Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i Artists & Illustrators

Two hundred years ago John Constable (1776-1837) had embarked on what many see as the defining project of his career. Between 1819 and 1825 he painted six unusually large rural canvasses, pictures he referred to as his ‘Six-Footers’. Each of the views depicted scenes on the River Stour as it flowed from Cambridgeshire to Essex through Dedham Vale, an area known today as ‘Constable Country’. Here the Constable family owned property. It was also where John was born and where he most often chose to sketch and paint. Constable, like Thomas Gainsborough before him, loved the Suffolk countryside. The two men were born 50 years, but only 15 miles, apart. Whereas Gainsborough accepted that he could never make a living from what he called his ‘landskips’, Constable kept trying. He…

In Paris 1924, poet André Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, a call to arms for artists, thinkers and writers, which promoted creative freedom, without much concern for reason or logic. What followed was art that possessed a dreamlike quality, where proportion is manipulated and subject matter strange, unsettling and illogical. Surrealist paintings in particular often include unexpected associations between objects. Surrealism has always sought to challenge the status quo and authority, often driving towards revolution. In this way, Surrealism has always been political. It’s easy to understand why, for so many people, Surrealism is Paris-centric with a singular narrative: Breton and Surrealism are synonymous for good reason. But it’s not the full story, as a new show at Tate Modern aims to reveal. Surrealism Beyond Borders reframes Surrealism as a…

I like to approach my paintings in a loose way using broad brush strokes so that the finished work looks interesting when viewed hung on a wall. Colour is an important factor to bear in mind, but not so much the detail, as I think that too much can be lost when looked at from a few steps away. My paintings don’t have a focal point as I give everything the same value. The idea is to concentrate on the light and colour and capture the mood and feeling of the scene, adopting an impressionistic eye, just as if I had taken a glance at the scene and then painted that image. Heavy bodied acrylics are very good as you can get a varied selection of strong colours, and they…

Heraldic artist LAURA RYAN regularly uses gouache for her work replicating coats of arms. Here, she shows you how she painted this jolly portrait Gouache is a wonderful graphic medium, which dries quickly with a matte finish. I use it daily in my work as a heraldic artist, creating intricate designs and replicating coats of arms onto record pages for the College of Arms. My creative practice is also figurative in nature. I enjoy working from figures and faces to make illustrations. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how I would approach a portrait in gouache. The most common mistake made by newcomers to gouache is to use the paint too thickly, which will cause it to streak and dry with a texture. In my opinion it should generally be used…

Unsolicited advice: so easy to give and, mostly, hard to take. I’m sure you will have experienced the generosity of others keen to share their brilliant ideas for your artistic improvement, regardless of your desire to be informed or their understanding of your craft and experience. To quote my neighbour, “I don’t want to give you advice, but…” Here are a couple of ways to field unsolicited advice with grace. I’m often told what I should do when I’m at shows. Even if you don’t exhibit, I’m willing to bet you have someone in your life who thinks they know better than you about how you should be making your artwork. The important thing to remember is that people believe they are helping. Sometimes they are entirely wrong, like the…

Sarah Maycock comes from a family of painters. Her grandfather was the Principle at Eastbourne Art College from 1953-1980 whilst her grandmother taught painting and life drawing. Her mother also went to art college and worked in the Print Department at Sotheby’s. A Kingston University graduate, she was soon snapped up by Handsome Frank, a UK based illustration and animation agency. Career highlights to date, include her painting of Liberty London for their luxury advent calendar, her whale paintings for the Natural History Museums’ Beneath the Surface exhibition, and her portraits of Guerlain’s five perfumers over their 190-year history. She has just published her second book, Love Is… for Big Picture Press. Do you look for clients or do they contact you? Almost all my work comes through Handsome Frank.…

The history of drawing in pastel is inextricable from the history of depicting the human form or drawing in its own right. The ‘red chalk’ used in the delicate renaissance figure drawings of Raphael or Leonardo were precursors of the hard pastels we use today and even the chunks of hematite with which our prehistoric ancestors marked cave walls could be imagined as pastel in its rawest state. Manufactured in their current form from the 16th century, coloured pastels were a popular medium of society portraiture in the 18th century before truly coming into their own in the drawings of Edgar Degas and Odilon Redon in the 19th century. The substantial pastel works of Paula Rego – from the momentous Dog Woman series to her brief and eloquent self portraits…

Marcia Burtt • Aerylic “I set up with the biggest canvas I can handle in the time I have. I identify several interesting things and try to figure out how to fit them into the size and shape of my canvas. I want my painting to be dynamic, so I may crop things on one edge or choose subjects that work against each other. The landscape begs me to find relationships in the subject, but I’m not always able to see them. If I can, I use a gestural approach. If I can’t, I paint big shapes with a two-inch brush, looking for rhythms and relationships. I join and refine shapes, working positive against negative. I never draw, since acrylic dries quickly enough for me to correct things. Once I…

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I teach a still life painting class once a week at Heatherley School of Fine Art and, of all the various objects I present the students with to work from, flowers are the most enthusiastically received. That is until the paintings are underway. After a bit of struggling, someone will inevitably turn to me and cry, “How do I do this?” The reality of painting them can be difficult. In this series, I have so far made drawings from details of paintings of eyes and hands. These drawings of flowers, I found far more difficult. This is because of a combination of factors. With flowers, you are dealing with mostly abstract shapes so it can be hard to keep track of precisely which petal you are drawing. They are very…

What do we know about gouache? It can produce broad colour notes and atmospheric effects using thin washes, whilst more opaque applications can produce complex, naturalistic textures and refined details. For those getting started with landscape painting, it’s a little more forgiving than purely working in watercolour and is simpler to set up than oils. Although well-suited to studio paintings – like this demonstration – gouache is also an excellent choice for en plein air painting. The necessary equipment is portable, lightweight and easy to clean up when finished, which is extremely handy when painting outside. Gouache is best used for smaller paintings. The opacity and quick drying times are useful for working in layers too. The paint’s thickness is ideal for producing textured effects common to landscapes, such as…