Australian How To Paint magazine chooses a topic or style of art each issue and gives you a comprehensive guide for you to develop your skills. Over the series we will cover all major painting technques plus popular paint ideas.
One of the most frequent questions we get asked at Australian How to Paint is, ‘How do you paint landscapes?’ The Australian landscape, especially, is an inspiring landscape varying and changing and has beautiful awe about it, no matter where you are. We have compiled a number of artists in this issue, all with a passion for landscapes, and each artist providing their own landscape demonstration for you enjoy and maybe even have a go. As a special extra for this edition of Australian How to Paint, we include a pastel inspiration by Heather Jones. She takes us through a step-by-step demonstration of a beautiful setting in the Flinders Ranges. We would love to see your creations so please send us an email or letter with photos of your work.…
Michael Hodgkins grew up with an exhibiting professional landscape artist, George Hodgkins, as his father. George took every opportunity he could to travel Australia in order to gather reference material and subjects for painting. He spent a lot of time on painting trips throughout coastal and outback Australia, and Michael was usually there too, helping his father. Inevitably, he emulated his father, as children do, and by age 10 had acquired his first set of adult Oil Paints. “I was basically copying my Dad’s style as best I could because that’s all I knew. I would produce small naïve oil landscapes and Mum would put them in the Gallery we had and they would sell,” he explained. As a young adult, painting was put aside and Michael’s career path took…
MATERIALS • Gessoed Canvas 36cm x 24cm • Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour: – Winsor Red – Burnt Umber* • Art Spectrum Artists’ Oil Colour: – Permanent Mauve – Cadmium Yellow Light – Lemon Yellow* – Burnt Sienna* – Zinc White – Titanium White • Langridge Underpainting Medium • Langridge Painting Medium • Brushes: – Hog Bristle Filberts size 6 – Hog Bristle Bright size 8 – Hog Bristle Flat sizes 1 & 2 – Hog Bristle Fan size 2 – Hog Bristle Round size 1 & 2 – Synthetic Sable Rigger size 0 • Palette knives with 5cm & 6cm blades * used in underpainting only STEP ONE A drawing is made directly on the canvas with a mix of Permanent Mauve and Zinc White, thinned down with…
I am an Australian by birth and I have lived at Castlereagh near Sydney for 38 years where my studio is situated. I travel all over the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales (and beyond) to paint en plein air. I have attended six Bathurst workshops, and another four at Meroo in Kurrajong – run by CASS. I feel very strongly about the mood and the light of a subject. Drawing has always been a fascination for me, and I trained as a commercial artist after leaving school. I was employed in that field for around six years, and freelanced for a few more years; after which I worked as a potter for about 16 years. Some six years ago, I began to paint – after my two sisters-in-law took…
MATERIALS • Saunders Rough 300gsm paper. • 2B pencil. • Winsor & Newton watercolours: French Ultramarine; Cobalt Blue; Cobalt Turquoise; Brown Madder; Light Red; Raw Umber; Raw Sienna; Aureolion; Quinacradone Gold; Permanent Rose. • Brushes: Number 12 Raphael Sable and a Number 8 Escoda synthetic. STEP ONE I sketched a simple drawing to identify the main shapes. STEP TWO My first wash was from the top down, wet-in-wet. I painted with my board on a 30 degree angle. I wet the sky area, then added a soft wash of Raw Sienna followed by Permanent Rose then Cobalt Blue. I allowed gravity to do the work, allowing the flow to the horizon line; then went straight into the foreground with Raw Sienna – adding more pigment as I came down the…
• Always set up your paints on the left, if left-handed; and the right, if right-handed. I have seen many beginners going across their paintings to reach paints and water. • Have everything ready at hand before you begin. • Squint, squint, squint to eliminate detail and get to the basic shapes and tones. • Do simple pictures in one pigment to help with tonal values. • Go to galleries and exhibitions and look at lots of pictures. • Learn from your mistakes. Remember, it is only a piece of paper; turn it over and start again. • Do swatches of different pigments in varying densities to see what happens. A good reference for this exercise is Richard Schmids’ ‘Alla Prima’. • Always have your colours in the same position…
