Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Artists & Illustrators

Making an art magazine can be a disorienting experience at times. This is, after all, our “February” issue, yet I am writing to you in mid-December and you probably won’t read this until early 2022. Such is the way of magazine dates that I’m never quite sure whether to wish you a happy Christmas, New Year, or Easter at this point. What I do know is that the winter months are a good time to take stock. I often like to pull out piles of old work, finishing up some ideas and discarding others. I find myself developing the detail in a forgotten drawing or revisiting portraits where I never quite caught the likeness. There’s even a pleasure in looking at something made five years ago and admitting that perhaps…

When you’re starting out on your painting journey, it is easy to become nervous of bright colours. Less confident artists often rely upon certain neutral colours in their palette as they easily transform stronger tube colours by desaturating, tinting or darkening them. These neutral pigments include Flesh Tint, Buff Titanium, Warm Grey, Payne’s Grey and Neutral Grey and they help to create an earthy, naturalistic look in a painting without bolder colour clashes. Burnt Umber is another popular choice for less experienced artists, who use it liberally in mixes with other colours to create darks and neutrals. These are quick fixes though. A better understanding of your options when it comes to neutral colours – and greys in particular – will improve your paintings no end. The main issue is…

Layering colour washes over dried ones is a classic method for building up a watercolour painting. Overlaying washes in successive layers in this way creates intense areas of colour and detail. Painting wet-on-dry allows good control over brush strokes because the paint will not flow beyond the edges of the shape you’ve painted, making it ideal for creating detailed and defined shapes. With this technique, you can either paint flat, uniform shapes by applying wet paint onto dry paper; or you can apply wet paint over areas of dry paint; or you can paint shapes of variegated colour that vary in hue, tone, and intensity. Working wet-on-dry requires patience because previously laid paint can be easily disturbed. Always allow each wash to dry and don’t be too vigorous when adding…

Diaries can have all sorts of purposes. With the growing popularity of bullet journals, sketchbooks, and gratitude diaries, their positive effect on mindfulness and mental health are widely promoted. To keep a journal in some form is a popular ambition but rarely seen beyond the first few pages, which is understandable; writing an entry every day can seem a daunting commitment. In addition to this, numerous artists and hobbyists aspire to regular practice in the form of a daily sketchbook. Many of these books end up unfinished – or worse, not started – tucked away on a bookshelf, first page still intimidatingly blank. How do you form this habit and stick to it? And how do you get past the first hurdle? Tea diaries are a great solution to these…

When the long, dark nights and cold, wet weather of the British winter set in, planning a painting holiday for the year ahead is a guaranteed way to boost your mood and motivation, and you can be sure to make it one to remember in 2022 with the art getaways organised by art tutor Marilyn Allis. Throughout the year, Marilyn joins forces with two other popular artists to teach students different techniques and styles over the course of three days. Now we’ve teamed up with the artist and tutor to offer five readers the chance to each win a £200 voucher to put towards one of these unique Trio Breaks in the beautiful coastal town of Bournemouth. Staying in a luxury seafront hotel for four nights and working in sea-view…

Commonly used with watercolours, this technique describes adding pigment or water to an existing wash on paper that has not completely dried. It is a must-have skill for watercolour painting. The wet-in-wet technique creates a soft and sensitive effect in watercolours, and beautifully complements harder edges or areas of detail. Depending on how wet the first wash is and the consistency of pigment in the second wash, the timing of adding the second wash is crucial to its success. Successful paintings have a good balance between light and dark tones. To change a tone in watercolour there are two techniques: glazing (see page 54) and wet-in-wet. Wet-in-wet allows you to control tone before the wash dries and lightens, making it an effective method when time is short. • Suggesting detail…

As an alternative to starting a painting with the sky first and then building up the landscape, it is possible to paint the mountains first and then glaze the clouds on afterwards. For this to work safely, it is essential to use a more absorbent cotton paper. This method requires that the mountains are painted first on dry paper. Once this has dried completely, the entire area of the paper can be glazed with clean water and the sky then applied in the traditional way. I used a small sheet of Saunders Waterford paper for this example and prepared a strong mix of Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. I also squeezed out a small blob of Raw Sienna. 1 Layer the landscape I created three layers of mountains, all done using…

If you were an apprentice artist in a large 15th-century workshop, perhaps in Italy or Japan, you would know exactly how to paint eyes. There would be a recognised way to approach the subject and a specific method to follow. These days however, there are almost as many ways to treat painting an eye as there are pairs of eyes in the world. This is both a help and a hindrance when it comes to actually painting a portrait, because we have wonderful artistic freedom yet almost too much choice. I believe what we are all searching for is our own way of responding to a particular problem. A good strategy for finding that unique path is to be inspired by other people’s attempts and then experiment ourselves. The exercise…

1 PISSARRO: FATHER OF IMPRESSIONISM 18 February to 22 June Camille Pissarro is considered the father of Impressionism, not least as he was the only artist to show work in all eight “Impressionist” exhibitions in Paris from 1874 to 1886. Now almost 150 years later, paintings spanning the French master’s entire career will go on show alongside pieces by those he inspired, such as Claude Monet, Georges Seurat and Paul Gauguin. Above all, however, Pissarro’s ahead-of-the-curve versatility will be underlined here, from the early, chunky flat marks of Farm at Montfoucault in Snow, to the optical mixing of View from my Window [above]. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. www.ashmolean.org 2 BEATRIX POTTER: DRAWN TO NATURE 12 February to 8 January 2023 Whether it’s Peter Rabbit sneaking into Mr McGregor’s vegetable patch or…

At 98, Anthony Eyton would be forgiven for taking it easy. The senior Royal Academician began his fine art studies 80 years ago, yet, he says, there is still much to learn and create. He has others to help him today – his housekeeper and her son, plus his daughter Sarah, a talented photographer in her own right – so that he can focus on the things that have kept him occupied all this time: thinking about, talking about, and making art. We’ve barely made it inside the hallway of his large three-storey semi, set back from a busy road in South London, before Anthony is eagerly asking if he can show us his studio. It is only as he climbs the elegant winding staircase, adorned with faded posters from…

Push and Pull Each of the principles of depth we have looked at in the articles in this series – diminution, atmospheric perspective and detail – can be used as tools for emphasising or reversing illusory depth on the picture plane. Once you have a grasp of these principles and are able to recognise them in your subject you can start to play with them in your images, magnifying the effects of perspective to exaggerate the illusion of depth or reducing the expected effects of perspective to deliberately flatten an image. You’ll see this push and pull in the work of artists who combine representationalism with abstraction – in Gustav Klimt’s landscape paintings or the imaginative tableau of Paula Rego, for example. We can take the shape-based principles of diminution…

A watercolour wash is a thin application of pigment mixed with water; there are many types, each with unique effects. A glaze is when a wash is placed over existing dried washes to strengthen colour and tone. The transparency created by layering and mixing colours is unique to watercolour painting and, with a bit of practice, can produce beautiful results. Both washes and glazes require the same three ingredients: water, pigment, and paper. The strength of a wash will vary depending on the proportion of water to pigment. For example, for rich colour you would add more pigment, or to achieve delicate colour, more water is added to produce a weaker mix. Glazes, on the other hand, are always weak and transparent, as their purpose is to alter subtly the…

Born in Glasgow in 1959, Peter Graham studied at Glasgow School of Art under a number of high-profile and influential tutors including Barbara Rae. After a short career as a film editor at the BBC, he turned to painting full-time in 1986. Peter was elected to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 2001, serving as vice president for two years from 2004. He is also a member of the Paisley Art Institute. He wrote a book, An Introduction to Painting Still Life, which was published by David & Charles in 2002. There are plenty of far-flung destinations in your paintings. Have the travel restrictions of the last two years changed your focus at all? My range of subjects takes me to the south of France on a regular basis…

“I illustrate every book I write… It makes no difference if it’s for kids or adults” Like many kids, I drew all the time. I would scribble on anything. I would sometimes draw on the walls and it would drive people mad. I illustrate every book I write. It makes no difference if it’s for kids or adults. I can’t know my characters until I can see them, so I need to draw them. The drawing and the writing always argue with each other. I like to do them both in tandem, so I’ll do some writing, then draw the character. But then the drawing will contradict the writing and push it in a new direction. My new book of pandemic drawings, B: A Year in Plagues & Pencils, is…