Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Artists & Illustrators

7 SEPTEMBER ING Discerning Eye 2021 submissions close today. This year’s six selectors include painter Pete “The Street” Brown and Talk Art podcast presenter Russell Tovey. www.discerningeye.org 30 SEPTEMBER The World Reimagined aims to educate about slavery via 10 large globe sculptures on display in major UK cities next year. Submit a design for the chance to feature. theworldreimagined.artopps.co.uk 30 SEPTEMBER Enter your art into Holland’s Painting of the Year 2021 for the chance to feature in an exhibition in Amsterdam or win a rather appropriate €2021 cash prize. www.paintingoftheyear.com…

As a subscriber you will enjoy these benefits: Step-by-step guides, from painting and drawing to printmaking and illustration. Improve your painting month after month. Learn how to get the most from materials and discover new techniques. Subscriber-only offers and discounts. Plus you will never miss an issue with free delivery straight to your doorstep! SAVE up to 33% off the shop price FREE postage to your home* 1 year (13 issues) subscription to Artists & Illustrators UK £42.95 | Europe €66.95 | USA $76.95 Australia $114.95 | Rest of World £58.95 Subscribe now Go to www.chelseamagazines.com/CAAISM21 Or phone +44 (0)1858 438 789 (quoting code CAAISM21) If for any reason you’re not happy with your subscription, you may cancel within 14 days of placing your order…

Never should the power of the humble pencil be underestimated. It is so often the first thing an artist reaches for, the go-to tool is the starting point for many a masterpiece, and one brand who understands the importance of the right pencil is Faber-Castell. Founded in 1761, Faber-Castell is the world’s oldest pencil manufacturer, yet it continues to be an innovator in the field. This autumn, the leading German brand launches the first ever 14B graphite pencil and Artists & Illustrators has teamed up with them to offer three lucky readers the chance to win a set of these groundbreaking pencils, as part of a bundle of top-quality drawing materials worth more than £300 each. The 14B pencil is part of the new Pitt Graphite Matt range, but Faber-Castell…

German Expressionism was an early 20th-century art movement characterised by bold colours and marks. Taking inspiration from Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh, Expressionist artists such as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Alexej von Jawlensky are good examples of portrait painters working in Germany at that time. Often much cruder in style and bolder in application, these painters developed an almost reckless attitude toward portraiture where colour was used for emotional impact, using vivid notation. For this masterclass, I wanted to try and emulate some of the portrait techniques of these artists. I wanted to use colour with a very non-realist emphasis as they did to see just how far it could be pushed in that respect. I worked from life and then developed the image as I went,…

1 CHOOSE SUPPORTS CAREFULLY Consider your support carefully before beginning. If you’re painting with oils or acrylics and want a smoother finish, try using a prepared wooden panel or a fine cotton or even linen canvas. With watercolour, the texture of your paper can have a huge bearing on how the paint behaves too. A rough paper can be useful for showing the sparkling highlights of light on water as the paint fails to settle in some of the dinks in the surface, while hot-pressed paper is very smooth, allowing for wet-in-wet washes that could suggest softer reflections. A cold-pressed (or NOT) paper is a good mid-point between the two. 2 STUDY THE OPACITY EXPERT TIP – Kate Brinkworth: “Whatever the subject matter, choosing the right paint can really help,…

Figure Drawing by Jake Spicer Regular A&I contributor Jake Spicer reveals himself to be the natural heir to Andrew Loomis in his tenth and most comprehensive book to date. Early exercises with attainable targets give way to a library of anatomical reference, while profiles add vital context. Figure Drawing is structured like an art school course and is every bit as rewarding. Ilex Press, £25 Reader offer – SAVE £9! A&I readers can buy Figure Drawing for £16, including UK P&P. Order by calling (01235) 759555 and quoting the code: “9952100052”.…

While fashions change faster than the seasons, our concept of fashion illustration has largely remained unchanged: look at any designs from the past century and you will often find the same full-length figures striding forward, all rendered with elegant black ink lines and sweeping washes of watercolour. Even contemporary books, such as Holly Nichols’ Modern Fashion Illustration released this spring, might swap the watercolour brush for a Copic Sketch Marker but ultimately the principles remain the same. It is clear, however, that what we don’t expect to see is awkward, off-the-cuff poses, jarring colour schemes and roughly textured passages of pastel, acrylic and whatever other media can be thrown into the mix. Yet that is precisely what Chris Gambrell has made his stock in trade as he has risen to…

James McNeill Whistler was an American artist, trained in Paris and famed for his London nocturnes, yet his connections to Scotland ran surprisingly deep. He only visited the country once as a teenager, yet he was embraced as one of their own. The Glasgow Boys called him “The Master” and petitioned for the Corporation of Glasgow to buy his Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle, becoming the first public collection to own Whistler's work. The University of Glasgow, meanwhile, gave him an honorary doctorate and is now home to the world’s largest public display of the artist’s work, comprising 80 oil paintings and more than 1,700 works on paper, as well as almost 300 artworks made by his late wife Beatrix, all thanks to a…

Mention perspective in a drawing class and the attention of students vanishes faster than two straight lines converging on a horizon line, but the principles of depth are about much more than the strictures of technical drawing. To paraphrase the Royal Academy’s former Professor of Perspective, Humphrey Ocean, perspective describes how we look at the world around us. We exist in three dimensions whereas paintings, drawings and prints exist in two; by engaging with the principles that govern how we perceive space on the surface of paper, we can learn to see the world around us with fresh eyes. In this new six-part series examining the principles of depth, I’ll be looking at how we can better perceive and represent space in the world around us, touching upon – but…

1 Mask your drawing Masking fluid is often used to simply prevent the paint from reaching a section of the paper, whereas I believe it should be firmly seen as a medium that can be expressive in its own right. I began by drawing up the main flowers, but only marked roughly where the grasses would go. I wanted to retain the white paper for the daisies and clover later, so I painted them with masking fluid. I placed a small drop of masking fluid on each petal with the colour shaper and then used the tip to pull it across the area to be preserved. I took care to manipulate the fluid from the top of the meniscus and not allow the colour shaper to touch the paper. 2…

My first copy of Artists & Illustrators was brought to me from England several years ago by a dear childhood friend, a performance artist and photographer who has lived in England for many years now. I instantly fell in love with the magazine after reading the first few pages. I am an artist, painter, graphic designer and mom to a five-year-old boy who is a big artist himself. The first time I bought Artists & Illustrators was on my birthday. After that, my husband started buying them for me. And now every time I receive the new issue in my mailbox, I feel as if it is my birthday, which is an amazing feeling. But I am not stingy with my birthday present. Every time I get the new issue,…

Have you ever stopped to wonder what water means to you? Maybe it evokes memories of summers spent by the sea. Perhaps its unpredictable ebbs and flows induces a fearsome awe. Or an immense gratitude for its restorative powers could come to mind. According to Michele Poirier-Mozzone – for whom water represents life and the passing of time – the interest is universal, but the reasons are unique. And after nine years of depicting the element in pastel and oil for her in-demand Fractured Light series, the Massachusetts-based artist can be considered an authority on the element. “Water means so many different things to different people,” she explains, putting the success of her underwater paintings down to the subject’s ubiquitous appeal. Yet this modest reasoning gives little credit to her…

Transcribing depth In representational art, the principles of depth must be balanced with considerations of composition and colour scheme; even abstract paintings borrow from our ingrained understanding of depth, with blues and mid-tones appearing to sit “behind” warm colours and areas of greater tonal variety. For this exercise, I want you to make drawings of other artists’ works. Alongside these studies, make notes in your sketchbook about which principles of depth have been employed to create the illusions of space and which have been reversed or manipulated to flatten the image or support the composition. This will help you train your eye to identify which principles are required to achieve various results. Next month: Jake explores distance and scale. Jake’s new book, Figure Drawing, is published by Ilex Press. To…

“I like to ask questions through my art… I’ll have a thought and I will really want to unpick it” When I was three, I drew my mother. She was pregnant with my younger brother and I stuck a piece of paper that was concave out from the page to show the bump. All my work has stemmed from that drawing, they all have sculptural effects. I like to answer questions through my art. I’ll have a thought, and I will really want to unpick it. I don’t think I’ve actually managed to answer a single question, but I have been led to ask more interesting questions. Portraiture should be more accessible. I think it should be both an actual representation of the day-to-day and available to everyone. My recent…