Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Artists & Illustrators

In common with many other people, I have spent the last year missing the experience of life drawing. For the past 20 years or so my weekly routine has involved going to life classes. It is a practice that generates its own momentum – the more deeply I go into it, the more it seems to offer, and the more possibilities and challenges come to the fore. After a year of not working directly from life and with a view to returning to life classes as we (potentially) emerge from lockdown restrictions, for the first time in as long as I can remember I am approaching life drawing as though from the outside. If not as a beginner then certainly as someone who is out of practice. Of course, there…

TYDA STERBOVA Before my studio was built, I painted at the dining room table. This meant that, at times, we were having our dinner kneeling around the coffee table. It all worked OK until our first son started standing up and grabbing the paint. I knew then it was time to move my work somewhere safer. After seeing a few projects by [Irish custom builders] Big Man Tiny Homes, the decision to build a garden studio was made. I was able to give a lot of input and optimise the layout for the best light available; I wanted large windows to bring in as much as possible, especially on the wall I intended to paint on. I also wanted decking, overlapped by the roof, and this has created a great…

“I can’t wait for galleries to reopen… Perhaps this is when my win will sink in!” It feels amazing to have won the John Moores Painting Prize. And to have my painting, The Common, join the Walker Art Gallery’s collection. I will definitely pop a bottle of something with friends to celebrate. The John Moores team hosted a very special announcement ceremony on Zoom. It was a shame not to be there in person, but they sent all the exhibition artists a package of Champagne and chocolate, which was a lovely surprise. Tokyo’s Ueno Park initially inspired The Common. But walking and running in the parks near my home in South London influenced the direction it took. I began the painting by blocking in. . Lotus flower leaves and their…

VITAL CALLS I’m writing in response to your “Keeping Connected” letter of the month [Issue 429]. I help run a small art class, Art & Soul, comprising a group of people with varying ranges of disability, such as Parkinson’s, strokes and mental health problems. Until lockdown, we met in a scout hall and the group bonded to become a cheery, supportive bunch. During lockdown we tried to keep the camaraderie going with fortnightly phone calls. These calls have been a vital source of contact for us all as most of the group do not have access to, or indeed ability to use, electronic devices. They have also helped ease the isolation of a number of members living alone. As well as providing a friendly voice, we set regular art challenges,…

Ingrid Sanchez’s first studio was a storage room in the backyard of her parents’ home in the Mexican city of Morelia. She was nine years old and would while away hours painting in oils. However, it would be some 20 years before she would have her own workspace again and first use watercolours, the medium that has anchored her career as a professional artist. Ingrid now paints and teaches small classes at her home studio in West London, where she has been based for the last seven years. It is a forensically tidy, bright white space dominated by plants although she’s in the process of converting the summer house in the garden into another area where she will work, too. “I am a very organised and clean person,” she says…

1 Get perspective. It’s easy to get pulled into the drawing and forget to stand back so that you can see it properly. Especially at the early stages, get back regularly – if you’re standing at an easel make sure you have a bit of space behind you; if you’re working in a sketchpad, hold it out at arm’s length away from yourself. 2 Work from big shapes to small. Try to establish the overall structure before homing in on the details. Finding things like the composition of the subject, the way the large forms fit together, and the overall scale is more important at the beginning of a drawing than refining individual bits. 3 Squint to simplify the forms. Looking through half-closed eyes helps us see areas of light…

Last month we looked at how the language you use to describe colour can affect how you perceive and represent it. Over the next three issues we’re going to dig deeper into the three dimensions that make up a colour: hue, saturation and tone. A colour’s hue describes its family name – for example, blue or red or purple. An observed colour might sit firmly in the centre of that hue family (a “really blue, blue”) or it might sit closer to a neighbouring family of hues (a “greenish blue” or “purplish blue”). The borders that separate one hue family from another are blurred, shaped by cultural consensus, visual perception and personal experience. One observer might describe a colour that sits on the boundary between red and orange as “red”,…

David Storey The winner of our inaugural British Art Prize, announced on page 20, will be given the opportunity to work towards a solo exhibition with the prestigious central London gallery Panter & Hall. In doing so, they will find themselves in exalted company, exhibiting in a space reserved for many of Britain’s most popular and creative talents, including Mark Demsteader, Una Stubbs, Sam Toft and David Storey. Fading Light Woman Sitting on a Gate “Whenever I’m in London, I often visit the British Museum and look at the Elgin Marbles,” explains the painter. “I find they have an extraordinary haunting presence, and the fact that they are missing arms and faces seems to work as a metaphor for memory.” David works out of a Brighton studio in an old,…

“Mistakes are an inevitable consequence of pushing ideas and taking risks” I had a disaster in the studio last week. A print I was working on took a wrong turn. I ended up destroying the whole edition and redoing the work. While I am pleased to say that this doesn’t happen very often at such a late stage in the process, I do slip up and make mistakes all the time. I have come to see these errors as very much part and parcel of my working method, rather than as a series of embarrassing catastrophes to be hidden at all costs. You don’t have to be happy about making mistakes but owning them does help remove some of the sting. Nobody likes making mistakes. I certainly don’t, but I…

Crosshatching – the layering of parallel lines to create tone – is unlike any other drawing technique in that it is sculptural. What this means is that it is necessary to understand not only the appearance of an object, but also its shape. How much space does it take up? How do its surfaces curve and fold? These are questions that need to be answered, in addition to the obvious questions of light and shadow. Given the unusual mental effort required in order to crosshatch well, it can be helpful to break the process down into an orderly series of steps, from initial sketch to finished drawing. My own process involves a great deal of planning at the outset, gradually leading into a less regimented, more free-form approach later on.…

1 Apply soft washes As this patch of sunlight hit the wall, I was struck by the qualities of the shadows. Crisp ceramics and architectural plants were complemented by the shadow's hard and soft edges, caused by multiple light sources. I used the size 10 round brush to wet the entire surface. This afforded enough time and fluidity to push paint around and achieve very soft blends. I applied neat Raw Sienna, Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Blue where I saw reflected colour in the shadows. 2 Choose your edges Once the first wash was thoroughly dry, I wet the surface again. Using the size 10 brush, I applied a wash of a “shadow mix” of Ultramarine Violet, Raw Sienna and Cobalt Blue, working from wet areas towards dry areas. Where…

Most artists love the buzz of finishing a painting in one go. When it all comes together, the colours harmonise and the brushstrokes look fresh and lively. The problem, if you’re anything like me, is that many paintings don’t quite succeed straight away. Reworking is required. Luckily, I am often able to put those disappointments to good use, with the added benefit of generating richer surfaces than I would have done in a single sitting. Dusting off neglected paintings may reveal some that are much better than you remembered, requiring little more than a few tweaks to be finished. Others, admittedly, will be viewed as “failures”, but with a little preparation they can make very useful surfaces for fresh subjects. (The occasional complete stinker can be happily destroyed to relieve…