASTELS For a burst of colour, consider pastels. Of the four main types, soft pastels are pigment-heavy, expressive and easy to blend, though create plenty of dust, whereas hard pastels contain extra binder to help produce more precise lines and less mess. Pastel pencils are a good alternative to hard pastels, as they offer a greater level of precision, while retaining some of the rich layers of soft pastels.

Finally, you have oil pastels, which can be used to create heavier build ups of colour and mix well with other media.

Sketching pencils are an essential part of any artist’s kit.

Even if you only draw to work out a composition for your painting, you’ll still need to use good-quality materials.

There is not just one best pencil for sketching so you should find the one that suits you.

Graphite pencils are graded. H stands for “hard” – H leads are very smudge resistant and give cleaner lines, ideal for outlines and light sketching. The higher the H number, the lighter the pencil. B stands for “blackness” – B leads contain more graphite, so they smudge easily and are readily erased. The higher the B number, the softer and blacker the pencil. HB falls in the middle of this scale.

You may also see an F grade, which stands for “fine point” – an F lead stays sharp for longer, so is suited to writing notes or drawing fine details.

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CHARCOAL Charcoal is useful for prep studies, as it is softer and allows for expressive, brush-like marks.

However, it generates plenty of dust, so is less suited to under-drawings as the particles can contaminate paint colours. When it comes to drawing with charcoal, there are four main options.

First is willow, the budget option; soft, easily broken up and sold according to thickness.

Second is compressed charcoal, which is made with binders, so it is stronger to hold yet trickier to erase. Third are charcoal pencils, which are easier to draw with, yet the thin charcoal core tends to splinter easily. And finally, there is Nitram charcoal, a unique yet top-end brand. These long strips retain the grain of the wood they were made from and can be sharpened easily to fine point.

PHOTOS: DERWENT/NITRAM

GRAPHITE

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Paint mediums

When added to colour mixes, paint mediums can bring variety and greater control to the paint surface. Not sure which one to try? We’ve got all the answers below What is a paint medium?

A paint medium is an additive, usually an oil or a paste, that can be mixed with your paint to alter the properties of it in some way. It should not be confused with references to the different types of “painting mediums”, which are the types of paint, such as oil, watercolour, gouache and acrylic.

Top tip

Try an Im pas to Ge l or Mediu m to thic ke n oil and a crylic pa ints and leav e visible brushs tr o ke s

Why are they useful?

Paint mediums give artists greater control over the application and finish of the paint. Different mediums can be used to variously alter the consistency, texture, sheen and drying time of your paintings – or chosen sections of them.

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Are there downsides to using them?

Some paint mediums naturally have a slight yellow tint to them, so look for “non-yellowing” options. Paint mediums can also cause issues when layering paints (particularly oil paints) as the drying times of different layers can be affected.

Which mediums alter a paint’s drying time?

Most oil paints are made from pigments mixed with linseed oil, so adding more oil slows drying times.

In the 1960s, Winsor & Newton developed Liquin as a synthetic alternative to linseed oil that has almost no effect on the colours.

Turpentine also speeds up the drying time of oil paint as it evaporates quickly – it is particularly useful on your base layer.

As watercolour tends to dry quite quickly anyway, watercolour mediums tend to slow drying times instead. Gum Arabic slows drying times further, though it also increases the luminosity of colours and makes washes less permanent.

With acrylic paint, a Fluid Retarder helps to slow the drying process.

For the opposite effect, Ox Gall Liquid improves watercolour’s flow.

Which mediums alter the paint consistency?

Liquin and Linseed Oil both bring a silkier consistency to oil paints and dry to a glossier finish. Stand Oil is another good alternative here too.

Add it to the paint to create honeysmooth brushstrokes or mix with turps for a rich medium that is good for glazes.

Glazing Medium is a popular choice for acrylic artists, as it lowers viscosity and enhances the glossy finish of paintings. It tends to enrich colours too, adding extra impact.

Flow Improver can also be used to create an even, self-levelling finish.

If you want to thicken watercolour consider adding Aquapasto, a translucent gel that allows for impasto-like marks to be made.

Which mediums alter the paint texture?

Acrylic paint leads the way when it comes to texture-enhancing mediums. Granular Gel and Pumice Gel make coarse, gritty marks, Fibre Paste creates a finish similar to rough paper, and Crackle Paste breaks up the top layer of dried paint like the cracked surface of an Old Master painting. Liquitex’s Modeling Paste meanwhile is made with marble dust, which really thickens acrylic paint to a clay-like consistency.

Some watercolour pigments naturally granulate, which means that they create a mottled effect when applied in a wash. If you want to replicate this effect with colours that are naturally smoother, adding a Granulation Medium will aid this.

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CAS E S TUDY

18 Artists

& Illustrators

C A S E S T U DY 1

Kirsten Britt

In the first of four case studies, the part-time artist explains how she developed her colourful, layered approach to painting portraits in pastel and watercolour

ABOUT KIRSTEN Kirsten Britt was born in 1975 and studied at Wimbledon School of Art. She lives in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, and works part-time in the special educational needs department at St Richard’s Catholic College.

With a brand new website showcasing her work, Kirsten makes portrait commissions and regularly sells work to raise money for charity, including Twitter Arts Exhibit (TAE21) for the Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy Fund, and the Sophie’s Postcard initiative for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. www.kirstenbritt.co.uk

Finding subjects

LEFT Frida II, ink pen, watercolour and pastel on paper, 23x30cm

I’ve been drawn to portraiture since I was very little. I always come back to the human face, I love it in all its forms and expressions and colours.

I think a portrait is a really unique way of capturing a moment in time as well.

My style is something that has evolved really. The artists who appeal to me have got a real signature style and you know what to expect from them – I wanted my work to have a similar signature, really.

Aside from the famous faces like Frida Kahlo or Billie Eilish, I use the Sktchy app to find my subjects. It’s a beautiful, collaborative community of artists who share photos with each other, as well as inspiration and ideas. The monthly fee (which I choose to pay) is optional, but gives access to additional content.

The source photos are all submitted by artists, so you know you are going to get nice lighting, interesting faces and unusual angles – things that are a bit different. Sourcing from Sktchy means that I have permission to use the photo too.

Sketching out Before starting on a final piece, I create little advance sketches to try and get a feeling of tone. Tone’s really important to me. When you’re drawing from photos, it can be a real challenge to get the image to pop off the page. It can sometimes look a bit flat. This is one of the reasons I use toned paper. If you work on white paper, you can only really push the tone in one direction, whereas if you are using a toned paper, you can push that drawing in two directions – you can push it darker and you can add your highlights to lift it off the page.

The paper I use is Strathmore Mixed Media, a beautiful 300gsm cardstock. It’s a real workhorse – it doesn’t buckle with watercolour and it has an absolutely smooth finish for my pastels. I definitely spend a lot of time looking at the source photo so that it can tell me what colour paper it wants to be on.

Someone with a warmer-toned skin, I might try and complement with a cooler tone of paper. Other times I might deliberately paint a paler Caucasian skin on a tan paper to force myself to push harder with the colour placements. When you paint from photos rather than live models, the paper choice can be really key and make the highlights come alive and pop. I make colour swatches in advance so I know how my watercolour paints are going to appear on those different colour papers and then I’ll also make graphite sketches, just to get an idea of where the shadows will play out or if I want to emphasise a particular feature. Then I will launch into the final picture.

I sketch out the composition fully in pencil first. I don’t put shading in at that point, I’m just sketching out the shapes and I can be quite precise over the measurements. I’ll spend a long time on this stage, at least an hour, an hour and a half. Then I go over the top of the pencil with my Edding 1800, which is a beautiful waterproof fineliner.

Sometimes I’ll use a carbon or acrylic ink with a dip pen if I’m looking for a looser result. I try to be really free with my ink lines, whereas I’m very precise with the pencil sketch underneath. I know I’ve got that accuracy there so I can be a bit freer with my pen work and try and bring in the contours.

With the ink lines in place, I will completely erase my pencil drawing – I can erase really hard on this paper and I know the pen line is not going to be affected.

Vibrant colours I use Schmincke Horadam Aquarelle watercolours. They are so vibrant, so intense – I won’t use anything else.

I’ve tried many different brands and always come back to this one, it’s just gorgeous.

I prefer to begin with the middle tones and it’s a tentative start for me. I’m led by the painting as well.

Although I have an idea of what colours I would like to use, sometimes as I’m exploring those initial washes, the painting will just speak to me and suggest a direction. I tend to start scared and finish up confident.

I like to start with a purple shadow, generally. Regardless of the paper you are using, a purple shadow is Easy Painting

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I try to be really free with my ink lines, whereas I’m very precise with the pencil sketch underneath

fairly neutral, and you can run in whatever direction you want with the colours still. It allows you that freedom. I don’t like a skin-tone shadow or a grey shadow – I still like my rainbows.

I put the painting on the radiator, so the watercolour dries really quickly.

The Strathmore paper is great for this, it’s not going to buckle and the paint won’t dry a shade I wasn’t expecting. Sometimes I’ll have two drawings on the go at once so I can put one to one side and keep going on the second. I’m an impatient person.

Sometimes I’ll make a start on a colour, it might be a warm tone on the skin, for example, and I’ll notice the shadows in the hair are cooler and so I’ll look for a cooler tone that will complement that. These colours will have come through to me in the photograph – there might be a play of light on the ends of the hair where I can see a purple that I will use through all of the hair.

Nothing to lose I finish my drawings with Stabilo’s Carbothello pastel pencils, which have a bold texture and vibrant intensity. I often use crosshatching, which is something I learned at college during life drawing classes actually. The beauty of crosshatching with pastels is you get complete opacity that sits really beautifully on top of the watercolour that’s coming through. It brings in a different texture and I love having different textures in my work. If I make a mistake, I go with it, 100 per cent.

If I’ve put a colour on that is perhaps denser than I expected, I think: “run with it, embrace it, push it even further,” why not? These drawings are just for me so if it’s 20

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going to teach you something then great. More often than not with mistakes, I’ve thought “Well, this painting is a write-off…” and that frees me up to try something different. If I felt a little bit nervous and unsure before, now the stakes have changed and I’ve got nothing to lose. Some of the best paintings have come out that way, when I thought it was all going wrong and it wasn’t.

Pastels are very forgiving as well – you can erase them or cover up your watercolour marks. Part of the beauty

of keeping the pastel pencils for the final stage is that I can choose to embolden my watercolour or soften it, I can disguise it a little bit or draw it out and exaggerate – it’s one of the things I love about this technique.

I greatly admire artists that leave sections unfinished and leave it to your imagination, it adds a bit of intrigue into the paintings.

I’m a bit too obsessive to pull that off, I like to keep going until it’s done.

It’s not in my character to put the brush down.

ABOVE Chris, ink pen, watercolour and pastel on paper, 15x20cm RIGHT Anniek, ink pen, watercolour and pastel on paper, 23x30cm

BASIC SKILLS

Sketching

BASIC SKILLS

SUBJECTS

Over the next 16 pages, we will cover some basic skills needed to start painting. GRAHAME BOOTH begins by explaining the benefits of sketching to familiarise yourself with a subject 22

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BASIC SKILLS

M

ost watercolour painters who favour a looser technique also seek to produce a final painting that is very much simpler than the original subject. By “simpler”, I mean a less cluttered and detailed appearance – something that is often quite difficult to achieve in practice.

Creating a simpler composition is not simply a case of leaving things out (although this may well be part of it).

Instead, it is the much more nebulous idea of painting a chosen subject so

that it appears to be very quickly and economically executed, while still suggesting the detail that is effectively no longer there.

As I will show you in this article, one sure way to help this process along is to use a pencil sketch of the original subject, drawn in situ, as the main resource for the painting.

On the rare occasions when I travel to any of the London airports, I always try to get to the city for a couple of hours painting and I usually head for the River Thames where I can be sure of finding something interesting.

On my last visit I enjoyed a morning’s painting around St Saviour’s Dock and after lunch I crossed the river, ending up outside the Tower of London. It was quite crowded, a light rain was starting to fall, I needed to get back to the airport fairly soon, and the subject didn’t immediately inspire so this provided me with four good excuses not to set up my easel again.

Feeling slightly guilty at this wasted opportunity, I decided instead to make a quick pencil sketch of the view towards Tower Bridge. I confess I began with very little enthusiasm but, as is usually the case, I quickly started to enjoy the experience. When sketching, particularly if pushed for time, we naturally concentrate on the parts of the subject that we find

interesting and our brain almost automatically ignores or simplifies the rest. It personalises the process too, because what I find interesting may not appeal to others. That is why paintings by different artists of the same subject vary so much.

I was not altogether unhappy with the resulting sketch and thought I might get a painting out of it back at the studio. It was only later, however, when I compared my sketch to the photograph I had taken of the same subject, that I realised just how much I had abbreviated the scene without really thinking. Also, if I only had the photograph and not the sketch I doubt very much if a painting would ever have been considered. So why should the sketch provide an impetus to paint that the photograph – or indeed the original subject – did not?

LEFT Grahame Booth, Tower Bridge, watercolour on paper, 36x26cm ABOVE Grahame’s photo of the view towards Tower Bridge, London

WHY SKETCH? The process of painting is not one of simply copying everything that is in front of us. Instead we should use the real subject to create our own interpretation of it. I believe that the actual subject is largely immaterial – it is the passages of paint that I ultimately apply that will make the painting work or not.

The key to achieving such a result (or at least having a chance of doing Easy Painting

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BASIC SKILLS

The flagpole and traffic were more defined in my drawing

The distant buildings were drawn larger and more detailed

No detail recorded in the cobbles

The wall was moved to connect with the tree

so) is to take the many different elements that are present in reality and link them together to create a relatively small number of interconnecting random shapes.

This not only simplifies the subject but also makes it stronger by avoiding the details that may distract the eye.

Each part of the painting should be interesting to an extent, but perhaps not too interesting. This is where an initial sketch can help. Many painters avoid sketching before painting as they see it as an unnecessary waste of time, yet I find this is never the case. Is it not better to think and plan with a pencil that can easily be erased and altered rather than start straight in with the paint and perhaps realise halfway though that a different approach would have been better?

SIMPLIFYING A SUBJECT In my photograph, there is a huge amount of detail in the buildings on the far bank of the river – as much as is visible on the bridge. However, when looking at the scene in reality, I was very aware that the buildings were a considerable distance behind 24

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the bridge and so appeared to be much less important. In the sketch for example I merely showed the bulk of the group of buildings with just an indication of the perspective lines.

This is the area where photographs must be treated with caution.

A camera simply records everything that is in front of it. It will not help you be discerning and, unless you use a shallow focus, it can’t show depth.

Of course, a painting also has no actual depth – it is a flat sheet of paper, after all – but we can create the illusion of depth upon it by using aerial perspective [see the box on the right].

The problem with aerial perspective is that, in reality and especially on a bright day, it only really becomes apparent at quite a considerable distance but if we use these effects of aerial perspective in the painting, irrespective of whether we can actually see them the suggestion of depth is enhanced.

In my painting, I also greatly reduced the tonal strength of the dark lines of the railings and riverside wall, as they created an unwelcome division between the foreground and

the further parts of the subject.

In place of this, I allowed the bridge tower to blend with the river and ultimately down to the foreground, creating one large light area, further simplified by not A initial sketch will save much more time attempting to indicate than it takes as it the complex cobbles. helps you focus on I also spotted a few your priorities oddities when comparing

Top tip

my sketch to the original scene: I clearly remember how important the flagpole to the left was to me, yet it is barely discernible in the photo. It was the same for the vehicles on the bridge – I noticed them much more than the photo would suggest.

BUILDING ON THE SKETCH When I painted the subject in the studio, I tried to retain and even emphasise the simplicity of the sketch. In the sketch I had moved the left foreground railing and shrub area to allow it to link with the left tree, whereas in the painting I made a more obvious connection between the leaf canopy of the left and right

TOP LEFT Grahame’s original sketch made in situ TOP RIGHT A photo of the Tower Bridge painting in progress

tree. I took care to paint the figures, their shadows and the railing together, so as to produce a single connecting shape from the left side to the right. When painting I also had to resist a strong temptation to put more detail into the bridge towers – there was so much detail visible in the photo, but I tried to stay true to the

A E R I A L P E R S P E C TI V E The main tenet of aerial perspective is the idea that things in the distance appear cooler in colour, like the far trees here.

Tones are also neutralised, details reduced, and distant objects appear to almost blend together.

sketch. So, without the sketch would I have painted this subject? Probably not. Would I have painted it in this way? Definitely not.

A line sketch with some tonal shading provides plenty of material to execute a painting. By all means take a photograph as well as this will provide a reminder of colours and help with any inaccuracies in the drawing that will almost certainly occur, but don’t paint from the photograph, paint from the sketch.

If you don’t have time to work in situ, you can even sketch your photograph first. It will never be quite as good as being in front of the actual subject, but you will still be able to pursue the idea of simplification. www.grahamebooth.com Easy Painting

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Colour

BASIC SKILLS

MIXING

ANNA DANIELSSON/NATIONALMUSEUM

You don’t need to purchase lots of colours to make a great painting.

London Fine Art Studios co-founder ANN WITHERIDGE shows you how to mix magic with just four pigments

BASIC SKILLS

T

o help you with your colour mixing, I wanted to take a look at the Zorn palette to show you how you can use it in your paintings.

We will use the Zorn palette to look in detail at colour, colour relationships and the advantages of using it when it comes to portraiture.

WHAT IS THE “ZORN PALETTE”?

The Zorn palette – also known as the “limited palette” – is a restricted palette of four basic colours: black, white, red and yellow. When mixing with them, I consider these the primary colours and white – with black the substitute for blue.

Some also regard the Zorn palette as two colours – yellow and red – with black and white pigments serving to control the chroma and the value.

Either way, the fundamental colours are definitely limited.

WHY IS IT CALLED THE “ZORN PALETTE”?

The limited palette has been ascribed to Anders Zorn, a Swedish painter born in 1860. He was not the first to use it, and nor did he use it exclusively, however he is an artist who greatly excelled with it.

Many artists throughout the history of art have used a limited palette, including Titian, Rembrandt and Velázquez, though most artists would use other colours when needed and vary their pigments. During the 19th century, many more pigments and colours became available to artists, so the use of a limited palette became less prevalent. Yet some artists remained loyal to their limited palette and continue to do so today.

There is much debate about whether Zorn truly did use such a limited palette, but his 1896 SelfPortrait [left] suggests that he did just that. In it, the Swedish artist depicts himself holding a palette with just those four colours, laid out from dark to light, proud of his bravura. He was showing us his skill as a painter by creating such ambience through his brush handling, despite the limited

choice of original colours. The Zorn palette is really used more when painting portraits or figures, rather than landscapes, for example.

(One reason is that we apparently see more variety of greens than any other colours). As such, Zorn would also use blues, greens and other colours when painting landscapes in oils or when painting most subjects with watercolours.

There is also evidence from his studio of a very varied selection of paints, but my studio also includes many colours that I would not usually use: as a painter I am often gifted tubes of paint and I like to experiment with different colours. After all no artist should be completely formulaic, as it leaves no space for creativity.

TEACHING COLOUR There are many schools of thought when it comes to teaching colour and colour theory for painters. One approach is an abundance of colour.

There are those who believe that all that we see is colour and therefore we should have access to as many pigments as possible. This approach presumes that, as students, we understand colour completely. In fact, we tend to readily understand the difference in hues (the difference between red and green, for example), but colour, with all its varying temperatures and values, is a much more complex and subjective topic.

Furthermore, we can rarely get exactly the right colour from a tube.

Painting involves mixing colour and developing relationships. A colour is perceived only in relationship to its neighbour. If we have an abundance of pigments, then we have thousands of combinations of colours available to us. How could we possibly keep track of which colour combinations give us which colours?

Another approach to teaching colour involves limitation. This means being much more disciplined and scientific about colour mixing and relationships. Of course, as we learn, we can add more colours to our palette. The saying goes that “values

do all the work, but colour gets all the credit”. How true this is. People often admire the colours in my paintings and yet the colour is nothing without the design of shapes and values.

John Singer Sargent once said that there was no point putting a brushstroke down unless it was the correct brushstroke in terms of colour, shape, value, and direction.

While this is very true, at London Fine Art Studios we believe that learning every aspect of that in one go is much harder than if you were to break it down first, looking in turn at colour, shape and so on. A well-proportioned monochrome image is still “representational” even when devoid of colour, so it is best to master that first and introduce colour gradually.

The irony is that it is liberating to paint with less pigments – and it can teach you so much.

EXERCISE

PAINTING AN EGG For the first exercise I have chosen to paint an egg. An egg is a fantastic teaching tool – a cheaper alternative to hiring a life model. The colour of an egg is so flesh-like, and the shape of it is so similar to that of a face.

It really is an amazing tool.

THE PALETTE I never suggest using a white palette.

OPPOSITE PAGE Anders Zorn, SelfPortrait, 1896, oil on canvas, 118x91cm BELOW Zorn’s Self-Portrait was painted with a four-colour “Zorn palette”, similar to this one, which consists of Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red and Ivory Black

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It is very hard to gauge true values and colours when mixing on one, as everything seems deeper in the context of the white. In the same way that it is good practice to tone a canvas or panel before painting, so it goes that it is easier to work with a mid-tone palette: a wooden palette, a grey tear-off palette, or a piece of glass with a wooden table or sheet of mid-tone paper laid underneath.

I use a wooden palette, as I really like to hold it as I walk back and forth from my easel, plus I can easily tilt it if there is glare.

Begin by laying out your four colours far apart on your palette, from light to dark, just as in Zorn’s 1896 Self-Portrait: white, yellow, red and black. More specifically, I used Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red and Ivory Black.

I will go into more details on these colours in next month’s article.

I am always reminding students that a palette is limited in size, so we don’t want any of it to go on “holiday”, we need to access all of it. I suggest laying your colours far apart from one another and near the edge of the palette to give you a larger area in the centre in which to mix them.

THE SET-UP As canvas panels are usually white, we can tone them with a little black so that they appear a mid-tone grey.

It is always best to start from a mid-tone so you can better judge the lightest highlights and the darkest darks.

Traditionally a little red is added to the black. This is for two reasons: firstly, blacks tend to be very weak pigments so the red can strengthen the base and means cracking is less likely. Secondly, adding a little warmth to the ground can really help when painting flesh tones.

When using a limited palette, we are most likely prioritising the effect of light, therefore drawing and values are going to be the main anchor as opposed to colour.

Make sure you have a strong lighting set-up. Place your subject near a window (preferably one with north light so that the light stays constant) or use a desk lamp to beam a strong light onto the subject to give a clear and defined value 28

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pattern of light and dark. Don’t put your subject between yourself and the light (known as contrejour) or stand with your back to the light.

Ideally you want light on your canvas and a nice balance of light and shade on the subject.

THE PROCESS After toning the canvas, start your painting by mapping out the shapes with the same red-black mix you used for the wash, just a little darker.

Ivory Black and (especially) Cadmium Red are transparent colours, so it is

1

important to not use the Yellow Ochre or Titanium White at this stage – they are opaque colours and will make your painting milky.

Think of it like this: if you have a cup of tea and want to make the tea darker, you can always add another teabag. If the tea gets too dark, you can add more water. However, when you add the milk, you lose the transparency for good. It is that transparency that adds such a wonderful quality to a painting. When painting always aim for a variety of transparent and opaque passages.

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ABOVE Ann’s toned canvas panel and still-life set-up BELOW AND RIGHT The five stages of Ann’s egg painting

BASIC SKILLS

Next, map out your shapes and then add your shadow lines – the edges or the transitions between the light and dark areas. Try to keep your painting very simple and look to establish just two values at first: a light and a dark mass. Be careful with the Cadmium Red – it is a very strong pigment, so we don’t want it to overpower the drawing. Use it simply to slightly strengthen the black. The aim is to establish the shapes and value pattern with just those two pigments.

For the lights then, mix them with the other two colours: the Yellow Ochre and Titanium White. If the light appears a little too yellow, add a little Cadmium Red to warm it up; if it appears too chromatic (or saturated), a little Ivory Black will soften it.

Avoid softening the transitions between the values. This is tricky in practice, but the saying goes that you should always “paint the transition”.

It is very tempting to try and soften the paint between the transitions, but this can make a painting look muddy.

If you work instead with a brush loaded with pigment and use it to paint the correct transition (shift in value), then the brushstroke will do all the work of the modelling and blending for you. The painting will also look crisper and cleaner as a result.

Once you are satisfied with that, all that’s left is to add a light background that really helps the egg to jump out.

CONCLUSION My students always ask me how they can practice at home and whether they can paint a portrait from photos.

I believe you will learn so much more by painting an egg with a strong light source than copying a photograph.

In a photo, the work of translating the three dimensions onto a two-dimensional picture plane has already been done for you. However, by painting an egg, you are learning about how the shadows on a portrait work and how the mass relates to the background. Ideally set your egg against a mid-tone background so that the play of light and dark of the background relates to the light and dark on the egg. Change the colour and value of the background or the position of the egg to create hours of practice and experimentation. www.londonfineartstudios.com

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4

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F U R TH E R I D E A S

As an alternative exercise to the one above, try painting two eggs together – this makes things more interesting as you must consider the relationship between the two objects.

An extra challenge could be to place the eggs on a piece of wood or in front of a hessian background.

The colours and values of the new background will now be closer to those of

the eggs, so this will in turn encourage you to look more closely at the relationships between colours across the whole painting, rather than simply focusing on local colour.

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Making

BASIC SKILLS

MARKS

A good painting is not just about the subject but also how you apply the paint. ROB DUDLEY explains the importance of building up a vocabulary of marks and textures

A

Rob Dudley, Revelstoke View, watercolour on paper, 43x34cm

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s primarily a painter of landscapes, my work has often featured stone and its many textures.

From shiny, worked granite and natural field boulders to stone rows and rocky coves, it seems as if I’ve painted stone in all its forms and guises. Living and working on the edge of Dartmoor and close to the coastal cliffs of south Devon, I have an almost never-ending source of subject matter to fill sketchbooks and subsequently canvases back in the studio.

Over the many years of painting stone, two characteristics seem to stand out above all others. One is the colour – or more accurately, colours – found in the rock itself. The variations of hue seen in just a few pieces of granite are almost impossible to record. The other important characteristic, and probably the one I find the most interesting, is the varied and often unexpected textures and surface features of the stone itself. From the smooth, almost mirror-like facets, to surfaces so pitted and dimpled that they resemble the surface of the moon, to dark, shadowy cracks and crevices, all are a joy to paint.

I find watercolour seems to lend itself almost perfectly to this exploration of texture. Not only can it be used to recreate the rich colours of stone, but it can also create its own texture as it settles and granulates. With pen or fine brush, it can define rich, dark sharp lines too.

As ever with watercolour, careful consideration must be given to the choices of paints and papers used, particularly if you want to achieve specific effects.

For example, a “rough” paper and a heavily granulating pigment will doubtless create a very different effect than a staining pigment used on a smoother “cold pressed” paper.

Ultimately, a successful painting should contain a range of textural effects and marks. Over the next few pages are five key techniques to try, followed by an example of how I combined them in a finished painting. A heavy reliance on the same brush marks can often lead to a rather stilted end result. Time spent in the studio experimenting with paint and paper will often lead to some unexpected and unusual effects, often by accident. And these in turn will lead to more interesting and engaging paintings. www.moortoseaarts.co.uk

BASIC SKILLS

PA I NT S PAT TE R I’m always surprised at how much paint this particular technique requires, so be sure to mix a decent puddle of your chosen watercolour before you begin. Keep the colour strong as it will dry much paler.

The trick is to either flick or tap a loaded brush over the section to be painted. Once they are dry, cover adjacent areas with scrap paper if you don’t want them to be painted. If you spatter before the first layer has completely dried, the paint droplets will run into one another and the effect will be lost. Add further spatters with a different colour. The example shown on the right was spattered on to dry paper using a size 4 sable brush, but interesting effects can also be achieved when spattering onto previously dampened paper.

D RY B R U S H The drybrush stroke is one of the techniques that I use more than any other when painting stone-like textures. The aim is to create a broken (rather than a solid) brush mark. This works more effectively with stronger, darker colours than it does with paler ones.

Load a brush (I used a size 6 sable in the example on the right) and remove excess paint with kitchen roll. Scuff the side of the brush lightly across the surface of the paper. Test the effectiveness of the stroke on some scrap paper first.

Be careful not to go back over previously painted areas as the broken parts will be filled and the effect will be lost.

M A S KI N G S PAT TE R Spattered masking fluid produces a wonderful base on which to build other effects.

It creates almost a reverse of the previous technique.

If used straight from the bottle, masking fluid can be too thick to flick easily and it’s often necessary to add a little water – just enough so that it resembles the viscosity of single cream for it to work.

I use a nylon masking brush dipped in a little soapy water.

The soap helps to prevent the bristles from clogging up, which would make a decent spatter almost impossible.

Remove off any excess soapy water with a sheet of kitchen roll and then carefully load your brush with masking fluid. Either flick or tap the brush over the area to be masked. As before, cover any areas that are not to be masked with scrap paper.

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DRYBRUSH The rough surface of the paper helped to accentuate these drybrush strokes.

MASKING SPATTER The white of the paper was reserved to indicate sunlight hitting the stone.

C AU LI F LOW E R S For many watercolourists, a “cauliflower” is something which causes a certain degree of angst. Dropping wet paint or even clean water onto a semi-dry wash will cause a blooming effect that looks like the head of a cauliflower. The effect increases as it dries too.

In the wrong place, a cauliflower can be quite annoying. However, when used in a controlled manner, it is extremely useful – particularly for creating stone-like textures. In the example above, I’ve dropped both water and Ultramarine Blue into Burnt Sienna. Try spattering over with other colours when the cauliflower is completely dry to create some interesting textures.

D R AW N LI N E S Lines can be drawn with a brush, dip pen or even a sharpened stick.

In the example above, I used both a size 2 sable brush with a fine point and an old-fashioned dip pen. Note how the brush leaves a slightly broken, more textural line. When using a pen, I will often get the paint flowing on some scrap paper first before attempting to draw on the painting.

This helps to stop unwanted blobs of paint from ruining the line. I’ve used watercolour paint in this example, but acrylic inks can also work well, particularly for really dark lines.

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CAULIFLOWERS I let these cauliflowers form their own textural details within the shadows.

Allowing paint to do its own thing creates a more organic, less contrived feel.

BASIC SKILLS

COMBINING THE MARKS

ORIGINAL VIEW

Rob Dudley, Up on the Beacon, watercolour on paper, 45x25cm

In the example below, I wanted to show you how those five very different mark-making techniques could be combined into a single painting, adding variety and interest to the surface of the artwork.

F I N A L PA I N T I N G

PAINT SPATTER Multiple layers of spattered paint create sharply detailed textures, which in turn set these rocks firmly in the foreground.

DRAWN LINES These sharper, darker lines act as a contrast to the looser and more random nature of the spattered paint.

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M AT E R I A L S C A S E S T U DY 2

Lesley Dearn This former set designer reveals how exploring the West Wales coast and experimenting with mark making tools has helped produce her beautifully textured landscapes

ABOVE Secrets and Skies, mixed media on board, 23x23cm 34

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CAS E S TUDY

ABOUT LESLEY Lesley Dearn graduated with a BA in fine art from Sheffield Hallam University in 1989. She worked as a set designer for the likes of BBC Wales and S4C before a brief career as a civil servant. In 2011, she turned to art on a full-time basis, teaching life drawing and art workshops alongside her own painting.

Her work is available via Cardiff’s Albany Gallery and the Queen Street Gallery, Neath. www.lesleydearn.co.uk

Landscape experience The Welsh landscape is an important part of these works. I spend much of my time on the West Wales coast at Newport, Angle, and Freshwater East or West, but I also walk the Preseli Mountains and the glorious Brecon Beacons. All of these places lift and invigorate me, and I feel a landscape as much as see it. When I’m in the landscape, painting is usually done as part of a long walk. Travelling on foot gives me a sense of scale and a vivid experience of all the elements: the wind on my face, a warming burst of sunlight... It all stimulates my thoughts and fires up the ideas I want to work with. The shapes and colours are wonderful, but it’s the atmosphere that really inspires me, and it’s that atmosphere that I try to capture. Welsh weather is reliably unpredictable and can change in the space of an hour.

Nothing gives a clearer idea of distance, atmospheric perspective and scale than watching a distant landscape or coastline change as you walk through it. Along the way I take photos and make quick sketches – sometimes almost without stopping

– but, when I find a place I want to stop, I like to paint. I’ll usually do three or four 20-minute paintings in acrylic, looking at different views and concentrating on different aspects and experimenting with ways to reproduce them in the moment.

To capture the very specific light effect in paintings like Spirit, you have to first experience the moment, which is why being outside is so important to me. Putting a light effect down is a bit like trying to capture a gasp.

I know when it’s working because I get a physical thrill. It’s often more about the feeling than it is about planning. It doesn’t always work but I spend a lot of time looking at what a painting needs – sometimes that’s a case of looking and thinking carefully and slowly, then acting very quickly.

My paintings are mixed media.

I mainly use acrylic paint, sometimes with watercolour or ink underneath, and a wide range of drawing materials: various pencils, including watersoluble ones, and lots of charcoal.

I don’t have a specific, fixed palette, but I do keep it to a fairly limited number of colours in any particular painting. At the moment I’m using lots of Yellow Ochre, Lemon Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Phthalo Blue, Indigo, black, white and umber, but I will use any colour if I feel the painting needs it.

Keeping colour fresh I like to have an idea of what I want to achieve in a painting before I start and what I want it to feel like, and then I think about the overall composition. Nothing is set too early, but I like to know the general

Putting a light effect down is like trying to capture a gasp…

When it works, I get a physical thrill Easy Painting

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BELOW Sky Rise, mixed media on board, 36x36cm

C A S E S T U DY

RIGHT Spirit, mixed media on board, 45x45cm

direction I want to go in. I usually start with some drawing in charcoal and ink to put the structure in and then build the painting with layers of acrylic paint. I tend to work all over the piece rather than section by section, I think paintings evolve better when I don’t get too focussed on any one area.

There’s a mix of smooth passages, scratchy marks and even occasional drips of paint in paintings like Secret and Skies. That painting was built up gradually with lots of layering and working back into areas. I use a palette knife and various brushes.

I like to use flat nylon ones, either 1/2” and 1”, as you can make so many types of mark with them, but I also use small decorator’s brushes, riggers and stiff, hog-hair brushes.

All the tools give slightly different marks and I like to combine them to create variety on the painting surface.

I play with the consistency of the paint, usually just adding water.

The key to keeping colours fresh is letting the layers dry, using some 36

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opaque layers and some transparent, and being aware of what’s happening when you put the paint down. If it’s starting to look muddy, I stop.

I do keep a fairly orderly palette with plenty of space for mixing, and I frequently clean the colours off and put out new ones to keep them fresh.

The bigger picture Like many landscape painters, I admire JMW Turner’s work for its power and atmosphere, and for his role in creating the tradition of artists going into the landscape not to copy but to experience. Artists such as David Tress, Joan Eardley, Donald Teskey, Len Tabner and Maggi Hambling, their work is full of energy, robustness and absolute commitment.

Have the principles I learned and developed during my time as a set designer proved useful in my painting career? I think so yes. I was designing in the 1990s in Wales, just before everyone got mobile phones and computers, and I was lucky enough to work on some fairly low-budget

productions that required a lot of creativity. This taught me to be very resourceful. One of the main principles that applies to both set design and painting is to keep an eye on the whole picture, so that everything works together: no paper coffee cups in a period drama!

Most of the compositional elements required on screen can be related to painting: you get to decide what’s important, direct where you want the viewer to look, and create mood and atmosphere. And, of course, working to a deadline is important – I find short timelines can work better for me.

Honestly, I don’t always know when to put the brush down. Often paintings tip over into what I consider to be overworked. It’s a very personal threshold: one person’s “energetic painting” is another’s “unfinished mess”. I consider a painting finished when I look at it and I like enough about it, it captures something of what I originally felt, and it still has some of the early energy visible.

One principle that applies to both set design and to painting is to keep an eye on the whole picture

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Top tip

M a ke y our firs t layer darker t h a n yo u think it should be so th at the brig hter lay e r s s h ow u p later

How-to

GUIDES

So you understand your materials and you’ve practised basic skills, over the next 22 pages it is time to take a deeper dive into some tricky artistic subjects.

Wildlife artist JASON MORGAN kicks things off with a simple approach to painting fur 38

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THIS IMAGE Jason Morgan, Clouded Leopard, Panpastel and pastel pencils on paper, 28x21cm TOP LEFT Jason Morgan, Lion Cub, Panpastel and pastel pencils on paper, 28x21cm

To create realistic fur using pastels, you need to be able to apply multiple layers

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any artists are apprehensive about drawing and painting animals. They might really want to draw their own pet for instance, but all that fur just overwhelms them. So where do you even start?

I vividly remember struggling to paint animals when I started more than 20 years ago. Instruction was almost non-existent back then, and what did exist sorely lacked in detail and techniques, almost as if the artists were keeping secrets back.

It was so frustrating. I made it my goal to share everything I learnt myself, so others could progress quickly.

When you are confronted with something difficult, I have found that it’s best to try to simplify it, to break it down into more manageable and achievable parts. With regards to animal fur, the first stage is the basic tone and colour. I try to make this layer just slightly darker than I want the finished artwork to be, so the lighter details will show up when placed on top.

The second stage is where I start adding the shadow areas of the fur texture, these are the small areas you sometimes see in between the lighter hairs – something I will explore in detail in the lion demo below.

If the lighter hairs only need to be moderately lighter than the darker “under fur” textures, then you won’t need the stage above.

The third stage is where I begin to add lighter, more detailed fur and hairs on top of the first two layers.

This final stage might take many layers, maybe four or five, before I have built a painting to the stage where it looks like realistic fur.

Let me show you my process using some examples.

DEMO 1: THICKER FUR For this drawing, I wanted plenty of impact and detail, so it needed a larger scale. Pastel pencils can’t be sharpened as finely as coloured pencils otherwise they break, so bear that in mind when thinking about the scale of your artwork. The advantage of pastels, however, is that we can easily put light details on top of darker underlayers, which makes it much faster to make large paintings.

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Thicker animal fur has a greater depth to it, partly it’s made up of layers of not only hair but also air. In order to recreate that effect on a 2D surface, we must work in multiple layers. On the right you can see how I used PanPastels to block in the initial layer, both the very dark areas and also that vibrant flash of colour. I didn’t want to muddy colours in that vibrant area initially, otherwise I’d

struggle to make the colours rich again when I started adding details.

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I added the first layer of texture to the underlayer here. I usually begin by putting in the darkest shadow areas, the areas between the highlights that will follow. It is critical to study a subject thoroughly and ensure these marks are going in the direction the fur is flowing and growing in. This is what gives the animal its structure, shape and form.

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On top of those darker marks, I began to add layers of lighter detail with sharp pastel pencils here.

Each new layer was generally lighter than the one underneath. I made sure to twist and turn my pencil to leave more natural marks, as the last thing you want is regimented marks that look more like a fence than fur.

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THE RIGHT MATERIALS To create realistic, finely detailed fur using pastels, you need to be able to apply multiple layers on top of one another. After extensive testing a few years ago, I decided that Clairefontaine’s Pastelmat paper and boards were by far the most suited to my style and I now use them for all of my drawings.

I generally choose a mid-tone paper, like a brown or dark grey, for everything except very light or 40

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DEMO 2: SOFTER COATS Knowing when to place the background is tricky.

Should it be first, as it is the element that is furthest away? Or should it go in last and risk overlapping the subject? I find that the background plays an important part in my ability to accurately judge the colours and tonal value of my subject. Likewise, the subject is always being influenced by its surroundings and the reflected light. With this in mind, I almost always put at least a bit of the background colour in early. Only adding a little means that I can still accurately judge other colours without risking smudging a thickly applied colour.

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I began by transferring my image to the pastel paper. I never draw directly onto the paper as I don’t want to be erasing on its surface. When blocking in colour, it’s also important to remember that if an area needs to be very dark or very light, you should avoid putting anything underneath it that might contaminate the top layer.

For example, avoid laying down a mid-tone grey under an area you later want to be pure white. This does not apply to drawing whiskers as these will go fine on top at the end of your drawing.

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An underlayer, such as the one you can see here below, can be made using pastel pencils on smaller drawings or PanPastels or soft pastels on larger drawings. Notice how this layer appears a little darker than the completed left side. I did this so the lighter details show up when added on top later.

I always blend and bed in this underlayer with my fingers by gently rubbing the pastel

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in the direction of the fur direction. (If you want to really smudge the pastel, use a paper stump instead.) Rubbing the pastel pushes it into the tooth of the paper, creating a smoother look. I almost always start with the areas furthest away from the viewer (in this case the ears) and then gradually work my way forwards towards the closest area (here it’s the nose) to create a sense of overlap.

Once complete, I used Clairefontaine’s Pastel Revolution Freezer to completely seal this underlayer.

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By now I had completed both sides of the head and also the nose. Notice how I slightly blurred the nose. I don’t always do this, but on this particular drawing I wanted to attract more attention to the dog’s eyes, so I kept the eyes in sharp focus and blurred the nose. It’s not difficult to blur in pastels, just use a gentle touch with a finger. The secret is to have no sharp edges showing in any area you want to appear out of focus.

extremely vibrant and colourful subjects. Using a mid-tone paper means that both my lights and darks show up immediately – remember white pencil won’t show up on white paper.

You might assume that a rougher paper could take more layers, but my testing showed otherwise. I found that sanded papers created far more pastel dust, which then sat on the paper surface and made detailing much more difficult. Personally, I find sanded papers are more suited to either very large drawings or a more painterly look, but every artist is different, so it is definitely worth testing out for yourselves.

I also favour Stabilo’s CarbOthello pastel pencils, Faber-Castell’s PITT pastel pencils, Rembrandt’s soft pastels and PanPastel’s ultra-soft artists’ painting pastels – the latter are available in a dedicated Jason Morgan Wildlife Painting set. I blend them with either a paper stump (the softer ones blend more fully) or a Jackson’s Art Rubber Blender.

I have never sealed my finished drawings as all fixatives can alter tones and colours to varying degrees and very few fixatives actually fix the pastel to the paper anyway, but I have used Clairefontaine’s new Pastel Revolution Freezer to completely seal the underlayer on some recent drawings. It can alter some colours, but it allows you to work on top of them without smudging, even if the tooth of the paper is full. www.jasonmorgan.co.uk

R E F E R E N C E I M AG E S

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If you don’t have a pet to draw or you are worried about copyright issues when painting images found on the internet, Jason has collected together a vast online library of more than 900 high-resolution reference photos that can be used with no copyright worries.

These include not only wildlife subjects, but also flowers, landscapes and more.

Download the perfect reference image today at www.wildlifeart-online.com Easy Painting

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How to...

Compose pictures Unsure which subjects and details to include in your paintings? The trick is to decide what your next picture is really going to be about, says ROB DUDLEY

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ABOVE Rob Dudley, Reflections on the River Avon, watercolour on paper, 33x45cm 44

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hen tutoring workshops and art breaks, I’m often asked a similar question: when faced with a complex subject, how does one decide which elements to include in a painting, and which ones to leave out?

Though I’m often asked in relation to landscapes, the question applies across all genres of painting. And thankfully, the answer may be far simpler than one might think.

The easiest way to make the decision about what to put in and what to leave out is to decide as early

as possible what the painting is going to be about. I’m not suggesting that it’s as easy as simply deciding that the painting will be a portrait of a friend or harbour scene – that is the subject. I’m suggesting that we, as artists, should have a clear understanding of the reasons behind why a painting is being made.

Ask yourself: why am I painting this subject at this moment in time?

Once you have decided this, it’s much easier to choose elements that support the meaning behind the painting while also rejecting others.

For example, take a simple beach scene. This is our subject.

By including a lone figure on the beach, however, the artist could attempt to convey a sense of solitude through the painting. This is what the painting is about. However, if several figures or groups of people were included then the meaning behind the painting would be altered, that sense of solitude would be lost, and it would become a different painting. As such, a clearly defined reason for making the painting is key when it comes to deciding what’s in and what’s out.

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PROJECT

Below are six stages of a single painting with an explanation of the decisions made at each point

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REFERENCE PHOTO

This stretch of the River Avon at Aveton Gifford in Devon is one that I have painted many times. It never fails to inspire me. Walking along the tidal road one day, I came across the scene shown in this photo. I was struck by the stillness of the reflections in the ebbing river level and quickly decided that would be the focus and what my painting would be about.

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PRELIMINARY SKETCH

Time was of the essence; the tide was still going out and I only had a few minutes to put pencil to paper.

I very quickly sketched the scene, picking out the essential elements to support my proposed painting.

Even at this sketching stage, I was beginning to plan my painting; selecting elements that would support and not detract from the final image.

Within a few minutes the scene had changed, and the river had become little more than a trickle. It was time to head back to the studio.

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INITIAL DRAWING

As it was the stillness of the water and its reflections that had caught my attention, I decided the whole painting would be constructed around those elements. Nothing would be included that would detract or lessen their impact.

At this point of the Avon, it’s not uncommon to have quite a few boats moored in the river channel – see the original photograph. However, if I had included too many in the painting, it would likely have shifted the emphasis away from the water – a subtle change, but an important one nonetheless.

With this in mind I drew out the composition and spattered some masking fluid on the foreground to add texture. Once that was dry, I added some very light washes of colour.

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TREES AND FIELDS

The river runs through a wide, gently sloping valley here. There are numerous trees and a complex patchwork of small fields surrounded by walls and hedgerows.

Again, if I had chosen to paint these to the same level of detail as seen in the reference photo then the viewer’s attention would have shifted from my chosen area of focus. It would have been impossible to leave out all of that greenery too.

I solved this by simplifying details and reducing their tonal strength, so that they would recede into the background without compromising the main focus.

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WATER AND REFLECTIONS

When it came to work upon my key focus – the water and its reflections – it was essential to avoid adding any distracting elements to this passage of the painting. After dampening the paper, I dropped in strong washes for the tree reflections with blues and violets in the foreground water.

I wanted this area to be simple, uncomplicated and somewhat understated in contrast to the rest of the painting. In the photograph, two swans can be seen swimming in the river. Lovely as they were, I felt their inclusion would lessen the impact of the reflections and prove a distraction.

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FINAL PAINTING

The final stages of the painting were an opportunity to pull everything together. I touched in colour to suggest the boats, flicked in a few orange buoys and masts, and spattered some foreshore stones, while paying close attention not to overdo the detail.

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F U RT H E R E XA M PL E S Two more pairings of photo and painting that show what to leave in or out

BATTISBOROUGH COVE, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 35X45CM This is a good example of my approach to a complex subject. I noted the ever-changing colours in the sea, the milky blueness of the shadows, and the sharply lit edges to some of the rocks. I found these details exciting and wanted to make my painting about these elements.

The desire to focus on these details outweighed the need for topographical accuracy. Colours were heightened, rock formations were simplified or left out altogether.

In essence, I only included elements and details that supported or complimented my chosen areas of interest.

LOOKING OUT FROM THE MOOR, OIL ON BOARD, 30X20CM The bright, sunlit field in the mid-ground contrasting with the dark background was the hook that caught my attention and would become the focus of this small oil study.

In order to emphasise that contrast, I increased the tonal differences between the two areas and reduced any unnecessary detail. For example, the hawthorn bush in the right foreground was removed completely in order to allow the viewer’s eye to move unhindered towards the bright field.

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How to...

Sketch creatively There’s no such thing as a perfect sketchbook. But there are countless ways to use them in inventive ways that can help you develop your ideas says KATE OSBORNE

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he perfect sketchbook. There are many ideas about it, but no blueprint for it and no rules about how to use it. An outdoor sketcher will tell you how drawing your immediate environment creates far better memories than if taking photos of the same subject, whereas a studio sketcher might tell you that working in the quiet of the studio allows them to dig deeper and explore ideas with no distraction. It’s horses for courses, there are no “should”s.

Be warned, though, there are quite a lot of rather perfect looking sketchbooks on social media these days, which are decidedly gorgeous but can be quite daunting to use as your model. It’s better to approach your sketchbook fearlessly – it’s your own private space, where you can

record or respond to what you see and also try out those new ideas, media and techniques, work out your compositions, or play with colour, tone and more.

A sketchbook is not meant to frighten, but to give permission to play. Allow for those inevitable dead ends and mistakes that must happen en route to something that works; those “failures” are steps towards resolving and expressing ideas.

My own main source of inspiration these days has been my local allotments. Artistically, it’s a great combination of wild weeds and brambles on its edges interspersed with the neat structures of cultivation.

The sketches and photographs I make on site I then use in the studio to do more sketchbook work, where

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editing becomes a big part of the process. It is just about possible to wander until you find the literally “perfect” view, but even when you’re sitting in front of a lovely view you’ll be editing as you draw and I definitely find it more exciting to elements together and leave elements out in a way that inspires. Once off the hook of reproducing what I see, the creative options are endless, and I can play to my heart’s content.

As well as a place to experiment, a sketchbook is also a library and a great personal resource. When I hit a blank spot and don’t know where to head next, it’s always a good idea to have a rummage through them and see if any of the ideas in there inspire new work. Below are eight ideas for using your sketchbooks creatively.

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SKETCH FASTER

Some sketchbook drawings can be reworked over a period of time, but often time is short. As an exercise, I sometimes even limit the amount of time I allow myself to spend on a sketch. Working fast forces a more instinctive way of working.

This allotment sketch was executed so rapidly that it has become pretty abstract, more about colour and shape than an accurate representation.

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SKETCH A SKETCH

Sometimes it is useful to make sketches from sketches to develop an idea. I made the charcoal sketch [below] in situ on the allotment in the bleak months of winter, when the scene was dominated by the bare bones of structures, bare soil, and a sense of space. I then used this sketch to work up a watercolour sketch of the same subject [above].

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Approach your sketchbook fearlessly – it’s your own private space

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3 The pink of the chair was an invention, an example of making stuff up to make your painting work.

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SKETCH FROM PHOTOS

You can still be creative when working from reference photos. This

spread was based on a picture of a neglected corner of the allotments – a water barrel used as a euphorbia plant pot with rubble bags in front and brambles growing over the top.

I used a range of media for this particular sketch, including Inktense

crayons, Derwent acrylic pens and watercolour. I left a lot of blank paper showing at the bottom, these empty spaces playing off the busier top half of the sketch to create something a little more dynamic. Sometimes less is more.

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SKETCH WIDELY

Concertina watercolour sketchbooks are great for extending your drawings through a series of folded pages, either in one session or over a series of sessions. They are easy to spread out to check and rethink. It can also be useful to see how a project and ideas are developing. The sketch above was a quick one, showing just a few favourite elements from the allotment in watercolour and gouache.

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SKETCH WITH LIMITED COLOURS

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SKETCH ON NEW SURFACES

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So-called weeds abound on any allotment site. They add to the biodiversity and encourage wildlife to flourish, and deserve credit for their tenacity, subtlety and beauty.

This was a quick and simple sketch to capture those qualities, painted very freely using just three or four watercolours and an acrylic pen to add a bit of structure and detail.

When my process becomes too familiar, I can lose the creative impulse and need a nudge or new stimulus. This might be a new subject, a new media or a new surface, or a combination of two or three of these.

I sketched this woodpecker at our local natural history museum on Polydraw drafting film, which isn’t marketed for this purpose, but has a smooth, water-resistant surface.

I drew with liquid graphite and pencils, erasing highlights with wet wipes.

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SKETCH IN BLOCKED COLOUR

This sketch was based on a very old photo, which was taken on a different allotment site and lurking in the reference pile waiting for its moment.

I sketched using gouache, which has a lovely matte finish and dries quickly. The main advantage of using gouache over watercolour is its opacity, which allows you to block in colour and work over previous layers easily.

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SKETCH OVER GHOSTS

If I’ve not sketched for a while or I’m just having a bad day with it all, my sketching will begin very tentatively. As a result, I often find that the sketches will lack energy or commitment.

When this happens, a more interesting result can be had by washing off the original sketch with water, which leaves a “ghost” image that can then be worked over.

As sketches such as this are already deemed a “failure”, I find courage with nothing to lose and tend to be less literal. For this one, I used the bright pink simply because I liked the colour, dragging it across the page on the edge of a piece of card.

This, together with the use of watercolour sticks and acrylic pens for the details, created a dynamic interplay of abstract marks. www.kateosborneart.com

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How to...

Paint alla prima

DAVID SHEVLINO reveals how to get stunning results while painting directly wet-in-wet – and shows you how to avoid your bright colours getting muddy along the way

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WHAT IS ALLA PRIMA?

WHY PAINT DIRECT?

Alla prima is also known as “direct” painting and refers to a wet-into-wet method of using oils and acrylics in which the picture is basically completed in one sitting while entirely wet.

It is the opposite of “indirect” painting, whereby the paint surface is built up in layers with each layer being allowed to dry before the subsequent one is applied.

Alla prima is a more modern way of working, whereas most of the painting done before the 17th century could be described as indirect.

My direct painting method first developed when I left art school in 1984. After graduation, I no longer had access to live models – and was too poor to hire them. Although I liked working from still life subjects in the studio, I also began exploring painting en plein air. This is how I began painting wet into wet. Although I no longer paint outdoors, the experience taught me a lot about spontaneity and capturing a fleeting moment in a limited amount of time. As anyone who has painted en plein air knows, you can’t be too precious or fussy

about your subject and light changing by the minute. As far as I was concerned, I had a limited window in which I could get down the essential elements of colour, forms, light and shadow to capture the specific quality of a given scene.

Not only did I adapt my painting style to the demands of working outdoors, but I began to embrace it as a way of painting with spontaneity and freshness. I didn’t paint this way exclusively, but it became one of several tools in my toolbox. Eventually I stopped plein air painting and began to work exclusively in the studio.

However, my direct painting skills remained in my toolbox.

Over the course of my career I’ve experimented with many different styles and approaches. My larger paintings are typically indirect, but many of my smaller pieces are direct.

Both ways of painting have their advantages. What I like about painting directly is the immediacy, spontaneity and ease at which the paint moves.

THE CHALLENGES There are several aspects of direct painting which present different challenges to the indirect method.

One of the most common questions I get from students is, “How do you apply wet paint over existing wet paint and not turn the whole thing into mud?” I usually respond by explaining

some basic principles about developing good painting habits.

Keeping the colours on your palette clean is essential for good painting, but especially so when painting directly. If you mix with your brush and use the same few brushes for all of your tones, as I do, it’s critical to keep them clean in between mixing.

I clean my brush in white spirit and wipe it on a rag whenever I begin mixing a new colour.

Another issue I see with students is not using enough paint. In order to lay paint over wet paint you must have enough of it on your brush. A good habit to develop is to put a generous amount of paint on your palette – please, no pea-sized dabs! Your palette itself should be a good size, too: at least 40cm by 50cm.

KIT FOR PURPOSE There are no such things as magic brushes, but without the right ones, you’ll be fighting against yourself.

I prefer long brushes, such as flats and filberts, because they have some spring to them. When you load them up, you can lay paint over paint because they have some give to them.

Flats and filberts also make it easier to apply large swathes of paint that lend themselves to an economical paint application. Shorter brushes tend not to have the same feel, so they end up sweeping the paint away, instead of laying it on.

I like to use stiff synthetic fibres that mimic natural bristles, as opposed to soft bristles, which are more like fine animal hair. The synthetics tend to hold their shape longer than natural

ABOVE, FROM FAR LEFT Beginning, an alla prima study in progress; Adam in Mask, oil on canvas, 42x38cm; Narraticon, oil on panel, 27x35cm

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Top tip

to alla prima painting, it helps to think of medium in two categories: liquid and gelatinous. Liquid mediums would be oils (such as linseed) or alkyd mediums such as Galkyd, which feel like oil, but speed up drying times. Adding a liquid medium to your paint will extend it and give it a creamy, buttery texture. This buttery consistency is what I prefer when painting directly as it suits laying the paint on and moving it around.

By contrast, gelatinous mediums would be things like Winsor & Newton’s Liquin, Gamblin’s SolventFree Gel or anything that has some body to it. These gel mediums are great for building texture and achieving a thick application of paint.

Finally, in this discussion of how to apply paint over wet paint, there is the actual touch – or how much pressure you should apply to the brush as you add paint to your surface. You want to lay the paint on, not sweep it away. This is something that can be practised in order to develop the right feel for what you want to achieve in your paintings.

g nipulatin Avoid ma ch, u m o to t the pain e colours otherwis me kly beco can quic ll u d d n mu d d y a

TONE AND COLOUR

ABOVE Nikki in Red, oil on panel, 30x23cm

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bristles. I like a size 8, 10 and 12 from either Rosemary & Co.’s Ivory series or Silver Brush’s Bristlon range.

Alla prima is a very economical way of working and you can imply a lot with minimal brushwork. There is a looseness and spontaneity to working direct that is also particularly well suited to subjects that are in motion.

Most of the students I teach are trying to achieve a looser style where the brushwork is more evident. For that reason, I suggest using large brushes, such as sizes 10 and 12.

They can prevent you from becoming too fussy about paint application. The idea is to go for large, broad strokes.

Your painting surface is also a factor. The weave of canvas tends to give a little more texture onto which the paint can adhere. On the other hand, a panel can make for a very

smooth surface. Gesso-primed panels aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I like that the paint moves around so fluidly on them, so much so that when I feel like painting on a smooth surface, I use a gesso panel and then seal the surface with a mixture of oil paint and Gamblin’s Galkyd painting medium. This makes the surface non-absorbent and very slick. When it comes to canvas, I use both canvas boards and stretched canvas; I’m not particular about whether it is an oilor an acrylic-primed canvas though.

For panels, I use either MDF or aluminium composite board – when primed with acrylic gesso, both surfaces have a similar feel. The advantage to using aluminium is that it’s lightweight and doesn’t warp much.

Paint medium is a subject which can be very confusing. When it comes

I always paint on a toned canvas.

For a generic, all-purpose tone, a middle grey is nice. At other times I like to play around with different colours. Sometimes I use a bright colour, like red or blue, for the undertone and let part of it show through in the finished painting. This can create a nice abstract effect as you lay paint over the ground. I try to be decisive about making marks on the canvas or panel and avoid noodling around too much with them.

I also discourage students from blending. When I want to create a smooth transition between two bits of paint, I soften the edge between them by dragging my brush over the paint. Sometimes the filberts are well adapted for softening an edge and creating a soft transition.

When laying in my initial tones, I start with the mid-tones. I know many students were taught to block in the darks first, but I like working this way because it seems natural for me to start with mid-tones over the

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LEFT Race Horse, oil on panel, 35x38cm

There is a looseness to working direct that is well suited to subjects in motion

darker ground colour. As a way of simplifying things at this stage, I try to think of them not as mid- and dark tones, but rather as light and dark instead. Taking this approach means I can work my way in either direction, darker or lighter.

When I start mixing the colours on my palette, the first thing that goes through my head is value (or tone), then colour. Someone once said to me “value does all of the work, but colour gets all the credit”. If your values are accurate, you can take some license with the colours, and tweak them to your liking if you wish.

I don’t worry about colour temperature – whether it is warm or cool – in the initial lay in, I come to that later.

TAKEAWAY TIPS Before my workshops come to an end, I always try to leave students with some practical ideas for how they can practise mark making, applying their paint directly and achieving the looseness and spontaneity they’re looking for.

My first bit of advice is more psychological than technical. Give yourself permission to experiment

and to make a mess if necessary.

This was a major hurdle for me coming from a very classical, traditional background.

When I was finally able to put my inhibition aside and not be too precious about what I was doing, that was the moment I was able to move forward and really start applying paint in a way that was new for me.

As an exercise you can practise applying brushstrokes and mark making by using old boards or canvases. Give yourself a time limit.

This is important because we so often start a painting with the best intentions of trying to keep it fresh and spontaneous, but human nature and perfectionism take over and, before we know it, we’ve overworked the whole thing and lost what we had at the outset of the painting.

If you can train yourself to practise working on small surfaces for a limited time – say 45 minutes or an hour – you can avoid the risk of overworking a painting by stopping and putting it aside, whether you like it or not. If you aren’t happy, just get another surface and do it again. www.davidshevlino.com Easy Painting

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How to...

Suggest depth

Painting is often a case of trying to depict a 3D object on a 2D surface. AL GURY reveals four simple principles that will help you create a true sense of depth

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llusion of depth is one of the hallmarks of representational painting. The genres of landscape, still life, portraiture and figurative painting often depend on illusions of three-dimensional forms existing in a perceptual space. While some art does not require illusions of depth to convey its visual narrative, many do, particularly in traditional genres.

Creating a visual sense of perceivable depth in a painting

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depends on several artistic principles working in combination with each other. A very important area is colour, but colour in and of itself might not create the full illusion of depth in a painting unless it is combined with the elements discussed below.

Colour must be modified by – and added to – chromatic intensities, edge descriptions, brushwork types and details, and the size of colour touches in the image. This complete

package creates aerial perspective or illusions of depth via relationships between these several visual and technical elements.

The four descriptions on pages 58 and 59 are designed to support an increased understanding of the formal and visual elements of colour in creating depth in painting. The same concepts can be used across oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, pastel and other colour media.

BELOW Al Gury, Reclining Nude, oil on panel, 23x30cm The overall high-key colour choices, combined with strong variety in foreground and background brushstrokes and planes, created a sense of depth.

LEFT Al Gury, Tuscan Sunflowers, oil on panel, 36x30cm Depth was created by using sharper, more chromatic and expressive brushstrokes in the flowers, while softer brushstrokes and cooler colours helped other areas recede.

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weaken the colour’s intensity.

A way to think of this is putting too much cream in one’s coffee: a little supports the overall flavour, too much and it is no longer coffee.

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ABOVE Al Gury, Portrait of a Man, oil on panel, 41x30cm The strength of the planes and brushstrokes describing the near side of the face helped give a sense of structure and depth.

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CHROMATIC INTENSITY

Degrees of chromatic intensity (or brightness of a colour) can seem to cause areas to visually come forward or recede relative to other colour areas. For example, a brush stroke of pure Cadmium Orange surrounded by otherwise softer or more neutral colours will cause the bright orange to pop forward in a painting. The same Cadmium Orange, if broken or neutralised by a complementary or another neutral colour, will seem to recede into the background relative to brighter colours. Relative to each other, brighter more chromatically intense colours will appear to move forward

optically compared to colours that are more neutral in their chromatic intensity.

Changes to chromatic intensity occur in many ways. Colours that are greyer, will optically recede next to colours that are less grey. Cooler colours tend to recede next to ones that are warmer. Colour mixtures that have more white pigment in them will seem to recede next to colours that are purer and so have less white pigment in them.

Note that adding white pigment to the mix can weaken the chromatic intensity and brightness of almost any colour. A little white may enhance a vibrant colour, but too much will

EDGE RELATIONSHIPS

A stroke of colour in a painting that is brighter may indeed come forward relative to softer, less chromatic strokes, but other elements are needed to enhance that visual effect. The quality of edges in brushstrokes and their description of objects in the painting need to be modified to strengthen depth. The edges of a colour stroke or colour object will come forward more effectively if the edges are sharper and clearer than those around them.

A general axiom is that: sharper, clearer, more definite strokes, colours or marks come forward while softer less defined strokes with softer edges recede by comparison. If you combine that with colour, one can say that colours that have sharper edges and clearer strokes come forward compared to those that have softer edges and less clear strokes.

In addition, colours that are also brighter, more highly chromatic, and have clearer edges and strokes and shapes, will come forward relative to colours that are darker less chromatic and have softer edges, strokes and shapes. This combination of clarity versus softness, in combination with chromatic levels is essential in artwork where true depth and aerial perspective is needed.

In reality, a colour or stroke can be made to come forward even if it is muddy and dull in colour. As long as the patch, stroke or mark in question is clearer than those meant to recede, depth will be achieved.

This is also true of colours that are dark. A dark colour can be kept in the background or distance as long as its edges are soft relative to colours or strokes in the foreground.

In other words, illusions of depth in colour can be manipulated via edge differences, whether the colours are bright, light, dark or dull, all in relationship to each other.

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SCALE AND SIZE

If we take into account that strokes, marks and shapes of colour

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U se sha rper s tr move spatially in o ke s t o s u g ge s t area s relationship to each in focus and soft er mark other by virtue of the s fo par t s o f a pic tu r elements described re fur ther away above, the size or scale of those strokes, marks and shapes are also important.

Larger strokes of colour generally come forward visually compared to smaller ones. Areas of colour that have clearer, bolder shapes and edges will bring the foreground closer to the viewer while smaller, softer ones will seem to recede into the distance. These concepts are especially valuable where the artist wants a strong and clearly defined foreground, middle ground and background.

Textures are also modified by these ideas of scale, edge, colour intensity and so on. Colour details in the foreground would have to also be sharper and clearer in stroke, while details in the distance would be smaller and more generalised by comparison.

Broader, larger, more distinct strokes in a foreground are often the solution to bringing the perspective of a landscape continuously towards us.

Without that effect, the lower area of the image might drop off and the illusion of perspective will be lost, regardless of whether the foreground is bright or dull. is weak or the depth of the colour and strengthening the chromatic ABOVE Al Gury, its related relationships are neglected. intensity and clarity of the foreground.

EVALUATING Summer In painting where depth and aerial This tends to be the single most AS A WHOLE Landscape, oil on perspective are needed, colour must problematic area of colour, value Evaluating and critiquing one’s own panel, 30x30cm be built in relationship to edges and and texture for most artists. work is one of the most difficult The high chroma strokes, chromatic intensity to We tend to focus on that part we things artists have to do. If you are foreground stands neutrality, size and clarity of areas emotionally invested in your work, it is like the best, like the beautiful band out in contrast with and the image gauged and balanced of pale Ultramarine Blue along the often hard to see when a composition the neutral colours and evaluated as a whole. horizon. That luminous stroke will is off the mark, for example. further back. www.algury.com have less meaning if the foreground A good strategy is to stop periodically, maybe about a third of the way through a painting and take a hard look at the overall big TAKE AWAY TI PS AL’S FOUR-P OINT PL AN FOR SUCCESS relationships. It is here that you can Take time to plan Problem solve Try to consider Evaluate the identify weak areas in colour depth out the colour and critique the overall painting as a and its relationships with other formal relationships your work as you depth relationships whole periodically elements like temperature, chromatic relative to edges, go, using the visual in a composition, throughout the intensity, edge differences, stroke chromatic qualities discussed rather than always entire painting sizes, corners of the composition, intensities, scales in the article to focusing on process, especially and foreground, middle ground and the overall help you to painting interesting the depth created and background. elements of make suitable details or tackling by colour and If the colour is not creating a first creating aerial adjustments and favourite areas. its related impression of depth, then revisions perspective. modifications. relationships. need to be made immediately.

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Petula Stone

Finding subjects from the garden studio of her 19th-century cottage, this award-winning watercolourist has developed a graphic approach to floral painting

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CAS E S TUDY

ABOUT PETULA With a background in graphic design, Petula Stone first made the move into art as an illustrator, after graduating from Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) in 1976. Petula soon received a host of commissions, starting with children’s books before moving into packaging design and illustration.

Today Petula lives in rural Suffolk in a 19th-century cottage and works in a garden studio. As such, plants and flowers are a recurring theme in her work. Throughout her career, she has worked for many high-profile clients including Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and the National Trust. A favourite commission involved creating a series of botanical illustrations for a fruit and herbal tea range for Ahmad Tea, which she still enjoys spotting in airport shops. Petula also designed and illustrated a series of postal stamps for the Guernsey Post, which provided a wonderful opportunity to study and illustrate the fascinating flora and fauna of the Channel Islands.

Petula joined the Society of East Anglian Watercolourists in 2019 and exhibited two of her paintings in the society’s September exhibition. One of those, The Garden, was awarded the inaugural Artists & Illustrators Award. www.petulastone.co.uk

TOP RIGHT Summer Border, watercolour on paper, 18x18cm OPPOSITE PAGE The Garden, watercolour on paper, 20x20cm

Colour captures My Artists & Illustrators award-winning piece, The Garden, came about when I took my class to Fullers Mill Garden in Suffolk for some plein air painting in the summer. I made sketches and colour washes at the garden, which I brought home to my studio.

For the final painting, I was conscious of capturing a sense of the vibrant colours and shapes of the flowers without being too figurative.

I started with the white tulips, blocking them out using masking fluid, which I left to dry before wetting the entire

surface of the paper and dropping in the washes of watercolour.

Before the watercolour had dried, I drew into it with a dart (any other pointed instrument will do) to indicate the stalks and plant frame. The sharp point will slightly damage the paper and the wash will run into the scratch you have made and appear as a darker tone.

I was then able to lock down the previous layer before working back into the painting and defining some of the more specific flowers and foliage.

The foreground leaves were painted

with acrylic ink, working light over dark, and the masses of tiny white flowers in the background were suggested by flicking white gouache with an old toothbrush.

Finally, I added depth to the composition by using a white watercolour crayon to sketch in the daisies in the foreground.

Flowing pigments Summer Border was inspired by my own garden and intended for a series of floral greetings cards. I took photos and worked up some sketches in the Easy Painting

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I was conscious of capturing a sense of the vibrant colours without being too figurative studio until I was happy with the composition and colour balance.

As is commonplace when I am working in watercolour, I masked out the lightest parts first. The white flowers were drawn using permanent masking fluid. I allowed it to dry before wetting the entire surface of the paper and dropping in the colours of the other flowers.

The wetness of the paper allows the pigment to flow, creating expressive but defined swatches of colour. I can then neaten up this freer style once the paper has dried, working back into the painting adding in the background colours as negative shapes around the flowers to create more definition.

Strong backgrounds

ABOVE Erythronium, watercolour on paper, 25x31cm RIGHT Two Lilies, acrylic on paper, 40x40cm

I was inspired to paint Erythronium during a workshop at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Painting white flowers can sometimes be a problem as shading can make them look “dirty”. I find that painting a fairly strong background colour creates a fresh, crisp and vibrant result.

I started by making several pencil drawings of various flowers from the garden, switching up the composition by incorporating the long grasses until I was happy with my final layout.

Sometimes, to speed up this process, I’ll try drawing on layers of tracing paper and moving these around to perfect my composition.

After masking out the flowers and grasses and dropping in some fairly strong background colours, I moved the paper around to allow the colours to flow and blend into one another.

Once this was dry, I removed the masking fluid and painted details into the flowers using the live plant material as reference where possible.

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a series of paintings which used flat colours and defined graphic shapes, and I found that acrylics were the best way to achieve this. As usual, I began Two Lilies by making a few pencil drawings based on some photographs I had taken. I wanted to create a bold design concentrating on the shapes and colours of the flowers and not on the details, so I limited myself to a palette of five colours.

I started with the background colour first. I actually used a test pot of Dulux household paint which gave a good flat surface. The flowers were painted on next using acrylic paint and a small sable brush to create the stamens.

A steady hand definitely helps here.

Finally, I added a diluted wash of the background colour over the dark green leaves using a broad acrylic brush.

Choice materials Floral subjects that are past their prime can be beautiful, but they don’t last long so I always take photos even if I’m hoping to paint from life.

This technique is also helpful when trying to make paintings which are botanically accurate, rather than trying to remember fine structural detail from memory.

I like painting tulips when they are just “going over” as they make

interesting shapes on the paper.

I drew the layout for Three Tulips on cartridge paper first and then I transferred the drawing on to Saunders Waterford High White hot-pressed watercolour paper.

By doing this, mistakes can be made and rubbed out on the layout paper, rather than spoiling the surface of the watercolour paper.

I then built up the colours of the petals using the wet-in-wet method and my favourite brushes: Raphaël Kolinsky Sable series 8404. The deeper tones were built up using at least three glazes of watercolour and I painted the detailed centres last.

ABOVE Three Tulips, watercolour on paper, 16x16cm

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COLOUR WORKSHOP In this in-depth workshop, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts head tutor AL GURY looks at four key factors that will improve your colour mixing abilities

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1. TONALITY Our workshop begins with a focus on the greyscale and developing simple ways with which to better understand and replicate the value of colours

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ne of the most complicated issues for artists when it comes to colour is understanding the value of colours in nature and how to replicate this in paint. This is also sometimes called the tonality of colours.

In the modern world, a greyscale – usually containing as many as 10 stops on the scale from pure white to absolute black – is used as a guide to colour values. A pure middle grey is usually the fifth stop on this scale.

Value refers to the visual quality of light and dark of surfaces, colours, objects and shapes, as we see them in nature. In other words, how light or dark are they. Matching colour mixtures to capture the correct values A 10-point greyscale

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LEFT Al Gury, Study after Frans Hals (Copy of 1633’s Meagre Company), oil on canvas, 35.5x28cm “There are three value groups here: lights (3-4 on a value scale), shadows (6-7), and the darkest elements (8-10).

The Hals original dramatised contrasts, with the darks adding mystery.”

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ABOVE Al Gury, Impressionist Landscape, oil on panel, 22x30cm “True to many Impressionist works, it is the middle values (4-5 on a value scale) and lights (2-4 on a value scale) that dominate this composition.”

of an object or a scene is a skill that is developed and learned over time.

Tone, or tonality, is often used as a term to describe value in drawing and painting. Tones of colours are referential to the values of colours, but tonality can also refer to the overall quality or visual feeling of the value of a painting and tonalism refers to an aesthetic of focus on the poetry of values or tones in a painting.

SETTING THE TONE One of the first discussions in the western world concerning the value of colours as seen in the natural world was presented by Aristotle in De Coloribus. Working in the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher suggested that colours and their values were a function of the interaction of light and shade. For him, absolute white was the complete absence of value and colour, while absolute black was the extreme opposite and also colourless and valueless.

Aristotle’s discussions of colour and value have been extremely influential for centuries, especially during the Italian Renaissance and again among Romantic painters of the

19th century. Today, we see white and black as part of the value stream on greyscale charts and they are important visual markers for gauging the value of colours.

The classical Greek and Roman painters, being very concerned with the beauties of nature, explored subtle gradations of value in colour to create form and depth in their paintings. The painted portraits of the Republican Roman period, as well as the landscape decorations seen in the villas of Pompeii, employed great delicacy in the rendering of value gradations in their colours.

The icon painters of the medieval period minimised value gradations in their portrayal of holy figures. Because the natural reality of these images was not important from a theological and meditative point of view, value gradations were limited, and colours were often flat and focused more on basic middle tones. The great flowering of the interest in nature after the 12th century in Italy, produced a renewed interest in varieties of colours in nature.

Leonardo da Vinci, the great Italian Renaissance painter, theorist and

Da Vinci’s palette The Italian master suggested a basic palette of white, yellow, green, blue, red and black. Note how each of the colour choices matches a different value – something that can be seen best when the palette is converted digitally to black and white.

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Albert Munsell introduced one of the first systems for understanding colour

inventor, suggested a basic palette of six colours – white, yellow, green, blue, red and black – that closely corresponded to a greyscale of six values. He chose white and black as important colours at the extreme ends of this simple scale and palette. His colour choices each match a value on the greyscale in a general sense.

The value of colours and their component value gradations in creating form and space were extremely important to da Vinci and set the stage for the strongly tonal, and value-oriented paintings of Titian, Caravaggio and the Baroque painters.

For these painters, value, or the overall

tonal quality of a painting, created the dramatic visual message and poetry of the work for the viewer. This was accomplished through the creation of polarisations of lights and darks, closer to the two ends of the greyscale, with a minimum of middle tones.

Conversely early Italian Renaissance paintings presented a gradual scale of values with much more emphasis on subtle, middle-tone gradations with extreme lights and darks as finishing elements to add strength and clarity.

The 18th and 19th century in Europe saw a great proliferation of theories of optics, and value in colour.

The practical applications of these

discussions bore fruit in the paintings of the period, especially the growing interest in painting from nature en plein air.

Landscape painters from John Constable in England to Camille Corot in France examined the values of colours in landscape as they objectively observed them in each location in their plein air studies.

Impressionist painters used unifying light and middle values of colours to create a sense of atmosphere and shimmering light and humidity in their paintings. Tonal painters of the 19th century were deeply interested in the poetic and expressive nature of values in their compositions. In America, the painters Thomas Eakins and George Inness created strong value constructions for emotional effect.

Even though Eakins was more factual in his observations and Inness was more concerned with the visual poetry of colour tones, they both employed value for creative purposes.

A NEW WAY WITH COLOUR In 1905, Albert Munsell, an American educator and colour theorist, wrote his first book, A Colour Notation. This introduced one of the first cohesive systems for the understanding of colour in a practical manner.

He postulated that every colour was a hue (part of a primary or secondary colour family), a value (each colour having a designation on a value scale) and a chromatic intensity (a range from grey to very bright).

This “colour space”, as he called it, allowed for a student or painter to evaluate each colour for these three properties. Munsell built and illustrated a construct, known as the Munsell Colour System, that could position each colour as to its properties of hue, value and chroma.

The Munsell Colour System This three-dimensional model illustrates the nature of each colour as a hue, a value and a chromatic intensity relative to a greyscale. An infinite number of colours could be inserted.

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LEFT Al Gury, Study after George Inness (Copy of 1865’s Peace and Plenty), oil on canvas, 22x30cm “George Inness was the master of tonal painting.

His values were often dramatised to emphasise pictorial strength.

Large masses of dark values are played off against luminous touches of light to create strong silhouettes.

Soft edges throughout create a sense of aerial perspective.”

In the teaching of modern colour theory, Munsell has been one of the giants in presenting a practical understanding of each colour, especially for painters.

In the industry of colour manufacturing today, many tube colours of oil paints and watercolours have designations on the label relating to Munsell’s system.

PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT How does one understand and learn the values of colours? There are several useful exercises you could try.

First, use a 10-point greyscale as the starting point and practice relating the colours on your palette to the greyscale. You will find that many tube colours are relatively dark and lower down on the value scale than you might expect. You might also choose a master painting you like and compare its values to that 10-point greyscale.

For a second exercise, use Munsell’s recommendations and practice mixing gradations of your palette colours from lightest to

darkest, brightens to greyest, in each hue or colour family.

Then, as you make new tints and mixtures of colours on the palette going forward, try to visually relate them back to this value scale. Very quickly you will start to gain a good sense of the relative values of each colour mixture.

Finally, when painting and attempting to match the colour values in a landscape, portrait, still life, or other subject, be mindful of matching each mixture to the value of the colours in the subject.

Slow down a bit and think through the value arrangement of your composition and mix samples of that range on your palette so as to see it as a value and colour plan.

You may want to hold your paintloaded brush up to the scene or subject to gauge the accuracy of the colour mixture and value. With time, your sensitivity to the correct values should become very sensitive and instinctive.

Turn over for part two of the workshop...

Value practice Explore a number of colours and their light-to-dark gradations by creating a test sheet of practise mixtures

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2. PALETTE Our colour workshop continues with a look at the beauty and function of the oldest pigments known to man – the earth colours

One principle that applies to both set design and to painting is to keep an eye on the whole picture

LEFT Al Gury, Portrait of a Man, oil on panel, 35.5x28cm “The rich, mid-tone complexion of the sitter was a perfect match to my limited palette of earth colours: Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White.”

LEFT Anonymous copy of a 17thcentury painting, Still Life with Book and Skull, oil on panel, 23x30.5cm “Making a copy of a painting created using an earth palette can help you get the feel of the mixtures and colour relationships.”

BELOW LEFT Real “earth” colours “This iron-rich, reddish clay from a farm field becomes a rudimentary Burnt Sienna when it is mixed with linseed oil.”

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he earth palette comprises the oldest group of colours used by humans.

Archaeological evidence of a short list of earth and organic-based colours goes back as much as 70,000 years.

Prehistoric people around the world used a palette comprised of naturally occurring yellow clays, brown earths, reddish iron-rich clays, carbon from burned sticks and bones, and white made from ground clam shells and natural chalk. This “limited” palette has been used to create remarkable images on cave walls and cliff faces, as well as the colouring on ancient totems, pottery and jewellery.

Reds, yellows, blacks and whites gave a rich variety to paintings of prehistoric animals and humans as well as striking patterning and colour on pottery, jewellery and other objects. Extremely durable, the early earth palette has miraculously survived in archaeological sites around the world and tell us much about our own history and development as a human family.

To create art with these earths, clays, carbons and chalks, they were ground and mixed with water, animal fats, oils or wax and applied to walls and handmade objects. This list of additives was expanded over time to include gums, lime, and glues. This ancient practice of grinding and mixing remains the principle manner of making all artists’ colours today, whether oil paints, pastels, watercolours or acrylics In the last 10,000 years, with the development of settled communities, simple technologies and the growth of crafts and skill-based artisans, the range and variety of the earth palette began to include heated and burned clays to make a wider range of reds, and a more diverse use of iron rich clays and plant and vegetable extracts. This more extended earth palette became the basis for almost

all colour usage for many centuries to come.

Not until the craft of grinding precious and semi-precious stones, and the simple technologies of using heated metals, lime, copper, calcium, silica and other mined materials was developed, do we see the ancient earth palette added to and extended by brighter colours.

HISTORY OF COLOUR Regardless of the gradual introduction of brighter colours, the simple earth palette remained the basis of artists palettes. It was highly practical and useful for drawing designs and creating the patterns of plants and animals on everything from walls to manuscripts. Even where bright colours might be applied to a fresco of an illuminated manuscript, the earth colours still provided the underlying structure and most of the practical descriptive colours for humans, animals and objects in any image.

In Old Kingdom Egyptian art, red and yellow clays, white chalks and black carbons were the primary colours in most images. Such bright colours as “Egyptian Blue” (a bright blue similar to Cerulean Blue in colour) or Malachite Green (made from the ground stone Malachite) were added > Easy Painting

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Ideal for describing nature, the earth palette is a primary tool for oil painters

BELOW Unknown artist, Still Life with Pears and Cherries, oil on panel, 23x30cm “Warm and cool were skilfully described here by playing off fully chromatic earth colours against neutral variations made by mixing with Ivory Black.

The purples were variations of Indian Red mixed with black and white.”

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as high notes of decorative colour in frescoes and illustrated documents.

Even so, the earth colours were the binding element of the whole image.

The Greeks and Romans of the classical world inherited the craft of making colours of all kinds from the Egyptians and Ancient Near Eastern cultures. A part of this transmitted craft was the continued tradition of using the earth colours as the basis of art making and decoration.

A development of the classical Greco Roman world that would bear fruit for many centuries to come, even to this day, is the use of the earth colours in painting the naturalistic colours of portraits and landscapes and coloured statues.

A naturalism and observational realism unseen in the other cultures

of the ancient world flourished in Greece and Rome from the 4th century BC to the 5th century AD. Classical Greek sculptures, showing the idealised form of the gods, goddesses and athletes, were typically painted in naturalistic colours, with earth colours used to paint the colours of skin and hair, and bright colours added for colourful clothing. The Romans continued this practice in their beautiful frescoes and portraits. The frescoes of Pompeii depicted remarkably naturalistic figures, landscapes and still life that depend on the earth palette for their basic form, design, shading and details. The 1st century AD “Fayum” portraits of Roman citizens living in the province of Egypt utilised earth palette pigments mixed

in heated wax – encaustic – and applied quickly to small wooden panels. Bright colours and gilding were added to these paintings as embellishments, though the flesh colours, drawing and tonality were dependent on the earth palette. These lovely funerary portraits prefigured the elegant naturalism of 16th-century Italian portraits.

The ancient tradition of the earth palette as a basis for describing form, structure, tonality and design continued in Western painting history through the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and into the 19th and 20th centuries. Ideally suited for describing most things in nature, the use of the earth palette was taught to oil painters as a primary tool in their paint box. From portrait painters such as the Spanish Baroque master Diego Velázquez to the English Romantic landscape painters such as John Constable to 19th-century figure painters like Gustave Courbet, the earth palette provided the foundation

LEFT Al Gury, Summer Fields, oil on panel, 18x25.5cm “Each earth colour was only mixed with Titanium White here to retain the highest chroma (colour intensity) possible.

The colours, which included Yellow Ochre Light, Burnt Sienna and Chromium Oxide Green, were also played off against each other to create maximum vibrancy.”

beauty and subtlety of the earth palette for use as their primary colour source. The 20th-century Italian master Giorgio Morandi elevated the earth colours of humble still life objects and landscapes to a high level of elegance and thoughtfulness.

Abstract painters of the 20th century, such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, relied on the earth palette in the creation of their powerful images. The sculptor Alberto Giacometti relied on the earth palette in his paintings to make a visual connection to his austere sculptures.

EARTH PALETTE TODAY ABOVE Tint Test This is a reliable way to ascertain hue, temperature and chromatic intensity. A swatch of each earth colour is placed above each “tint” – that same pigment mixed with white.

of the visual language of form, depth and naturalistic colour.

The colours of the bright “prismatic palette”, identified by American painter Frank DuMond, worked hand-in-hand with the earth palette to additionally provide an enormous array of subtle colour shifts, tones, mixtures and tints. Most Impressionist painters included the earth palette in their repertoire of atmospheric mixtures, with the ancient earth palette list, including black, providing their basis of training and painting practice.

Not surprisingly, many painters of the modern era have realised the

The earth palette contains a full range of colours. Ochres and red oxides provide yellows and reds. Ivory black, when mixed with white, has been considered the blue of the earth palette triad. Lovely warm and cool greys and beiges can be made from the umbers.

Mars Violet is a rich yet subtle purple. Pigments such as Terre Verte, Chromium Oxide Green (sometimes known as Oxide of Chromium) and Greenish Umber provide a broad range of greens for landscape painting.

The extensive range of colours available in the modern earth palette provide a full spread of hues, values,

chromatic intensities and temperatures. Explore the variety of earth colours in your local art shop and add useful pigments to your palette.

Within itself, the earth palette is broad, flexible and useful, although a minor-key range compared to the prismatic palette. In fact, the earth palette has a unique relationship with the prismatic palette.

Comparing the two palettes to each other, the earth palette can be said to be a “neutral” version of the prismatic palette and the prismatic palette a “bright” version of the earth palette. Each prismatic colour has its earth palette analogue and vice versa – Cadmium Orange has a relationship to Burnt Sienna, for example, while Chromium Oxide Green is comparative to Cadmium Green. Similar relationships can be drawn between most colours on the two sides of the broader palette of colours.

Earth colours have also traditionally been used to soften or neutralise highly chromatic colours like the cadmiums when mixed together.

The intermixing of the two ranges of colours can produce an astonishing array of new and complex temperatures and intensities.

Turn over for part three of Al Gury’s in-depth colour workshop...

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COLOUR THEORY COLOUR WORKSHOP

3. LIGHTING Learn how to accurately understand and recreate the colour and direction of your light source in the third instalment of our workshop

RIGHT Robert W Vonnoh, Nude, c.1896, oil on canvas, 40.6x32.9cm “Multiple light sources and reflected light create a balance between warm and cool colours here.”

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ABOVE Seymour Remenick, Artist’s Studio with Still Life and Easel, 1957, oil on canvas, 71.2x91.4cm “Warm, threequarter lighting suggests depth.”

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hoosing light sources and creating lighting effects in a painting is one of the central formal tasks of creating an image.

Whether a painting is highly realistic or only loosely recognisable in its content and subject, the direction, colour and intensity of light chosen for the work can strengthen or weaken the artist’s intent. For, example, what would a Rembrandt portrait be without the rich light and shade effects that reveal the form and character of its subject?

Impressionism is beloved by many for its shimmering colour effects created solely by ambient light. Taking time to look at lighting types and directions and translating them into both practical and poetic studio

decisions is essential for the aspiring painter. The history of lighting effects in western painting starts with the ancient Greeks and Romans and continues today in many forms of realistic and observational painting.

If we agree that light creates both form and colour in a painting such as a still life, portrait or landscape, then there are two key issues, among others, for the artist to consider before starting a new work that we will look at today.

THE COLOUR OF LIGHT The first thing to establish is what colour is the light source? Sources such as very strong sunlight, candle light, incandescent bulbs and spotlights create warmer colour

options for the painter. Such warm light literally lights up and intensifies not only the contrasts of light and shade in a painting, but also the chromatic intensity of the colours of objects lit by the warm light source.

The surfaces lit by this strong yellow or pinkish yellow light causes their colours to be intensified and warmed dramatically. The colour of this light source causes all the reds, yellows, oranges, browns, greens and even blues to take on a warmer and brighter quality in the areas hit directly by the light source. Frequently, to match these colours with one’s palette, the more highly chromatic colours need to be used. The cadmiums and other high-key warm colours need to be used to match Easy Painting

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COLOUR THEORY

ABOVE Reza Ghanad, Landscape, oil on panel, 20x25cm “Completely ambient, cool daylight characterises the lightly overcast day in this scene.”

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the intensities created by the light source. Just adding white only weakens the chromatic intensity of these colours.

Earth colours can be used, especially in the shadows, but they often do not have the chromatic strength to match the colours hit by a strong, warm, light source. For example, a red carnation may need pure Cadmium Red to match the purity of the flower’s colour under an intense and warm light source. Adding white to lighten it merely makes it pink.

Because of the sheer power of such warm light sources, intense tonal ranges from light to dark can be created in the subject. This requires a lot more of the darker palette colours to be added to achieve this dramatic effect. Good examples of this type of lighting can be seen in 17th-century

Baroque painting. Figurative artists like Georges de la Tour and Diego Velázquez created dramatic lighting effects, usually from a warm light source. French landscape painters of the same period, such as Claude Lorrain, used strong, warm light to create depth and a sense of drama in his landscapes. In summary then, warm, intense lighting can create dramatic light and shade in a subject

as well as intense, highly chromatic colours where this type of lighting is focused.

Another common, and very beautiful, lighting source is natural, cool daylight. Ambient natural daylight often has a grey-to-bluish quality.

While it can create strong light and shade contrasts, this type of lighting is often softer and cooler. It’s the equivalent of adding grey or blue to all

The earth palette can be very helpful in matching colours to an ambient or daylight scene

COLOUR WORKSHOP

the colours in the areas of the subject hit by the daylight. Traditionally, artists have often desired a northfacing skylight in order to achieve a cool, directional natural daylight source. Daylight, whether directed by a window or viewed in a broad open space, cools or neutralises colours.

Unlike the intense, prismatic palette colours that need to be used in a painting with a warm light source, in an ambient light or daylit painting the earth palette can be very helpful in matching colours revealed by this type of lighting.

Also, because white paint weakens the chromatic intensity of colours if not used carefully, white works well in creating softer, less chromatic colours for daylit painting subjects.

The 19th-century Impressionist painters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley painted subjects using natural daylight. Camille Corot also featured daylight effects in his highly poetic studio landscape paintings.

The colours these painters used were often a little softened and cooled or greyed by the daylight and the use of white in the light areas.

In summary, natural daylight, whether directed by a window, or viewed generally in an open space, creates softer, cooler colours, and may affect value contrasts and depth.

THE DIRECTION OF LIGHT The second consideration is the direction of the light source relative to the subject colour, shapes and paint strokes. Renaissance painters like Leonardo da Vinci determined that a portrait lit by a strong light from a three-quarter angle, rather that front on, creates a greater sense of three-dimensional form. He also used this visual idea to create a stronger psychological presence of the sitter in the painting.

Three-quarter directional lighting is one of the strongest ways to create a visual sense of solid form and depth in any painting subject. Whether using a warm or cool light source, this directional lighting has been one of the major tools of naturalistic painters since the ancient Romans. Later painters, such as the 17th-century Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn and the 19th-century artists Eugene

LEFT Al Gury, Portrait of a Young Man, oil on panel, 35.5x28cm “Highly chromatic prismatic colours were needed to achieve the intensity of the warm spotlight on the sitter’s already warm complexion.”

Delacroix and Thomas Eakins, used this strategy to great effect.

Variations in the angles of the three-quarter direction of the lighting creates interesting nuances and visual effects of depth, form and psychology. A weak light direction, or the complete lack of it, as sometimes seen in medieval and very early Renaissance paintings often created a flattening effect. Broad ambient daylight with no specific direction can also minimise depth and contrast in

1. Strong, warm light

any subject. Even so, this strategy may be very useful to many painters depending on their goals in their work. French Impressionist and Fauvist painters used this lack of light direction to help emphasise colours, paint strokes and lighting effects.

Being aware of your options and chosing the right lighting direction, then, is extremely important to meeting one’s goals in a painting.

Turn to page 78 for the final installment of our colour workshop...

2. Cool, directional light

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4. EXPRESSION Our workshop concludes with a look at the colourful lessons we can learn from the work of Henri Matisse and the Fauvist painters

Al Gury, River Landscape, oil on panel, 121.9x137.2cm My focus here was a Fauvist-style interpretation of the colours in nature.

The trees had a cool quality, so I interpreted them as blue, while the warm tones of the earth became reds.

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C O L O U R WO R KS H O P

H

enri Matisse once said that “colour was not given to us in order that we should imitate nature” but rather it “was given to us so that we can express our emotions”.

The French painter was a prime proponent of a movement known as Fauvism, which brought a complete freedom of expression and visual interpretation to the world of painting and colour. “What characterised Fauvism was that we rejected imitative colours, and that with pure colours we obtained stronger reactions – more striking reactions,” he said. Through this style of painting, Matisse was attempting to return to the innocence of his childhood, yet he credited his ultimate freedom to his academic training.

Matisse and his fellow painter André Derain were dubbed Les Fauves (or “the wild beasts”) by an irate art critic in 1905 for their seemingly primitive approach to paint.

Along with the likes of Raoul Dufy and Kees van Dongen, the pair had arrived at this new world of freedom in colour and expression from a number of directions.

The artist Gustave Moreau, one of Matisse’s teachers, was a strong influence on young painters in 1890s Paris. Moreau advocated freedom of experimentation and creativity in his young students. Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne contributed a sense of pure colour, expressive brushwork and strong two-dimensional design to the atmosphere being breathed by the young painters of the 1890s. John Russell, the Australian Impressionist painter who painted with Claude Monet, imparted Impressionist method and colour theory to the young Henri Matisse. This cocktail of influences briefly coalesced to become the Fauves for a brief time in France during the first decade of the 20th century.

THREE WAYS TO WORK For contemporary painters, employing the Fauvist ideas of the pure colour interpretation of nature can be extremely liberating. Three areas, concerns or strategies can be identified as a guide for anyone

Unknown artist, Portrait of Silver, oil on panel, 35.6x27.9cm True to Fauvism, the model’s facial colours have been related to their closest pure prismatic color, rather than mixing complex, subtle tints and shades.

interested in adopting the Fauvist approach today.

The first is the subject. In the realm of Fauvism and early Expressionist paintings, the subjects were drawn from observed nature. Still life, landscapes, portraiture, interiors and nudes were ready made subjects for the interpretation of colour, brushwork and design. Such subjects were part of the academic training of

most of the Fauvist and early modern painters in their ateliers. These traditional painting subjects remained the mainstay of French Fauvist painting. In a sense though, the subject mattered much less than the approach to the use of colour and expression. Almost anything could be the topic of exploration for the Fauvist painters: a building, a scene, a flower, and so on. For the contemporary Easy Painting

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RIGHT Abraham Peter Hankins, Picnic in the Country, oil on canvas, 33.3x45.7cm Hankins uses mainly prismatic colours in a manner reminiscent of Van Gogh and Gauguin.

Curvilinear motions of the brush loaded with paint of varying densities evokes a child-like image.

THE FAUVIST PALETTE To get to grips with a Fauvist-style colour palette, look at a variety of works painted by them between 1904 and 1908. Practice by painting small still life or landscape compositions using pure, bright colours with little mixing. Try to cultivate a freedom of expression in your choice of colours, rather than just matching what you see. The following pigments would be a good selection to get started.

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Cadmium Lemon

Cadmium Yellow

Cadmium Orange

Cadmium Red

Alizarin Crimson

Dioxazine Purple

French Ultramarine

Cadmium Green

Viridian Green

Yellow Ochre

Burnt Sienna

Ivory Black

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painter interested in exploring the Fauvist approach, choosing subjects that they enjoy, appreciate or are familiar with is a good strategy.

Matisse, Derain and their fellow artists loved the scenes, locations, people and objects they painted.

These were all taken from their everyday lives and activities, their emotional connection to the subjects strengthening the final paintings.

The second concern is the approach to the drawing. It is important to remember that the Fauvist painters were, for the most part, highly skilled draughtspersons in the academic tradition. An almost childlike simplification of shapes and

compositions was adopted by these painters an an emblem of their freedom of expression and a departure from that academic training. Matisse’s emphasis on simplification caused a limiting of detail, attention to shapes and a purely subjective description of pictorial space and design. If an apple was approximately round, he simply made it a circle.

A key aim, then, was to capture what was essential about the shape of an object and how that shape fit into the composition as a whole.

If an angle of a table did not suit the overall picture, Matisse changed it without regard to mathematical –

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arrangement of objects within the pictorial frame was as important as ever. In Fauvist painting, a good composition moved the eye around and through the pictorial arrangement on the canvas’s surface. It was during this time period that the concept of the “picture plane” came into common usage. The picture plane is a surface for the description of shapes, patterns, lines and colours that are essentially flat. One facet of Fauvist painting is expressive brushwork.

Alongside flat patterns and shapes is a vigorous use of the loaded paint brush. For a contemporary painter exploring the Fauvist approach, rich brushwork can be considered part of the overall drawing and expression of the work. There is no timidity in the brush calligraphy of the early Fauves.

A final focus for Fauvist-style painting is the use and interpretation of colours. This includes both the tube colours placed on their palettes, as well as the visual interpretation and mixing of colours they saw in nature. Most Fauvist palettes included both the earth colours, such as Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre, as well as bright, highly chromatic colours, like the various Cadmium colours. Some paintings, like those of Matisse, regularly included earth colours along with the bright colours.

Others, like some of Derain’s compositions, were frequently made

or actual – perspective. In the work of many of the Fauvist painters, objects and even people were drawn with simple brush outlines of a colour suitable to the image and its shape.

Black was often used. Some Fauvist paintings even reveal strong shapes without the use of outlines. The colour of the shape presents the object’s simplicity and clarity. The result of these approaches to drawing and shapes often produced a flattened image with little pictorial depth (though depth might be implied). Because so much in these paintings depended on the strength of the shapes, patterns and flat colours, it meant that the

from just the highly chromatic colours. White was included throughout as needed.

Fauvist painters often reduced what they saw in nature or a studio arrangement to the simplest, most direct colours possible. If something had a yellowish quality, they made it simply bright yellow. No careful modulation of neutrals or complex mixing of colours occurred, it was just a matter of selecting which pure yellow to use.

The same was true of all the other colour choices. Pure colours right out of the tube, maybe with white mixed in, were used for each object, tree, face, and so on. If a tree has a pinkish tinge in the colour of the bark, a Fauvist painter might simply make it pink. Freedom of interpretation is a maxim of Fauvist painting.

It’s not what the object should be, but rather what the painter sees it to be in their imagination. The overall harmony of colour in a Fauvist work is also very important.

In summary, any artist wishing to emulate the Fauvist approach should settle upon a simple, everyday subject that they enjoy painting, draw it in a way that captures the simplest qualities of shape and design, and colour it in a way that encourages a subjective vision of the subject.

Al’s book, Color for Painters, is published

by Watson-Guptill. www.algury.com

RIGHT Humbert L Howard, The Yellow Cup, 1949-’50, oil on canvas, 61x81.6cm Howard was very interested in the Matisse-like use of flat, almost collagelike colour shapes.

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C A S E S T U DY 4

Alan McGowan Following in the footsteps of the masters, this Glaswegian artist and tutor has developed an expressive approach to figurative painting traditions

Back to basics I’ve been teaching for a long time, working in art colleges and doing visiting lectures. All of that has changed in the pandemic. I started a Patreon account, but I didn’t just want to take what I was doing online already and charge people for it.

So every month, I take a topic and make a video or two about it for my subscribers, mostly about working in oils and working with the figure. There 82

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are chances for people to ask me questions as well. Topics or themes might be colour palettes or glazing.

The next thing I’m discussing is transcription. It was a big part of art teaching for a while and then it became unfashionable. The slate was wiped clean by conceptual art and colleges moved away from things like anatomy, transcription and life drawing.

When you return to these topics, there’s a freshness about them now.

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ABOUT ALAN Alan McGowan was born in Glasgow in 1964. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art and returned there to teach, as well as hosting courses in many prestigious venues, including London’s Royal Academy of Arts, Leith School of Art and the Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.

Alan was a semi-finalist on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2014 and his work has featured in the BP Portrait Awards and the Scottish Portrait Awards.

He teaches art online via regular courses and his new Patreon account. www.alanmcgowan.com

My usual process involves working from life, so lockdown has absolutely put a stop to that. There are a number of different things I’ve done to deal with that and one of those was to take on transcription again. I’ve been looking at artists who have more of an expressive approach, people like Delacroix, Rembrandt and Rubens.

It’s always more useful to look at slightly unfinished works or sketches, too. I love Rubens’ oil sketches, they reveal more about the technique than the best finished pieces.

A big part of drawing is about using your eyes rather than your brain – trying to draw what you see, not what you know. Anatomy is important, however. Having an understanding of what’s going on underneath the surface is quite enabling. It frees me up to get involved in things like colour and mark making instead.

Painting from life

THIS IMAGE Alisdair, oil on panel, 80x60cm TOP LEFT Andreas, oil on paper, 80x56cm

When I’m making a painting from life, time is key. The first thing to capture is the flow or the movement of a pose, especially if it’s a two-minute pose.

A short pose is likely to have a strong, dynamic movement to it. After that, it’s about creating the form with light and shade. Again, if we’re talking about a pose of five minutes or so, getting the lights coming forward and the shadows receding back is about all there is time to do.

If there’s a bit longer, you can start getting into more of a colour range.

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The outline is the hardest thing to place... I work outward from inside of the form instead

Initially, I’m talking about more colour in the light. If I’m going to try and develop more of a range of colours in the shadows, then the pose needs to be slightly longer. If it’s less than 20 minutes, there’s not much chance to explore temperatures in the shadows.

I don’t often go into a picture with a fixed idea. If I approach it with an open mind then maybe something in the subject suggests itself and I get into that. It’s an important part of my practice to be sensitive to the subject.

Likeness becomes involved. You can do a pretty wild painting, but how much should it look like the model?

If it doesn’t look like them, is that a failing? There’s a tension there.

Dilute to taste Topaz was painted on paper. I tend to use Daler-Rowney’s Canford or Ingres papers, they have some good colours.

Certain types of paper are less suitable for painting on with oils – watercolour paper tends to be bad – but then paper can always be primed.

In Topaz, a green line describes the figure. Sometimes I use charcoal, but I quite like coloured lines and oil pastel is good for that.

My approach to mark making is not exactly formulaic, but the general principles are derived from artists like Rembrandt and Rubens. There was a dialogue in their work between thin and thick paint, and also between transparency and opacity. Those are things that I’m really interested in, but I don’t follow the same rules that they did. I don’t use the same method of building up an impasto and letting it dry and then putting a glaze over the top. Topaz was done in about 40 minutes so it was all alla prima, none of it was able to dry before the end.

Some of the lights were created by the lighter ground coming through the paint layer: around the chest, a little 84

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ABOVE Topaz, oil on panel, 55x40cm LEFT After Rembrandt, oil on panel 30x25cm FAR LEFT After Portrait of Carpeaux, oil on panel, 21x15cm

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Tone and colour

ABOVE Lydia, oil on canvas, 55x45cm

bit on the arm, near the shoulder, and a little bit beneath her arm but above the shadow on her thigh. But in other places the light was shown by paint put on top: on her hips, the deltoid muscle on her shoulder, her left ear, and her forehead.

This dialogue between light revealed and light placed on top is fun. It gives the painting a sculptural quality, by which I mean sometimes the paint comes towards you and sometimes it comes away – it gives a sense of movement.

Where you can see the brush marks coming through, the paint was pretty dilute. I tend to use odourless turps, but there might be some linseed oil in that – it’s about controlling the viscosity of the paint. Linseed oil will make it slightly less runny, depending on the surface. If you’re working on paper, turps is fine, but if you’re working on other surfaces, you might want the paint to be a little bit gloopier, so it doesn’t run. Damar varnish dries more quickly so adding that will shorten the drying time too.

Paintings start in pretty much the same way as a quicker work on paper, but they do change a lot. I try to take the things I like about the quick ones – the life and vitality – and bring that into more sustained, ambitious pieces, without losing the life of it. For the longer paintings on panel, I will probably give the background more consideration – that doesn’t mean necessarily it will be filled in though.

It is important to be very sensitive about tonal relationships, they are extremely important. When people draw, they tend to focus on the outline first and then fill in tone and colour. It is the wrong place to start because the outline is the hardest thing to place. I work outward from the inside of the form towards the outline instead. It actually makes drawing easier and you’re often more likely to end up with a result that has that lively vitality. I do a lot less measuring than most people do.

There are certain things that are important when deciding on a colour palette. You need to be able to access the range of the colour spectrum, so primaries have to be looked after. After that, it’s about thinking about what direction primaries go, so the idea that reds might tend towards purple or towards orange, I’d be very aware of that when choosing my palette. The same for yellows and blues. Then there’s the earth pigments which are there really for the quality of the paint as much as anything else. I quite like Raw Sienna, it’s a nothing colour but it’s quite transparent so you can often get volume out of it, which is important.

I paint with long flat brushes.

I would probably struggle to work with any other kind of brushes now.

The length of them gives a certain kind of mark, which I like – it has a calligraphic quality. I prefer new brushes, as they have a springiness but also a sharpness. That sharp edge means I can get small marks out of a big brush and also still have accuracy when I’m making big marks.

The worst brushes for me are filberts, they create rounded, soft smudgy edges. You can’t make a definite mark with them… Well, I can’t! I want something with which I can be quite specific, hard and dynamic.

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Wisteria S T E P - B Y- S T E P

IN WATERCOLOUR Finding variety in repeated forms is the key to creating interesting pictures. FABIO CEMBRANELLI shows you how to balance light and shade in this gorgeous French doorway

ORIGINAL PHOTO

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S T E P - B Y- S T E P

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S T E P - B Y- S T E P

Fabio's materials •Paper Arches Aquarelle 300gsm cold-pressed watercolour paper, 58x48cm •Brushes Synthetic round brushes, sizes 6, 10 and 16; synthetic flat brushes, size 1/2”, 3/4” and 1”; synthetic rigger brush, size 2; fan brush, size 4 •Paints Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Rose Madder, Quinacridone Magenta, New Gamboge, Green Gold, Sap Green, Undersea Green, Manganese Blue Hue, Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Ultramarine Violet and Shadow Violet, all Daniel Smith Extra Fine Water Colour •Pencil Derwent watersoluble 2B sketching pencil

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I

visited Chédigny a couple of years ago, a small village known as “The City of Roses”. I love painting doors, balconies and windows with flowers, the play between light and shade attracts me so the wisteria subject was perfect for me.

I took hundreds of photos and made a few sketches.

Wisteria is not an easy subject to paint in watercolour. If you suggest round shapes instead of drooping clusters, for example, it’s going to look like a climbing rose instead.

Colour choice is important: the most well-known shades of wisteria are lavender, pink, violet and white but the pink is not so vibrant. Most of the time the flowers have a softer, pastel look. The leaf colour is also important – it’s not a dark green; it’s an intermediate shade, often with a yellow bias.

My approach to watercolour is intuitive and I like to paint loosely. I try to take the essence of the subject and interpret it so I don’t pay too much attention to the number of flowers in each cluster.

The general concept is much more important than a single detail. Instead of trying to paint flower by flower, try to focus on the play between light and shadow. You will create a stronger focal point and draw the viewer’s attention. www.fabiocembranelli.com

Pick o ut colo ur s

Here I started adding colours to the windows, doors, and roof. I used a size 10 round synthetic brush and mixed different shades of grey-brown: mostly Burnt Umber mixed with Shadow Violet, Ultramarine Violet, Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna. For a scene like this, don’t paint all doors and windows with the same colour mixture: using different shades in different doors and windows will make for a more appealing painting.

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Work t h e ver t ic als

I began by sketching out my composition. I used a water-soluble pencil so that when I started painting my sketch would disappear – the water works as a natural eraser. I began adding the wall colour with a size 16 round brush and a mixture of Burnt Sienna, Quinacridone Gold and Shadow Violet.

If the building wall is a vertical plane, try to move your brush in a vertical or diagonal way. If you apply the first layer vertically, it’s going to look more natural.

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Var y t h e m ark s

I started adding a few greens, mixing up Sap Green, Quinacridone Gold and New Gamboge. Remember it’s only the first layer so don’t add darker greens at this point. Try to leave a few soft edges between the green leaves and the wisteria clusters.

I like to use different brushes when painting greens so I can create a diversity of brushstrokes and marks. My brush choice here was a size 10 round and sometimes a size 4 fan brush, too.

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St ar t on t h e w is teria

I began painting the wisteria clusters using a size 10 round brush loaded with a mix of Quinacridone Magenta, Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson. For variation, I sometimes added a little bit of Cobalt Blue to the mix to stop it becoming too pink.

Suggest a few clusters, working with the paper upside down. Try and really think about the cluster’s structure, it’s not a square or round shape, but rather a conical arrangement, pointed downwards.

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S of ten e dg e s a s yo u g o

I continued working on the wisteria clusters with the size 10 round brush, using different combinations of Quinacridone Magenta, Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson, still with a subtle touch of Cobalt Blue. The more I added clusters, the more I tried to soften a few edges between them and the leaves. A good balance between hard and soft edges is crucial to enhance the sense of depth in a painting so blend, connect and mix clusters and leaves sometimes.

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Ton e it dow n

I added darker values to the wisteria clusters and leaves.

I used a mix of Quinacridone Magenta, Alizarin Crimson and French Ultramarine for the clusters and a mix of Sap Green and Undersea Green for the leaves, all with the same size 10 brush. I also lifted out some pigment from the clusters using a 1/2” flat brush to create a few highlights. Try to suggest different forms within the wisteria – avoid making the same shape everywhere, otherwise it’s going to look like a stamp.

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Top tip

Soften the hard edge of a still-wet stroke by gently grazing the edge with the tip of a moist brush

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Add gr e en er y

I continued to work with greens, suggesting a few distant hues on the left-hand side. For these, I mixed Sap Green, Undersea Green, Ultramarine Violet and Shadow Violet, and applied them with the size 10 round and size 4 fan brushes.

Think about values here: all the greens added to this left-hand side of the painting were a bit darker than the wisteria clusters, so the focal point (in this case, the wisteria) was further enhanced.

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Work on cont ra s t s

Using a size 10 round brush, I added a mix of Burnt Umber, Shadow Violet, Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine to the doors and windows. The main door in the middle of the building was darker than the wisteria clusters around it, so painting this added to the value contrast and made the wisteria seem more highlighted in comparison.

At this stage of a painting, I like to step back and take a look at the overall balance so I can decide where to add more details. Thinking ahead about the next steps in any composition is quite important.

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B rin g in det ails

It’s time to add a few more details to my composition.

I painted the streetlamp using the size 10 flat brush and a mix of Shadow Violet, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna.

Adding a few details is important to create interest but don’t overwork them. It’s just a streetlamp – it should be part of the composition, not the focal point. I also added a few very subtle darker values to the window and doors, using a colourful grey mix of Burnt Umber plus Ultramarine Violet.

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D arken t h e f lower s

I added darker colours to the wisteria, mixing Quinacridone Magenta and Cobalt Blue for the flowers, and darker greens made with Sap Green, Ultramarine Violet and Shadow Violet.

I used three different brushes for this stage: the size 10 round, the size 4 fan and the size 2 rigger. It is important to add different brushstrokes and marks to create interest, as well as dots and other tiny marks to suggest single leaves or flowers.

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G ently a dd sh a dows

I added shadows under the wisteria using the size 10 and 16 round brushes with a mixture of Ultramarine Violet, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. Don’t make the shadow mixtures too thick. If this layer is too saturated, it’s going to look like a texture on the wall instead of a soft cast shadow.

These shadows were just strong enough to suggest the play between light and shade. They conveyed a sense of drama to the composition and drew attention to my chosen focal point: the wisteria.

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Fini shin g t o u ch e s

By this stage, almost all the shadows had been added.

I added a final few using the larger two of my round synthetic brushes (sizes 10 and 16) again with the same mix of Ultramarine Violet, Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna. Note that all shadows follow in the same direction and they were added according to the direction of the sunlight.

This helps to create a rhythm, connecting everything together and enhancing the focal point.

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Animals S T E P - B Y- S T E P

IN ACRYLIC Instead of tackling a single wildlife portrait, HASHIM AKIB reveals how a more complicated group of animals offers the chance for a more painterly approach

ORIGINAL PHOTO

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Hashim's materials •Paints Azo Yellow Lemon, Azo Yellow Medium, Azo Orange, Pyrrole Red, Primary Magenta, Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Blue Violet, Sky Blue Light, Brilliant Blue, Cobalt Blue (Ultramarine), Phthalo Blue, Greenish Blue, Prussian Blue (Phthalo), Permanent Green Light, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Warm Grey and Titanium White, all Amsterdam Standard acrylics •Brushes Daler-Rowney Skyflow large flat brushes, sizes 1/2”, 1”, 1.5” and 2” •Support Stretched cotton canvas, 60x75cm •White plastic mixing tray •Kitchen roll •Water pot

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hen it comes to painting animals, it’s common for artists to go for a photographic likeness, perhaps with a heavy helping of cuteness.

It’s worth considering a few other options before you start your next wildlife painting to help it stand out from the crowd.

For starters, avoid obsessing over the source image and allow yourself to break free by using colours or marks more expressively. This reflects the wildness of the subject matter and adds a creative twist.

Try looking for patterns – these might be interesting shapes or colours, you might look at how repetitive these are, or focus on the effects of light and dark.

In simple terms, look at everything other than how detailed the reference material is.

Drawing and proportions are vital when it comes to adding naturalism but best tempered by some self-expression.

For this exercise, I will be talking you through how I painted a group of flamingos in acrylics, going through the various challenges and choices made.

I based this particular painting on a photo I took at the Berlin Zoological Garden. I loved the soft tints against dark and the various intricate shapes formed from the extended heads and legs. www.hashimakib.co.uk

Mix up colo ur s

Working on a grey base colour mixed from Brilliant Blue, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White, I sketched out the flamingos to make sure everything fitted on the picture plane.

On my mixing tray I added plenty of Titanium White, reds, oranges and earth colours, along with small dabs of blues and purples using a slightly damp 2” flat brush. All the flamingos will have a combination of these colours so be generous with squeezing out the paint. The central pool of colour on your palette can then be split into sections as your mixes develop, with stronger reds, slightly browner mixes, blues for cooler combinations, and a creamy mix with extra Titanium White.

L et p aint s t r e ak

Each flamingo was painted using a 1.5” flat brush, starting with a few semi-circular strokes for the body. The paint was used neat to add an impasto effect and colours were slightly under mixed to create some streaking, which mimicked the flow of feathers.

I added creamier tints for highlights and blue-grey tints for shaded, cooler areas. For smaller dabs, I either used the edge of the brush or switched to smaller flats. I used a warmer combination of colours on a few of the flamingos to make them stand out with some marks delicately placed to avoid smudging.

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Work s m all ar e a s

I wanted to do very little blending, so the painting process was more a case of weaving blocky marks together.

If you intend to blend acrylics, it’s best to do so while the paint is still “live”. The quick drying time of acrylics, even with thicker applications, is hard to estimate – under normal conditions, it can take minutes rather than hours. I find that using a retarder or water to dilute the paint can also dull colour so try working on small pockets of the painting at a time instead to allow the opportunity to integrate the colour.

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Fin d a f o cus

I made the decision early on that the two preening flamingos would be the painting’s focal point. I used my strongest lights on these two, while the blues contrasted the warm colours around them. In order to avoid chalky tints, I added some Azo Yellow Lemon to inject some heat. I also avoided flattening the colour too much by over mixing. A few of the strokes didn’t work out, so I used a damp sheet of kitchen roll to lift the unwanted paint away.

B lo ck t h e b a ckgr o un d

With the flamingos painted, I could work on the background. Essentially this was made up of dark, neutral colours, designed to draw the tints forward, though the area around the two main birds contained a warmer range of colours to draw them out further.

I used a damp 2” flat to mix Warm Grey, Yellow Ochre and various greens, blues and violets, as well as touches of Azo Orange and Titanium White to create a main pool of colour that I could expand upon. A few blocks of this were applied to measure the effect against the tints. Again, colours were left under-mixed for their streaky effects.

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Enrich t h e p alet t e

As more of the background was covered, I varied the colours as I went, primarily to add interest and avoid generic mixes. Richer combinations of Primary Magenta, Yellow Ochre and Azo Orange were added to the main background mix around the focal point with varying brushstrokes. I also applied Prussian Blue to heighten the darks and add crispness around the main flamingos’ necks, though I kept these extremely limited as acrylics dry darker and will flatten out.

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Add e ar t hy hues

The earthy combinations of colour in the background were an important contrast to the warmer tints but I held off using actual earth colours like Burnt Sienna or Raw Umber. It’s worth spending time mixing interesting browns from reds and greens, this way you can vary quantities for richer colour.

Try to avoid painting the background up to the very edge of a drawn outline as this will look fussy. Instead, simply block-in close to the edge so things can still be adjusted towards the end of the painting.

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Fin d s om e b alan ce

I added more greens into my original background mix to suggest the foliage. The reference photo provided extra information here but blurring or underplaying the detail gave the painting a clearer focal point.

I mixed a warmer green here by introducing Azo Yellow Medium while the very top background contained a little Prussian Blue to frame some of the heads. Once all the elements were in place, I had a clear idea of the overall balance and how each part fits together.

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Plan yo ur mixin g

For this painting, I used two mixing trays. As I made new mixes on the larger tray, I would occasionally dip into the original pool for colour. If you’ve been generous squeezing out paint, your palette may become corrupt. It’s worth spending a couple of minutes skimming off that corrupt colour with a palette knife to avoid muddying mixes.

I often use several brushes but rather than cleaning them each time, I wait to see if I could return to that particular colour. The acrylic doesn’t dry as quickly on the brushes as the dampness in the bristles maintains the paint’s freshness.

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B r e ak up h ar sh lin e s

I had a choice at this stage of the painting whether to indicate the legs or not. On the one hand, floating flamingos probably would look odd, but on the other the legs might clutter the composition and create harsh lines. When in doubt, I stuck to the original plan of showcasing the legs.

To indicate the legs, I simply used the edge of a clean 1” flat brush to draw a line, leaving an occasional break in the stroke to avoid too many harsh lines. Colour-wise, I used a blue-grey mix of Titanium White, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Sienna for some legs, and a mix of Primary Magenta, Titanium White and Yellow Ochre for the others.

Top tip

Avoiding thoroughly mixing paint and allowing streaky colour to show through can help resuscitate lifeless areas

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Enh an ce t h e e dg e s

To flesh out the legs, I applied a couple of reflections and spent some time adding lighter pink highlights. Fairly refined applications were required at this latter stage. Overall, they’re probably less impactful but these adjustments help to sparkle up the image.

I used my smallest flat brush with a mix of Titanium White, Azo Yellow Lemon and a little Sky Blue to enhance certain edges, such as the necks, the feathers and parts of the face.

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Fini shin g t o u ch e s

Along with those previous highlights I mixed a strong dark from Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna and various greens and purples. Some darks were lightened slightly and applied to the beaks, while the purer darks were used to sharpen edges and accentuate the curves. To make the colours pop, I added purer versions of reds and oranges where required and lifted the duller pinks on the left-hand flamingos with some cleaner combinations.

I avoided adding too much detail in the faces, particularly the eyes, so the finish was less fussy. It’s important to trust that the overall shapes are interesting enough.

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IN COLOURED PENCILS

ORIGINAL PHOTO

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©OLLY HEARSEY/DRAW BRIGHTON

JAKE SPICER shows how to create a bolder, more striking finish in this coloured pencil portrait by taking a selective approach to the details that you include

©OLLY HEARSEY/DRAW BRIGHTON

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Jake's materials •Coloured Pencils Mars Violet, Black and Plum, all Derwent Procolour pencils; Dark Orange, Amber Gold, Natural Brown, Wild Lavender, Mid Ultramarine, Turquoise Green, Strawberry, Flame, Moonstone, Oyster and Flesh Pink, all Derwent Lightfast pencils •Paper Seawhite 220gsm Cartridge Paper, A3 •Plastic eraser •Pencil sharpener

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made this portrait of Immie, a student and model at our Brighton studio, to experiment with a more minimal treatment of clothing and to explore a high-key interpretation of shadows that prioritised colour relationships over tonal accuracy.

For reference I used a photograph of Immie from the Draw Brighton image library, cropping to take the focus away from her feet. I settled on a photograph in which Immie was making steady eye contact with the camera to suggest something of her easy, confident bearing. I only like to draw from photos of a pose that could plausibly be held for the length of time in which the drawing is made, so this longer drawing ruled out any dynamic twists or fleeting expression. www.jakespicerart.co.uk

Ref in e t h e lin e s

I lightly erased the first sketch, working over the top with Mars Violet Procolour to add greater clarity to the underdrawing. The aim here was to establish a foundation for the rest of the drawing. Before you add colour, try to solve all of the proportional issues at this early stage by concentrating on achieving a visually accurate line drawing that focuses on contour in the figure.

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Cr e ate an un der- draw in g

I began with a loose establishing drawing in Mars Violet Procolour pencil. Hold the pencil with a distant, underhand grip to keep the marks playful. Although most of the drawing will be made with oil-based Lightfast pencils, I prefer Procolour pencils for under-drawing as they can be erased more easily.

E s t ab lish ton e

In the final stage of under-drawing, I added tone to the skin in Mars Violet. This provided both an opportunity to explore the tonal variations myself and to establish an underlying value that later layers will further darken. I built up the tone with tight vertical hatching, being careful to leave the light areas white and keep the dark tones relatively pale to allow me flexibility later.

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Ke ep h air s m o ot h

To make sure the hair really stood out in the drawing, I used colours that I wouldn’t use elsewhere in the portrait. As these colours would need to blend smoothly and the durability of the pencil tip was less of a priority, I switched to the oil-based Lightfast coloured pencils. I started with a thin layer of Dark Orange across all but the lightest and darkest parts of the hair to establish the warm saturation of Immie’s local hair colour.

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L ayer colo ur s

I switched to the lightest and most saturated areas of colour – the highlights in the hair – layering Amber Gold Lightfast selectively over the hair around the highlights.

Where it covered the white paper, it showed as a light yellow and where it layered over the earlier Dark Orange it combined to create a more saturated orange.

S ele c t colo ur s

I have a tendency of making my drawings too warm, so to ensure that the skin colour didn’t slip towards dull brown, I picked out cooler colours first, selecting a palette of cool coloured pencils. I find that if I select a colour, I am forced to actively select equivalents in the skin. It helps me to see green, blue and purple hues amidst the more prominent pinks and browns. I used a Wild Lavender Lightfast in the shadows for this, with Mid Ultramarine and Turquoise Green for the coolest highlights.

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D arken t h e h air

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Warm th e skin

I added Natural Brown Lightfast over the top of the Dark Orange, focusing on areas of dark mid-tone and the slim shapes of shadow that give the hair its form.

I finished the hair by adding the darkest darks in Black Procolour pencil to allow for sharp, clear-edged shapes of shadow.

To add warmth to the skin, I started with the lightest and most saturated areas first, laying colour down on the page with a light touch and using marks which followed the direction of the skin’s surface.

I used a Strawberry Lightfast pencil where the skin had a pinkish tinge, Flame where it tended towards orange, and Amber Gold with Dark Orange in the eyebrows.

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Top tip

Work into f e at ur e s

I worked into the features with a Black Procolour, adding clarity to the centre of the lips, nostril and eyelid. At this stage, pay particular attention to how the negative space of the white of the eye defines the iris.

I encircled the pupil carefully, avoiding colouring its centre so as not to fix its position too firmly. I also added saturation colour to the eyelids, nose and lips, making use of most of the skin colours.

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S culpt t h e s ur f a ce s

Now that the colour of the skin was established and the features were fixed, I moved on to sculpting the form of the in-between surfaces.

I used Wild Lavender Lightfast and the warm skin palette to gently layer colours over one another to create dark tones.

While I kept my neutral brown on standby, the interaction of the more saturated colours created all of the tonal variations I needed.

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Sh ow f orm w it h clot hin g

Despite the varied tonal range of Immie’s shirt in the photograph, I didn’t want it to detract from the patterns of the dungarees, so rendered it quickly and simply in the pale grey of Moonstone Lightfast.

The long stripes on the dungarees suggest both the form of the clothing and the shape of the pose, so I decided to draw each stripe as a simple, calligraphic line. I picked the Plum Procolour pencil for its extra strength, roughly blunting it to ensure a wider mark.

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To keep things fresh and open, avoid pushing tones as dark as they appear in your reference

Finishin g to u ch e s

Finally, I added freckles with little scumbles of Dark Orange and Natural Brown, using the brown for the dungaree buckles and buttons.

I clarified the shape of her irises with an eraser and used a Black Procolour pencil for the pupils. I finished the skin with a combination of Oyster and Flesh Pink Lightfast over the top of selective areas to blend and unify colours with a transparent layer of pale colour.

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Still life IN OILS

Painting in an expressive way doesn’t have to mean a lack of control. American master DAVID SHEVLINO shares his thoughtful methods in our easy-to-follow guide

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David's materials •Paints Titanium White, Cadmium Orange, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Brilliant Pink, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Olive Green, Viridian Green, Permanent Green Light and Raw Umber, all Michael Harding oil colours •Brushes Flat brushes, sizes 8, 10 and 12; filbert brushes, sizes 8, 10 and 12, all Rosemary & Co. Ivory range •Support Gesso-primed canvas board, 30x30cm •Odourless White Spirit •Galkyd paint medium

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hough my present work tends to be loose and sometimes abstract, I had a traditional and classical training at art school. I spent a lot of time honing my drawing skills while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

In much of my current work I use large brushes to mass in tones and colours, simplifying by economising the amount of visual information and number of brush strokes. For this step-by-step demonstration, I painted a quick, wet-into-wet still life as an example of how I interpret the information in a subject.

A common misconception, which I sometimes encounter among my students, is that a loose, economical application of the paint is somehow easy. I find that it’s not at all easier than a more literal, traditional painting approach.

In fact, it can be more challenging in some ways. The reason is that simplifying and economising your brush work require lots of decisions to be made. Look hard and think about what information needs to be there – and what does not. www.davidshevlino.com

Sketch yo ur s et up

I applied a blue-grey base colour to my canvas board.

Any given tone may appear differently on a neutral canvas than it would on a stark white one, so a tinted ground makes it easier for me to judge accurate values and colour temperatures.

I kept my still life setup relatively simple with a strong light coming from one direction. This created a contrast between the lights and shadows. I loosely sketched the composition with Burnt Sienna thinned with white spirit.

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Arran g e yo ur p alet te

I start by laying out my colours, grouping them into “families”. I keep the warmer colours in the upper left corner, blues and purples in the upper right, and greens in the lower right. Olive Green is a warm hue used in landscape painting, but I also find it useful for darker flesh tones. By contrast, Viridian is a cooler, blue-green and a nice foil to the Olive Green.

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B lo ck in light ton e s

Blocking in my lightest tones first is a habit I developed many years ago as a plein air painter. With a small palette, it was easier to keep the colours clean if I began with the lightest ones first, before my palette and white spirit became dirty.

This approach is especially helpful when painting wet into wet because what we’re essentially doing is putting wet paint over already existing wet paint, which can get very messy. So, it’s best to do whatever is necessary to keep the colours clean.

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E s t ab li sh contex t

I started blocking in the copper cup and the dark purple of the background.

Establishing the contrasting dark of the background helps to better judge the value range of darkest to lightest. It’s also helpful for adding context to the painting so that I can better relate one colour to another.

This is important because the tones don’t exist in a vacuum; they are all related to one another. Any given colour will appear as dark or light, warm or cool based on what is surrounding it – another reason why painting on the toned ground is so helpful.

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M atch t h e valu e s

I started to work on the copper cup. When I mix colour, my primary concern is value – is it light or dark enough? The secondary concern is colour temperature – is it warm or cool enough? If your values are correct, you’ll have some latitude with the colour. Here I used Cadmium Orange, Alizarin Crimson, Brilliant Pink and some Ultramarine Blue, all lightened with Titanium White. The addition of blue helped make the colour a bit more neutral, since those other pigments together would be too warm and saturated without it.

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Paint an d s crap e

I packed some thick paint onto the cup and simplified the tones in the reflection. There was more detail in the actual cup, but I was more interested in creating some abstract shapes. Notice how the strokes of paint around the cup are bleeding into the background – I like to keep the edges loose.

If I need to, I can come back and redefine them later.

Also note that there are areas of mid-tones in the white cloth, which I achieved by scraping at the paint in order to allow some of the ground tone to show through.

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Thicken t h e highlight s

I developed and built the paint on the cup, keeping it loose. I used a plastic scraper to apply the thick daub of paint of the highlight. When laying wet paint over existing wet paint, it’s important to load up the brush so that you can simply lay the paint on and not sweep it away. Paint consistency is also important. I favour a buttery consistency, so I use a Titanium White made with either safflower or walnut oil as these oils have a thinner viscosity than linseed oil.

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Add ch oice s t r oke s

I developed the purple background, using wide strokes of a size 12 flat brush to help to break it up. I also worked into the cast shadow on the surface to the right of the cup. Adding ripples in the white cloth was an effective way to add interest.

One of the challenges of simplifying your subject is limiting the number of brushstrokes. If there are fewer strokes, each one becomes more important and must be carefully placed.

Top tip

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S of ten t h e e dg e s

Once I’d established the subject matter, I was free to start making some creative decisions about how to treat edges. I do a lot of painting and repainting until I get the effect I’m looking for – for instance, I like to blur edges as a way of abstracting parts of the painting.

In the flower at the lower left, I made a couple of changes to the edge where it meets the purple background. It’s not a major difference to the previous stage, but it’s an example of my painting process and willingness to experiment with what I’m doing in order to achieve the effect I want.

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I like to mix my colours on my palette with a paintbrush. If you do the same, it is important to clean your brush in white spirit first and wipe away any excess paint on a rag before you try picking up fresh paint to mix another colour.

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Kn ow wh at yo u s e e

Painting a flower is not simply a case of replicating what you see in front of you.

A working knowledge of the basic principles of how light and shadow create the illusion of volume and depth can help you better interpret any given form. In the case of the peony, I saw a cup shape lit from the upper left, with corresponding shadows in the lower right. Given that information and what I know about painting, I was free to create a simple, abstracted interpretation.

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In cr e a s e t emp erat ur e

I have a tendency to over paint, so I like to start as sparsely as I can and stop myself from adding too many details. This takes a lot of restraint. If I go too far with a particular part of a painting, I may scrape it away and start again. The flower’s colour was slightly on the pink side, so I mixed Titanium White with a small bit of Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Orange. The warm temperature of this hue was a nice contrast to the cooler white of the cloth and the other flower.

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Finishin g to u ch e s

I placed a few darker strokes to indicate shadows on the right of the peony. These were a good example of neutralising a tone. I used Burnt Sienna with Dioxazine Purple, Olive Green and Titanium White. Mixing the warm earth colour with a cool purple gave me the neutral I was looking for.

Varying the colour temperatures makes for a more interesting composition. The contrasting warms and cools are as important as the lights and darks.

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From a restricted palette to carefully chosen strokes, ALVARO CASTAGNET explains why it is important to start out with a clear vision for your finished painting

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Street scene

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Alvaro's materials • Watercolours Yellow Ochre, Pyrrol Orange, Pyrrol Red, Burnt Sienna Light, Neutral Tint, Titanium White, all Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor; Lavender from Holbein Artists’ Water Color; Cobalt Blue from Sennelier L’Aquarelle • Paper Arches 300gsm rough paper, 56x38cm • Brushes A 2” flat wash brush; size 00, 2, 4 and 10 mop brushes; size 8 needle point brush; size 8, 10 and 12 synthetic rounds – see www.alvaro castagnet.net/e-store • Masking tape • Drawing board • 6B pencil

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aris is one of my favourite cities.

I feel inspired on every corner, and don’t think I will ever get tired of painting it. I often sit for a drink at Café de Paris, enjoying a good coffee and a warm croissant while sketching and watching people go by.

Rue de Buci is a beautiful street – short and narrow, with many architecturally rich buildings, creating an intimate scale, accentuated by the awnings, umbrellas, tables and people walking on the street, all these elements add to a wonderful feel.

I wanted to capture the Parisian energy of the street, so I filled it with people sitting and standing, and the waiter crossing to serve his customers. I chose a rich red tone as a way of unifying the painting and making it appear to vibrate.

There are no definite rules in painting; each picture is different and comes with its own demands. Even with a straightforward subject like this one, it is important to have a clear vision from the start.

Try to picture the finished painting in your mind before you start, and this will help you paint with freedom. Then from the moment you drop in the first washes, you can begin a dialogue between yourself and the paper.

Take your time to observe the scene and apply the paint with assertive brushstrokes, letting the techniques follow your initial vision until the very end. www.alvarocastagnet.net

E s t ab lish a warm b a s e

My vision was to create a warm painting, so I started by applying a rich, pure Yellow Ochre wash across the width of the paper with my 2” brush. While the paper was still wet, I placed a wash of Pyrrol Red with a touch of Pyrrol Orange over the awnings and continued this over the lower section of the painting to echo the colour and create overall harmony.

The challenge is to paint this in a single wash to avoid things getting muddy, so make sure you mix the right amount of pigment from the start.

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L ay dow n g uidelin e s

I fixed the paper to my board with masking tape first and placed it on my table. I drew with a soft 6B lead pencil. I defined the main shapes, placed the tables and people, and tried to give the umbrellas the right contour, while concentrating on the relationship between those elements when viewed from the narrow perspective of my seat.

When drawing for watercolour, you mostly need good guidelines, rather than accurate details. It is best to draw without much precision to allow freedom in your execution later so you can work with generous washes and not feel constrained by your drawing. I only included details on the focal point and the waiter because I needed to ensure the proportions of those were right.

D r y an d wa sh

Before going any further, I made sure the paper was dry – for speed at home, you could use a hairdryer for this. I then applied a wash of Neutral Tint with a fraction of Cobalt Blue and Pyrrol Red to the buildings. By using the same red in mixes throughout, you can maximise the glow coming off the awnings.

I used water from a spray bottle to add a bit of moisture and dilute some sections. I added a little Burnt Sienna Light to the mix on the left-hand side to make it deeper.

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Cr e ate n e g at ive sp a ce s

Using the same mix with Burnt Sienna Light added, I worked very quickly with loose brushstrokes, leaving many small white areas to suggest movement and create negative shapes. I wanted to capture the effect of light bouncing off people, tables, and cutlery.

I added a bit more Neutral Tint in places to darken it up and create more depth.

I tilted my board to let the wash run down, accentuating the reflections on the tables.

I also picked out a few faces with Yellow Ochre and Pyrrol Red again.

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D evelop wa sh e s

I continued with the washes on the right-hand side, creating shadows so the awnings appeared as negative shapes, working always with the same mixture of Neutral Tint, Burnt Sienna Light and Pyrrol Red. I extended the wash with a little water, darkening the value around the people and waiter to capture the beautiful feel of the Parisian light.

I went back with more Pyrrol Red over the awnings, then tilted the board while I was doing this to help the wash run over the borders of the awnings and soften the edges.

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Conf us e t h e e dg e s

It is not only important to use harmonious colours, but also to aim for interesting and appealing brushstrokes that connect different areas of the painting.

Here I worked with my size 4 brush to produce free-flowing, spontaneous-looking brushwork around the people and tables.

I also dropped in a bit of neat water to create bleeds and break up the hard edges. Doing this causes the viewer a little confusion almost, which in turn creates the sensation of movement and things happening.

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Fig ur e it o ut !

I concentrated on the central waiter figure here, as he was a crucial element of the picture. He needed painting with finesse, so the gesture of the strokes needed to accurately describe his movements.

I made sure I used a totally cool colour on his shirt to make it stand out against the warmth of the reds elsewhere. I chose Lavender for not only because I like the colour but also because it has body. As the waiter was seen against the light – or contrejour – the colour needed to be subdued, so I toned down the Lavender with a little Neutral Tint, Burnt Sienna Light and Pyrrol Red left on my palette. I also used a Yellow Ochre and Pyrrol Red mix to paint his face and arms.

Easy Painting

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E xp loit t h e water colo ur

I kept working on the main figure, creating his legs with dry brushstrokes to enhance the feel of movement.

I kept the same palette of colours for harmony, only darkening the mixture to add contrast as this enhances and brings the focal point forward. I used the same mixture with more water for his shadow.

I didn’t worry about the paint running, as these little incidents are the ones that add to the unique feel of a watercolour painting. As an artist, it is always important to exploit the vices and virtues of your chosen medium.

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S u g g e s t an d cont ra s t

I worked with a size 2 brush to add touches of colour to the customers sitting down, used Yellow Ochre with a touch of Pyrrol Red to create the orange with sparkle.

The smaller figures on the street were indicated with just a single shape, using a very contrasting value to the pale backdrop in order to enhance the feel of light.

Pick o ut highlight s

When I paint small elements like the lamp or signs, I suggest their placement in the overall wash and then, once that wash is dry, I go back and paint in the highlights. In this case, I chose Titanium White mixed with a little Yellow Ochre to calm the brightness.

Highlights are very important and need painting with the right tools – in this case, I chose a needle point (or rigger) brush, which is great for fine lines.

Synthetic brushes are best for this stage too, as the bristles have a stronger spring that is ideal for the finer details.

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Finishin g to u ch e s

For the final details, I kept to the same colour palette but with different variations in the colour mixes. I finished the waiter’s apron, while adding a few highlights to the heads and should of the figures. Also note how I used a few rich drybrush strokes to help link up the softer wet-in-wet areas I’d painted earlier. I finished by signing the painting in Lavender to make it stand out.

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Easy Painting

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Rub it up t h e right way

I worked on more touches to pull the painting together, darkening some sections and adding details. I sometimes use my fingers to soften an overloaded brushstroke or when I want some blending to occur. Your fingers are excellent tools to get rid of hard edges or remove any excess colour.

FLUID SHAPES & LINES

“Wild Rose”, 12”x12”. Nitram Fusain Aquarelle, Nitram Liquid Charcoal and Nitram Bâtons on hot press paper

NITRAM FUSAIN AQUARELLE “My work is a semi-abstract interpretation of the natural world with a focus on fluid shapes and lines.

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The Liquid Charcoal and Aquarelle watercolor charcoal mediums dry well and the blacks retain their strength and density. I love the combination of depth and subtle softness.” ~ Pamela Harnois Learn how Pamela Harnois used Nitram Fusain Aquarelle, Nitram Liquid Charcoal & Nitram Bâtons to create her artwork.

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A classically trained fine artist, Pamela Harnois has been experimenting with her craft for over 25 years working primarily in watercolor, charcoal, graphite and ink. Pamela graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and holds a degree in Fine Arts. Pamela’s signature style is light and loose and she has created a varied art collection of florals, still lifes, landscapes and seascapes.

A longtime resident of Southern California, Pamela now lives and works in beautiful Northwest Connecticut, where she gives online art lessons and maintains an active Instagram following of more than 24K artists from around the world. www.pamelaharnois.com | www.Instagram.com/pamelaharnoisart | www.facebook.com/pamelaharnoisart

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