Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2017 i Artists & Illustrators

Mark Peverley (Pev): Bit of alla prima plein air painting with oil on linen… it took six hours to paint in my backyard. Step-by-step guide: How to layer foliage. Artist Matt Jeanes shows you how to approach a mass of leaves in watercolour. Geraldine Walker: Fabulous ‘how to layer foliage’. I hadn’t realised masking fluid could be laid down after each layer dried. This tutorial will help enormously. Let us know what you think of Artists & Illustrators and share your painting projects with us using the contacts below... @AandImagazine ArtistsAndIllustrators AandImagazine @AandImagazine…

True to Life: British Realist Painting in the 1920s and 1930s 1 July to 29 October 2017 Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art (Modern Two) The rise of abstract art has left other genres of painting that thrived during the 1920s and 1930s somewhat overshadowed. This year, True to Life at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, from 1 July to 29 October, seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of British realist painting between the two world wars. Curated with stunning success by Patrick Elliott, the show is sure to fascinate and inspire representational artists as it brings together more than 80 paintings by around 50 artists who form a now almost forgotten generation of painters. Focusing on scrupulously detailed realist work, it locates them not only within…

It can be helpful to think of basic flower forms like this: a light side, a shadow side and a dark side. Your light source will help you see value, which will inform your colour choices. WORK FAST Start by toning your gessoed canvas with medium blue-grey. Next mix a bright, light yellow for your light side, a middle-range darker yellow for your shadow side and a dark for the centre of your sunny side. Look for your brightest bright and put it in. Next, decide where your shadow side is and finally put in your darkest dark. Work fast, and don’t worry whether it looks like a flower. When you stand back from the canvas, you will be able to see a sunflower. You can build on top with…

A strong light contrast such as a summery balcony is a great subject. An architectural feature has many hard edges and needs careful drawing because perspective is important. But why not add flowers, greens and pots painted with soft edges? In this painting, the door and balcony work as a support for the composition, and the greens and flowers are painted in a loose and spontaneous technique. I abandoned the comfort of outline and blended colours to get a range of saturation, tone and wet-on-wet effects. I wanted to create intense sunlight, so I paid attention to cast shadows. Before adding colours, I drew the main shadows. Most of the time, these are made with transparent washes, and can enhance the focal point – a play between light and shadow…

I usually work with watercolour in pans so when I was asked to do a demonstration using watercolour pencils, I leapt at the chance to try them. Here you can see the lessons I learned. With practice and confidence, I could become a bit looser and less formal in how I approached using the medium, but I found the variety and subtlety of the colours available were close to my typical watercolour palette. www.wilfreeborn.co.uk WIL’S MATERIALS •WATERCOLOUR PENCILS Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle: Lemon Yellow 240; Yellow 010; Yellow Ochre 034; Orange 030; Vermilion 060; Crimson Aubergine 599; Cinnamon 055; Raw Umber 049; Light Blue 161; Middle Cobalt Blue 660; Manganese Violet 112; Light Malachite Green 181; Spring Green 470; Dark Sap Green 739; French Grey (neutral colour) 808; Prussian Blue…

ANIMAL AMBITION I wanted to say how wonderful Portfolio Plus is. It is giving me a chance to display my work online in an amazing community of artists. I am 23 and a self-taught artist and illustrator living in the beautiful countryside of Cornwall. I am also very passionate about the world that we live in. I’ve recently been made redundant from my spectacular job as a glass engraver and I decided it was a sign I should dedicate myself full-time to art. I want to be able to inspire younger people and support charities with my work. It is a dream to open an animal shelter supported by sales of my artwork. Leah Ollsson, via email It’s great to hear Portfolio Plus is working for you, Leah. Signing up…

1 FESTIVAL OF ILLUSTRATION 2017 As part of Hartlepool’s Festival of Illustration, which continues until 23 August, you can join printmaker Cath Hodson on Friday 23 June at the Central Library in Stockton to explore how to create illustration using a combination of drypoint and monoprint. www.festivalofillustration.com 2 EXPLORE Print Fair Get some creative inspiration at the Freshly Pressed Print Fair, which takes place at The Civic in Barnsley on Saturday 15 July 2017, from 10am to 4pm. It is set to feature a cacophony of stalls selling art, illustration and more alongside a line-up of live music. www.barnsleycivic.co.uk 3 LEARN Life-drawing class Explore freestyle, large-scale charcoal drawing with a clothed model. Shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2016, artist Nicola Grellier will share her passion for drawing large and…

LONDON Sargent: The Watercolours 21 June to 8 October 2017 Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21 Take a new view of the renowned portraitist at the first UK show in nearly 100 years dedicated to watercolours of the great Anglo-American artist. www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk William Henry Hunt: Country People 24 June to 17 September 2017 The Courtauld Gallery, London WC2R Taking the lead from his celebrated work The Head Gardener, this exhibition shares depictions of rural figures in the early 19th century through 20 drawings and watercolours. www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery SOUTH British Art: Ancient Landscapes Until 3 September 2017 The Salisbury Museum SP1 Some of the greatest names in British art, including Constable, Turner, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash, come together to reveal a unique view of the landscapes shaped by our distant ancestors. www.salisburymuseum.org.uk…

Why Draw? by Joachim Homann, published by Prestel, £40. Taking in 100 drawings, pastels, watercolours and collages, this lovely hardback explores what compels artists to draw and illustrates its enduring relevance as a basic artistic practice. www.prestelpublishing. randomhouse.de How to Paint Skies by Geoff Kersey, published by Search Press, £12.99. Skies are a tricky yet essential part of landscape paintings. This book begins with advice to help you understand how watercolour behaves, so you can produce a broad range of effects, before outlining the materials you will need, and finishing with six indepth step-by-step projects. www.searchpress.com Painting Portraits of Children by Simon Davis, published by Crowood, £14.99. In this detailed guidebook, top portrait painter Simon Davis explains his approach to capturing the essence of…

“I CAN ONLY SAY WHAT I THINK AND BACK IT UP WITH MY KNOWLEDGE OF PERSPECTIVE, COLOUR THEORY AND ART HISTORY. BUT THERE ARE NO RULES” You’re best known for your portraits, but also paint a variety of subjects. Is there one that feels most natural? I feel most at home doing a portrait because a commissioned painting has to work from the off, so I am careful to select a room, background and lighting conditions I know will make a decent painting. How would you describe your oil technique? Direct – no preliminary drawing, always from life and not photographs, even for back-up. One battleground is enough. I use fairly dry paint with no medium, and tend to use short-handled sable brushes, which are intended for watercolour, so it…

My students often approach the start of their painting life with a degree of trepidation thinking that there is a right and wrong way to ‘do’ art. I suspect that it is the unfortunate fall out from an old-fashioned art education that encourages this idea and makes students nervous about getting stuck in and allowing mistakes to happen. It’s an old saw that you only learn from your mistakes but, with watercolour, some of those errors can become happy accidents, which go on to give you the confidence to continue taking risks. Fear of failure is the enemy and taking some risks always, in the end, works to your creative advantage. There are many talented watercolourists who paint in the pure medium and in a traditional style, but the medium…

1 HE WAS A WAR ARTIST DURING BOTH WORLD WARS This year marks 100 years since Wyndham Lewis was first commissioned as an official war artist. During the First World War, he worked for the Canadians then the British, creating his wartime masterpiece A Battery Shelled. In the Second World War, the artist painted A Canadian War Factory for Kenneth Clark’s War Artists Advisory Committee almost as a lifeline – he was living in dire poverty at the time. 2 HE WAS NOTORIOUSLY ELUSIVE Lewis loved to generate mystery about his origins. He insisted he was born in 1884, not 1882, aboard his father’s yacht amid a storm off the Canadian coast. It’s more likely he was born on terra firma in the town of Amherst in Nova Scotia. At…

ANNA AND ELENA BALBUSSO This beautiful frontispiece of the Countess Olivia for the Folio Society’s recent edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night saw its creators, Milan-based Anna and Elena Balbusso, shortlisted for this year’s V&A Illustration Awards in the book illustration category. The multi award-winning duo work together as Anna+Elena=Balbusso in the kind of professional harmony that’s probably only possible for identical twins. Their personalities complement each other, they say, so their process is one of continuous interaction and sharing which ensures that everything they produce is a joint effort. “We can start the project together and then divide the tasks,” say Anna and Elena. “We talk a lot before starting a new project but, if we disagree about something, we discuss and mediate.” But the pair don’t have precise rules…

Born in Florence in 1856 to American parents, John Singer Sargent trained in Paris before making his mark in London as a oil artist who excelled at painting the luxury and grandeur of his Edwardian society subjects. Yet he also painted en plein air in watercolour throughout his life, and was as fascinated with achieving technical mastery in this medium as oils. This summer, from 21 June to 8 October 2017, Dulwich Picture Gallery in London will be showing the first exhibition in the UK dedicated solely to his watercolours for more than 100 years. The painting on your free print, San Vigilio, forms part of Sargent: The Watercolours. It hails from 1913, after Sargent had closed his studio to focus on travelling and painting watercolours, and is a wonderful…

1 SET A TIME LIMIT TO CREATE A PAINTING What you will learn If you have a detailed style, it can be helpful to restrict the time that you spend on a painting. Learn to “travel light” and include only what you really need. This will allow you to dial in to your subject more quickly and create a finished painting in no more than a few hours. What you should do First, think about your light source and how it creates light and shadow areas. Quickly draw the basic shapes of the composition with your brush or pencil. Consider beginning on a toned canvas as this can speed up the process, plus the underlying tone can peek through later in places if you wish. Start to build the weight…