Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i Artists & Illustrators

SHARE YOUR ART Our Portfolio Plus service is a great way for you to reach a whole new audience during lockdown Did you know Artists & Illustrators has an exciting online community of more than 20,600 readers who currently share their art? What’s more, for as little as the price of a coffee, you can join our Portfolio Plus scheme and sell your artwork commission-free to more than 100,000 monthly visitors to the site. “I was really pleased to make a sale within two months of putting my first work on the site,” said Portfolio Plus member David Jessup. “Since then I have had several more sales, but, more importantly, I have received four really good commissions as a result of this exposure.” Follow the six easy steps opposite and…

1ST JIAB PRACHAKUL Could you tell us a little about the context to the scene? Night Talk is a souvenir from all of my moments with Jeonga and Makoto. We are Asian but we come from different countries, different backgrounds, and we became friends and developed a family-like relationship. At the time I had already moved to Lyon but still went back and forth to Berlin every other month or so. Every time I was there, we would make sure we caught up for dinner or a drink. That evening we went to this kneipe, a typical corner bar in Berlin, after having pizza. Jeonga was complaining to Makoto that he never made an effort to catch up, then Makoto started revealing his feelings about Jeonga – she is strong, precise…

• Paper Arches Oil cold-pressed 300gsm paper, 30x40cm • Paints Brilliant Pink, Quinacridone Red, Transparent Oxide Red, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow, Bright Yellow Lake, Yellow Ochre, Phthalocyanine Turquoise, Phthalocyanine Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black and Titanium White, various artists’ oil colours • Brushes Rosemary & Co Series 2025 Chungking bristle long flats, sizes 2-10 • White spirit • Artist’s tape • Linseed oil • Palette knife • Palette, 40x50cm…

To see if you have mixed the right colours, it can be helpful to pick up a blob of the paint on a palette knife and hold it in front of the photo (or the subject, if working from life) in order to compare the two. The reason for doing this is because two shades may look very close together when viewed on your palette, but they can quickly appear much different when placed in the context of the actual picture. In the image below, the same two colours have been placed together both in the darker part of Sabina’s face to the left and against the bright background on the right. Can you see how they look almost identical on the right, but the differences are more noticeable on…

YOUNG AT ART I’ve been subscribing to your magazine for three years now and can hardly wait for its arrival on the doormat every month. It really keeps me on track and helps motivate me when so many things in life make it difficult to focus on our own creative work. As a schoolteacher of infant classes, I've written and attempted to illustrate my own stories and thoroughly enjoyed your recent interview with Quentin Blake. I am always looking for hints and tips from the greats of children's illustration. I wonder whether you would be able to interview a few others? Gwen Bowie, via email Thanks for your email, Gwen. Turn to page 20 for our special on illustrating for kids with Robyn Wilson-Owen and Allison Colpoys. AT HOME IN…

Here’s an artist’s dilemma for you: how can we develop our own style, while avoiding endlessly repeated variations of the same artwork? Walking the line between maintaining a recognisable personal style and that style tipping into comfortable, dull repetition takes self-discipline, but the rewards are worth persisting. During my first week of art school we had a class in which we had to draw our feet. The boy beside me drew what we all thought was a brilliant sketch of his baseball boots. To the amazement of our class, the tutor called him out for relying on a stylised technique he’d mastered, rather than looking properly and drawing the reality of what was in front of him. I’ve never forgotten that lesson and it remains an essential guideline when making…

I am probably the last person to be offering fashion advice but comfort is key when painting outdoors. Temperatures vary, so layers are the way to go. Lightweight trousers and shirts are ideal for summer. You will almost certainly splash paint on your clothes so avoid anything expensive or precious. Sunglasses prevent tired eyes, but also shift your colour and tonal perception. A hat with a brim gives both protection to the head and shade to the eyes. Shorts and sandals are perfect for villages and coasts but in areas of vegetation, cover your legs to avoid insect bites.…

Painting from life has always been the classic and most beneficial way to learn how to paint. But not all of us will have the luxury of access to a life model or local drawing class, particularly during the lockdown. A great alternative for honing your skills is, of course, painting from photographs. If done right, working from photographs can be a really good way to practice your drawing and painting skills. In this article, I will talk you through a more advanced way of painting a picture from a photograph. This will involve explaining what to look for when choosing a reference photo, how to go about painting it, and how to make adjustments. When choosing your photograph, it’s important to choose one that has three main qualities. Firstly,…

1 SOFTEN THE EDGES One of the common pitfalls that Alyssa’s students make when working with reference photos is an urge to draw outlines on the canvas that don’t occur in real life. The fault lies with the reference material itself. “The photo relies on contours and doesn’t describe volumes adequately just by the very nature of it being a flat object,” she explains. The solution involves softening edges by blending them with your brush. “Identifying and describing plane changes is a much more useful way to create the illusion,” she says. “A hard outline creates a strong edge to a form which pushes it forward in the two-dimensional space, flattening it further. Edges need to be soft, nearly non-descript, so they recede.” 2 CAPTURE COLOURS An over-reliance upon reference…

Every month, one of our Fresh Paint artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus, our online, art-for-sale portal. For your chance to feature in a forthcoming issue, sign up for your own personalised Portfolio Plus page today. You can also: • Showcase, share and sell unlimited artworks commission free • Get your work seen across Artists & Illustrators’ social media channels • Submit art to our online exhibitions • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand illustrators.co.uk/register…

Artist Josephine Nivison Hopper is synonymous with Cape Cod. Every summer from around 1930, she would travel from New York to that claw-shaped peninsula to spend her days by the sea with her husband, Edward. She could often be found painting on Fisher Beach, looking up at the undulating cliffscape, committing it to memory by way of a watercolour. You can see that vantage point through her eyes in a study of the Hopper House, a quickfire painting by Jo that’s held at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. It is filled with energetic, non-descriptive brushstrokes, and squiggly licks of unnaturalistic colours: hot reds, sandy yellows and lime greens. The word “study” is key – it’s not a finished work, but rather an image born out of a creative impulse,…

• Paints Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Hue, Vermilion Hue, Prussian Blue Hue, Ultramarine, Phthalo Green, Yellow Ochre and Process Black, all Daler-Rowney System 3 acrylic; Manganese Blue Hue, Quinacridone Magenta and Titanium White, all Daler-Rowney Cryla acrylic • Brushes Rosemary & Co. Series 47 hog filberts, size 2, 3 and 5; Series 3099 hog background brush, 2”; ivory filberts, sizes 3, 4 and 5 • Canvas Gerstaecker Studio 1 primed 380gsm cotton canvas, 40x40cm…

1 Paint the shadow area as a continuous blending wash, using lighter tones of colour if needed to indicate reflected light. Keep a water spray handy to control the drying. 2 To simply suggest detail such as windows and doors, continue with the wet-in-wet method. The difficulty is determining the correct degree of wetness of the wash. If you add paint too soon, your mark will merge and almost disappear. No harm is done and indeed this can generate more variety. 3 With a slightly drier wash, the darker tones will remain soft edged yet visible. It is important to always add a stronger mix to that which is already there, otherwise you will almost certainly get runbacks (also known as “cauliflowers”). 4 As the painting continues to dry the…

I’m going to take you through an experimental portrait sketch I made of Matt over the course of three days. I’ve painted him many times before but when he fixed his glasses (which I stepped on and broke) with blue painter’s tape, I was excited to try another. I started this portrait in a way which was inspired by both the range of paint textures possible when working on Arches oil paper and the fact that Matt himself favours watercolour as a medium. I also felt that it might be fun to show a different way to start a painting other than the strict and simplified manner I usually teach to my students (and will explore in a future article). I felt this painting’s process was a nice balance between…

The use of colour is an emotive and sometimes contentious topic, and for each artist there seems to be a different theory or explanation. The subject of roses in particular provides ample scope for exploration in colour. My advice is simple: when painting flowers, you can’t be too colourful. Unlike landscapes or other subjects, which can become garish with more colour, flowers just look increasingly fresh and lively. Don’t be afraid to make use of this. With that said, you would be well advised to bear some of the theory of colour in mind and have a few tricks up your sleeve, so to speak. This article will give you some advice on how to see colour properly, and some mixes that I know work from experience. The marriage between…