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BREAK THE RULES
A recent visit to the Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy exhibition at
Tate Modern got me thinking about our creative journeys. The
COVER IMAGE WILLY RUSSELL,
TRACK FROM VAU, ACRYLIC ON PAPER, works on display suggested a painter who was almost unimaginably
62X86CM © WILLY RUSSELL
assured about his practice, from his bold palette to his confident
brushwork. Whether or not that impression is a true account of the
great painter’s experience is another matter. I imagine that Picasso,
despite the heights he scaled, walked a similar path to the artists I
Stay interviewed for this issue. Both Willy Russell (page 32), writer of Blood Brothers
inspired and Shirley Valentine, and the painter Ann Blockley (page 54), shared stories of
with a their bumpy journeys to creative fulfilment in paint. What unites them is that
subscription... learning helped them to build the confidence to plough their own furrows.
One thing I am certain about is that – however far into our painting
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glitches. To help smooth the way, our top experts reveal their solutions to some
Email: all-too-common painting problems (page 44). And so, with these artistic woes
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firmly banished, we can move on to being inspired by Aine Divine’s stunning
Online: mixed-media flowers (page 60) and Anne-Marie Butlin’s dry brush masterclass
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Artists & Illustrators 3

 Contents 44
FI N D T H E
S O L U T I O N!
60

© AINE DIVINE

82

© ISTOCK
Start with
passages of
thin paint,
and reserve
your palette
© STEPHEN CHAMBERS

knife for the

regulars
7 The Diar y
Nine exciting ways to get
creative this month
10 Exhibitions
Explore the best art shows
around the country
12 Fresh Paint
Three inspiring new artworks
22 Prize Draw
Win £1,000 worth of painting
supplies from Royal Talens
24 In The Studio
Laetitia Yhap shows us round
her seaside workspace
30 The Working Artist
featureS final flourish
18 Shani MARTIN KINNEAR
Rhys James ON OIL PAINTING
– PAGE 49
Jenny White visits the celebrated
portrait painter in her studio
26 Sir Ky f f in Williams 54 Talking
Extracts from a never-before- Techniques
published interview with the artist Ann Blockley’s new watercolours
32 Seeing Dif ferently 58 Five Of The Best
Top playwright Willy Russell on Find the right surface for
his journey into painting your works in pastel
60 The Magic Of
practical Mixed Media
39 Sketchbook Create bold and beautiful
Top tips and techniques for flower paintings with Aine Divine
you to try this month 66 Masterclass
© LAETITIA YHAP

It’s never too late to start making
art, says Laura Boswell
36 10 Minutes With...
Portrait artist Emma Hopkins
82 What I’ve Learned
Royal Academician Stephen
Chambers shares his painting tips
4 Artists & Illustrators
44 21 Painting Experiment with dry brush
Problems Solved technique using our step-by-step
Our expert artists help with 70 Essential Acr ylics
Explore
your most common frustrations Advice for choosing a support
52 Your Questions 73 Perfect Proportion Laetitia
Helen Brown on printmaking Jake Spicer helps you to master Yhap’s studio
and the landscape figure drawing on pa ge 24
 Letters
LETTER OF THE MONTH
Brushing up on wellbeing
he therapeutic benefits of
ainting are well documented
nd, for the last couple of years,
is aspect of our chosen
astime has, for me, been
onderfully demonstrated. I
as asked to give some help to
n elderly lady who, in earlier
ears, had been an enthusiastic
mateur painter. Sadly, as a
esult of a stroke, she had lost
he use of her right hand and
ad severe arthritis in her left.
he hour or so we spend
ogether is, she tells me, one of
he highlights of her week, and
he resulting paintings, made
nto cards, have winged their
way to her many friends. I have
een astonished at the dogged
determination she has shown.
Most of the work is in gouache – more forgiving than watercolour and
cleaner than oils. The experience of helping to bring such pleasure to
another person has been very rewarding.
David Jessup, Minehead, Somerset, via email
What a lovely story, David. We’re hoping to cover art and wellbeing in a
future issue. Keep your eyes peeled.
ILLUSTRATING HISTORY I have made many drawings and
When I retired as an art teacher paintings, including a 10x7ft mural
I joined our local museum in and illustrated leaflets for children.
Nantwich as a volunteer. I soon I know there are a lot of excellent
discovered significant events in the professional historical illustrators
town – Roman salt-making, a great but are there any amateurs like
fire in Tudor times, and a siege and me out there? I would love to
battle during the Civil War – hear from them.
occurred well before photography, Leslie Pickford, Haslington,
so illustrations were needed for near Crewe, via email
guidebooks, exhibitions and so on.
In the past few years
write to us
Send your letter or email
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Let us know what you think of
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SOCIAL SCENE
Keep up-to-date with
what’s happening
on our busy social
media channels
Talking
point: How
important
is a frame?
Gill Web The
wrong frame can
destroy a good
artwork. The right
frame helps every piece
to look its best.
Dave Edwards Spot on. Couldn’t
agree more.
Ann Robinson I pick up frames
from charity shops, all shapes
and sizes. I always choose ones
in good condition and keep
several in stock. I sometimes
paint them. This helps keep my
prices down and means I can sell
more artwork.
Ann Courtney The frame is there
to protect and enhance the
artwork. A frame can make or
break presentation. A frame can
be inappropriate and overwhelm
the artwork.
Angelita Arroyo Picking the right
frame makes a world of
difference. Still learning.
Lorna Metcalfe I’m looking
forward to choosing frames for
my first show later this year.
Join our regular Talking Points
at www.facebook.com/
ArtistsAndIllustrators
ISTOCK
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Artists & Illustrators 5
Discover the
inspiration behind
a modern master

Rodin
and the art of
ancient Greece
26 April – 29 July 2018

Book
now

Sponsored by

Organised with
Musée Rodin, Paris

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917),

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 the diary

9 ARTISTIC THINGS TO DO IN

ENTER THE SUNDAY

TIMES WATERCOLOUR
COMPETITION
This competition is open to works in
any water-based medium, not just
watercolour. As well as a prize pot of
£10,000, 100 shortlisted works will be
exhibited at London’s Mall Galleries

PAUL GADENNE
from 18 to 24 September. Enter up to
four artworks by 25 June.
sundaytimeswatercolour.artopps.co.uk

draw
2 Wildlife Workshops
You can choose
between two wildlife drawing
workshops on 16 June at
Honnington Farm in Kent:
British Birds or Owls of the
Worlds. Artist and tutor Jennie
Webber leads both, helping you
to draw the animals in their
natural habitat, plus you can
feed and fly the birds.
www.wildlifedrawing.co.uk
6 WATCH
I, Claude Monet
Told in his own words and
shot in locations where he
painted, this film – which is
back in cinemas by popular
demand – reveals the artist’s
fascinating process. Catch
it from 22 May.
www.exhibitiononscreen.com
8 Artists & Illustrators
the diary
d o n’ t
mis s!
read
EGON SCHIELE, STANDING MALE FIGURE (SELF-PORTRAIT), 1914, GOUACHE AND GRAPHITE ON
4 Modernists and
JENNIE WEBBER
Mavericks: Bacon, Freud,
Hockney and the London Painters
PAPER, 46X30.5CM. PHOTOGRAPH © NATIONAL GALLERY IN PRAGUE 2017
Art critic Martin Gayford’s account
of the London painting scene from
the Second World War to the 1970s
is a compelling tale that’s sure to
fascinate art lovers (Thames &
Hudson, £24.95). Documenting
friendships, feuds and creative
concerns, it draws on first-hand
interviews, photographs from the
time and the paintings themselves.
PRINT
3 Exploring Life in Motion
Through Drawing and Monoprin
Work with a life model to express
movement and energy in drawin
monoprinting. Inspired by the Life in Motion: Eg
Schiele/Francesca Woodman exhibition, this co
at Tate Liverpool runs from 7 June to 5 July.
www.tate.org.uk
DISCOVER
5 Canvas-making Workshop
Get your art off to a great start by learning how
to prepare a canvas with Chris Bingle, Pegasus Art’s
in-house canvas-maker, on 23 June, in Stroud. The
tutorial cost includes materials.
www.pegasusart.co.uk
learn
7 VISIT
Broadway Arts Festival 8 compete
Holt Festival Art Prize
9 Pleasures of
Illustration
Get your creative kicks in the Actor John Hurt, who died last with Merlin Strangeway
Cotswolds from 8 to 17 June year, trained as an artist at The artist will take you
with a line-up that includes Central Saint Martins and through a series of projects
talks from top artists, as well was involved with this prize exploring techniques, such as
as The Great Broadway Paint from its inception in 2010. drawing and printmaking, at
MERLIN STRANGEWAY
Off, in which amateurs and Don’t miss the chance to this fun introduction which
professionals compete to win. enter before 17 June. starts on 21 June and runs
www.broadwayartsfestival.com www.holtfestival.org for four weeks.
www.houseofillustration.org.uk
 l
8
s
.
E: Jane@norfolkpaintingschool.com T: 01485 528588 W: norfolkpaintingschool.com

7
 Exhibitions
JUNE’S BEST ART SHOWS
LONDON
Aftermath: Art in the
Wake of World War One
5 June to 23 September
Explore how artists responded
to the scars left across Europe.
Tate Britain. www.tate.org.uk
Edward Bawden
23 May to 9 September
Bringing together 170 works
that emphasise the versatility
of this important artist.
Dulwich Picture Gallery. www.
dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Henry Lamb: Out of the Shadows
26 May to 30 September
Known for his unusual portraits, Henry Lamb
went on to become one of the leading British
figurative painters of the early 20th century. In
this first retrospective since 1984, visitors can
explore townscapes and cityscapes, early
pictures of Ireland and Brittany, and work he
produced as a war artist in both world wars.
The Salisbury Museum.
www.salisburymuseum.org.uk
New English Art Club
Annual Exhibition
15 to 23 June
Figurative paintings, drawings
and prints from aspiring and
established artists.
Mall Galleries.
www.mallgalleries.org.uk
Sir Richard Wallace:
The Collector
20 June to 6 January 2019
The inaugural exhibition in a
new space, marking 200 years
since the birth of the founder
and his fantastic art collection.
The Wallace Collection.
www.wallacecollection.org
RECOMMENDED
Summer Exhibition 2018
12 June to 19 August
Grayson Perry RA coordinates
the talent for the gallery’s
250th year in this prestigious
open-submission show.
Royal Academy of Arts.
www.royalacademy.org.uk
The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Portrait of the Artist:
Monet and Architecture Käthe Kollwitz
Until 29 July 30 June to 30 September
Explore the French artist’s Thirty-six self-portraits and
affiliation with buildings paintings of working women.
through more than 75 works. Ferens Art Gallery, Hull.
National Gallery, London. www.hcandl.co.uk/ferens
www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Sonia Boyce
The EY Exhibition: Picasso Until 22 July
1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy The first retrospective of work
Until 9 September from this exciting artist, plus
Explore more than 100 a new commission.
paintings, drawings and Manchester Art Gallery.
sculptures from an intensely www.manchesterartgallery.org
creative period.
Tate Modern. www.tate.org.uk Kaleidoscope: Colour and
Sequence in 1960s British Art
ENGLAND – THE NORTH Until 3 June
LAST CHANCE Explore the relationship
BP Portrait Award 2017 between colour and form,
Until 10 June sequence and symmetry.
Catch the touring show Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
of award-winning and www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
shortlisted artworks.
Sunderland Museum and Life in Motion: Egon Schiele/
Winter Gardens. Francesca Woodman
www.sunderland.gov.uk 24 May to 23 September
Intimate and unapologetic
portraits from the artist
and photographer.
Tate Liverpool. www.tate.org.uk
Reflections: The Observant
Art of Richard Bawden and
Chloë Cheese
21 April to 10 June
STUDY FOR THE ANREP FAMILY, C.1920, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 34X38CM © PRIVATE COLLECTION
Vibrant depictions of the
world around us.
Watts Contemporary
Gallery, Compton.
www.wattsgallery.org.uk
School Prints
Until 3 June
Lithographs for children by
the likes of LS Lowry.
The Hepworth Gallery,
Wakefield. www.
hepworthwakefield.org
ENGLAND – MIDLANDS
About Face: The Rugby
Collection 2018
Until 16 June The Enchanted Garden
Self-portraits by celebrated 23 June to 7 October
artists such as Lucian Freud The British love of the garden has

HELEN ALLINGHAM, COTTAGE WITH FIGURES, DRAWING, BODYCOLOUR AND WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER © LAING ART GALLERY
and Eduardo Paolozzi. inspired artists for generations.
Rugby Art Gallery and Museum. Taking The Dustman or The Lovers
www.ragm.co.uk (1934) by Stanley Spencer as a
starting point, this exhibition
Created in Conflict: shows major works by British and
British Soldier Art from French artists who explored the
the Crimean War to Today garden as a stage for the
Until 10 June extraordinary, magical,
Artworks made by soldiers atmospheric and nostalgic.
from the 19th century to It gathers works from the
the present day. Pre-Raphaelites and French
Compton Verney. Impressionists, as well as the
www.comptonverney.org.uk Bloomsbury Group and
20th-century abstraction, taking
The Art of Industry: in artists as wide-ranging as
From Joseph Wright to Edward Burne-Jones, Dante
the 21st Century Gabriel Rossetti, Claude Monet,
Until 17 June Beatrix Potter and Francis Bacon.
Examine the changing ways Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.
artists portray industry. www.laingartgallery.org.uk
Museum and Art Gallery,
Derby. www.derbymuseums.org
of the artist’s death. and printer’s landscapes. 23 June to 25 July
ENGLAND – THE SOUTH Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne. Jerwood Gallery, Hastings. Small- and medium-sized
Animals and Us www.townereastbourne.org.uk www.jerwoodgallery.org works from the award-winning
25 May to 30 September artists go on show.
Contemporary and History of the Royal Academy Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition The Royal Scottish Academy
20th-century artists’ Until 9 June 2018 Inspired by her Writings of Art and Architecture,
encounters with animals. A display of Royal 26 May to 16 September Edinburgh.
Turner Contemporary, Margate. Academician’s work, including Exploring her relationship with discover www.royalscottishacademy.org
www.turnercontemporary.org JMW Turner, LS Lowry and feminism, with work from more the
David Hockney. than 80 artists. artist’s WALES
America’s Cool Modernism: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal. Pallant House Gallery, landscape Kyffin Williams
O’Keeffe to Hopper www.abbothall.org.uk Chichester. www.pallant.org.uk legacy on Until 23 June
Until 22 July page 26 Impasto works to mark 100
Explore the ‘cool’ in American Munnings and the River SCOTLAND years since the artist’s birth.
art in the early 20th century. Until 31 October A New Era: Scottish MOMA, The Tabernacle,
The Ashmolean, Oxford. This show offers a rare Modern Art 1900-1950 Machynlleth. moma.
www.ashmolean.org opportunity to explore the Until 10 June machnynlleth.org.uk
artist’s landscape paintings. More than 100 paintings,
Bringing Home the Catch: The Munnings Art Museum, sculptures and works on paper. Oriel Davies Open 2018
Art and Fishing in Newlyn Dedham. www. Scottish National Gallery of 23 June to 5 September
1880-1940 munningsmuseum.org.uk Modern Art, Edinburgh. The biennial open submission
Until 9 June www.nationalgalleries.org show for emerging and
See how the famous artistic Picasso: Paper and Clay established artists.
set captured the growing Until 24 June Lee Lozano: Slip, Slide, Splice Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown.
fishing industry. Celebrating the great artist’s Until 3 June www.orieldavies.org
Penlee House Gallery, experimentation with drawing, Work from a major figure in
Penzance. printmaking and ceramics. the New York art scene of IRELAND
www.penleehouse.org.uk The Lightbox, Woking. the 1960s and 1970s. Circus250: Art of the Show
www.thelightbox.org.uk The Fruitmarket Gallery, 9 June to 14 October
Edward Stott: A Master of Edinburgh. Artworks and archive material
Colour and Atmosphere Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: www.fruitmarket.co.uk to celebrate the 250th
25 May to 16 September Sea, Rock, Earth and Ice anniversary of the first circus.
Poetic portrayals of rural 13 June to 7 October RSA Open Exhibition of National Gallery of Ireland,
scenes, marking the centenary Four decades of the painter Art 2018 Dublin. www.nationalgallery.ie

Artists & Illustrators 11

Fresh Paint Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

David Grossmann
“The forest, the transitions of colours in
the sky, the quiet watchfulness of deer and
birds, the flow of time and seasons, this is
where I look for refuge,” says the Colorado-
based American painter. It’s an atmosphere
that oozes from his oil painting September
Forest with Yellow Leaves, creating a sense
of the peace he feels when working en plein
air among nature with its muted, delicate
colours. Cool grey, mauve and blue tones
contrast with warm yellow and scattered
orange in the pattern of the leaves. It has
an almost meditative stillness.
“It is such a gift to be able to stand in one
spot for a few hours and really observe my
surroundings; to watch the changes in light
and weather, and in my own emotions,”
says David. “My hope is my paintings will
convey a sense of shelter, and be reminders
of the peace and beauty that surrounds us
when we pause to watch and listen.” This
work was inspired by his wanderings
through forests near his home. He says:
“There was a feeling of embrace in the
groves of aspens, an invitation to stop and
watch the falling leaves. I wanted to capture
time passing and the shifting of seasons.”
But there is also an intriguing tension in
the opposing sense of depth and flattened
space. “Working with the patterns of lines
and dots in this composition was an
interesting challenge,” adds the artist. “I
enjoyed creating the ambiguity of which
leaves are falling, and which are still
suspended or on the ground.”
David Grossman’s latest exhibition, Haven,
is at Jonathan Cooper gallery, London, SW10,
from 7 to 30 June. www.jonathancooper.co.uk;
www.davidgrossmann.com >

12 Artists & Illustrators

BELOW September to p t
Forest with Yellow
ip
Leaves, oil on S imp li
spac e c it y all
linen over panel, for ima ow s
W h at w g inat
50.8x86.4cm e leave ion.
c an b e
a s imp out
a s w ha or t ant
t we
inc lu de

Artists & Illustrators 13

Fresh Paint
Yuko Shimizu
When the Folio Society contacted
New-York based Japanese illustrator
Yuko Shimizu about a job, she didn’t
think twice. “Many illustrators have
the Folio Society on their dream client
list,” she says. “There was no way I
was going to say no.” The project – to
illustrate 170 Japanese tales – had
instant appeal too, letting her indulge
in the brush-line painting techniques
for which she’s known.
In 1999, Yuko gave up her
corporate job and swapped Tokyo for
New York, where she studied a Master
of Fine Arts at the city’s School of
Visual Arts. She’s been illustrating
14 Artists & Illustrators
with international success ever since.
“I used to work with illustrators when
I was in PR,” she says, “and I was
dreaming about working on the
illustrators’ side.”
The animated monsters in ‘The
Invisible Man’ story in Japanese Tales
started with hours of careful research
online and in her bulging stock of
Japanese art books. Many of the
creatures were taken from old
masters of Yokai (monster) art,
working from historic paintings and
notes in the text. “I do tons of small
rough sketches until the composition
is just right,” she says, “then a tighter
pencil-sketch stage and an ink
drawing with Japanese calligraphy
brushes on larger paper. I scan in and
colour in Photoshop. The process is 50
per cent by hand, 50 per cent digital.”
Many of her peers have chosen to
go entirely digital, but Yuko is
attached to the physical process.
“I like imperfections and Asian
calligraphy brushes are harder to
control than shorter, western ABOVE Illustration
watercolour brushes,” she says. for The Invisible
“Every imperfection, mistake and Man, Japanese
success makes the hand-drawing calligraphy brush
medium so special.” and India ink on
The Folio Society edition of Japanese paper, coloured
Tales is available from www.foliosociety. in Photoshop,
com; www.yukoart.com > 43x56.5cm
 Finest artists‘ colours
Premium assortment 140 colours

www.schmincke.de
Fresh Paint
Michele Illing
It was Jackie Matthews’ dedication to
international charity Operation Smile
that inspired her friend and Portfolio
Plus artist Michele Illing to create this
painting. “I wanted to help,” she says,
“and do something that could raise
awareness of their amazing work.”
The organisation provides free
surgeries for children and young
adults born with cleft lip, cleft palate
and other facial deformities across
the world, and this artwork
encapsulates the care and attention
of the individuals involved. “I wanted
to portray deep emotion and feeling in
this painting,” she adds, “and I think
the pure pigment and intensity of
colour certainly helps with that.”
Although the composition focuses
on the mother and child, the
16 Artists & Illustrators
endearing face on the right draws you
in with an appealing, innocent gaze.
To get a composition right, Michele
sketches the scene, working from
reference photos, before applying
charcoal to midtone Canson
Mi-Teintes pastel paper. “I use a
multi-layering approach with pastels,”
she says. “I use fingers to blend, and
maybe a torchon in smaller areas such
as around the eyes and mouth.”
Each figure is treated differently.
“For the darker skin tones, I laid a
midtone of pale terracottas and earthy
reds first, then added highlights as I
saw them,” she says. “I added darker
marks of purple and dark blue around
the eyes, nose, mouth and chin, and
for shadows on the arm.”
Jackie’s gentle gesture is reflected
in the soft pink of her glove and the
smooth texture, creating a beautiful ABOVE Raising
and touching dedication to the Funds for
hundreds of volunteers who help Operation Smile,
Operation Smile every day. pastel on paper,
www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ 53x69cm
micheleilling
For your chance to feature in Fresh Paint, sign up for
your own personalised Portfolio Plus page today.
You can also:
•Showcase, share and sell unlimited artworks
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Artists & Illustrators 17
18 Artists & Illustrators
 © SHANI RHYS JAMES COURTESY CONNAUGHT BROWN, LONDON
LEFT Glass Vase
and Head in
Shadow, oil on
gesso on board,
61x61cm RIGHT
Blue Top Orange
Headband, oil on
gesso on board,
61x61cm

the
eyes
have it
t
SHANI RHYS JAMES he beautiful, winding drive to Shani Rhys James’
MBE is one of the house in deepest mid-Wales tells you a lot about
how she has chosen to live and work as an artist.
UK’s most respected
Here’s a painter who has been hailed as one of
living painters. On the greatest talents of her generation – a Jerwood Prize
the eve of her latest winner who was made an MBE for services to art. She is
London exhibition,
© SHANI RHYS JAMES COURTESY CONNAUGHT BROWN, LONDON

admired in the UK and internationally – and she has

JENNY WHITE achieved this from what might be considered a backwater.
visited her studio “I lived in London from the age of nine but I’m not part of
that cool art scene, which is why I love creating my own
language here,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t have a sense
of humour, but I’m not prepared to do the irony and
emotional disengagement that have become quite trendy.”
She admits it can be hard to get the eyes of London to
turn her way. “The Welsh arts scene is lively and terrific,
and I just battle on despite the prejudices. I’m not tough
but luckily I am a bit perverse and bloody-minded.” >

Artists & Illustrators 19

 Her career got off to a slow beginning. “I went to Central
Saint Martin’s, an abstract art school, so I could create my
own way of seeing figuratively, and I did loosen up. I had a
studio at Butler’s Wharf and showed in things such as the
Whitechapel Open and at the Royal Academy of Arts. Then I
had the kids and was teaching one-and-a-half days a week
in Holborn, so it was only after we came to Wales when I
ABOVE Shadow on was 34 that I started having time – and my career picked up.”
a Red Table, oil on Regarding the respect and recognition she has since
linen, 100x100cm achieved, she is likeably grounded. “You want to be in the
RIGHT Shock, oil on establishment but also, being here, you don’t think about it.
linen, 122x122cm You just do your work.”
20 Artists & Illustrators
And what work it is. Beyond the charming stone
© SHANI RHYS JAMES COURTESY CONNAUGHT BROWN, LONDON
farmhouse where she and her husband Stephen raised
their two sons sits a long barn where she has her studio.
The room is alive with colour, from the riotous blooms of
her flower paintings to the blood reds and limpid blue eyes
of her portraits. It’s clear she has two different palettes
– one for work done in Wales, and one for work in France,
where she spends a significant amount of time each year.
“France has a different light, a different atmosphere, a
different feel,” she says. “I work on gesso board, which
absorbs the oil quite a lot but also creates luminosity; you
can use transparencies with it, and it’s quite lovely.”
 S H A N I R H YS JA M E S

In terms of scale, she switches

between small and vast canvases.
“Sometimes it’s nice to do more
intimate paintings, and I might work up
to a big one. Although, you need
enormous energy for that and a public
exhibition you are working towards.”

A MOTHER’S INFLUENCE
Her latest body of work ranges from
flower paintings to portraits of her
mother – a strong influence, not least
because of her involvement in the
theatre. She brought her from Australia
© SHANI RHYS JAMES COURTESY CONNAUGHT BROWN, LONDON

to London at the age of nine, and Shani

spent hours watching her mother on
the stage. She did not see her Welsh
father again until she was 37, and it
seems significant that much of her
work, most famously The Black Cot,
which won The Jerwood Prize, focuses
on childhood. The cot is a recurrent
image in her work, typically caging a
child who gazes straight at the viewer.
“The cot was to do with trying to
remember early beginnings. After I met
my father I was trying to bring back memories,” she says.
She has also drawn on her own experience of motherhood.
The open, unerring gazes of the children are a reminder of viewer’s shoulder, as if frightened by
I work on
their full humanity. “I’ve tried to show that a child is as
much a human being as an adult, and to convey the
something we cannot see. Here is a
woman who achieved so much
gesso board,
responsibility of a parent to make sure that person is given freedom, now trapped in her body. which absorbs
the respect they deserve,” she says. The paintings are raw and affecting.
Her work has also dwelt on the constraints society has “I often paint emotionally charged the oil quite
historically placed on women. In some of her best-known
work, haunted-looking women are placed before heavily
pieces,” she says. “It can be something
I’m furious about, or upset about or it
a lot but
wallpapered walls reminiscent of the yellow wallpaper in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous feminist tale of the
can be expressing the loveliness of
having a grandchild.” Asked why so
also creates
same name, while in her brilliantly eerie 2015 exhibition of many of her subjects stare at the luminosity
automata, Cassandra’s Rant, a mechanical woman tapped viewer, she adds: “You understand
on a tabletop, a picture of domestic frustration. It’s a someone’s emotional content through eye contact.”
theme she saw played out on stage many times as a child. In her latest body of work we see the full circle of life,
“All those women, often from Strindberg, Chekhov or Ibsen, from glimpses of her first grandchild to the ravages of age.
embodied the craving of a woman to find liberation It’s work of emotional depth and richness, created through
because they were the possession of their husband.” a mixture of painting from life and imagination. Here is an
Some of her latest work brings a new chapter to this artist set to make waves for many years to come.
theme, depicting her mother bed-bound after a stroke. Shani Rhys James’ latest exhibition This Inconstant State is at
While so many of her subjects gaze challengingly at the Connaught Brown, London W1S, from 20 April to 26 May.
viewer, in these paintings her mother gazes over the www.connaughtbrown.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 21


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22 Artists & Illustrators
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Artists & Illustrators 23

 BY THE
SEASIDE
Laetitia
left London
to explore
painting the
fishing fleet

IN THE STUDIO

Laetitia
Yhap
ANNE-KATRIN PURKISS asks the artist about
her studio and long career in painting
You are taking part in a recording
for the British Library’s National
Life Stories ‘Artists’ Lives’ project.
What does it involve?
It is an oral history project, which
started at the British Library in
1990 in partnership with Tate
Archive. The recordings are available
to the public. It involves relating your
life story. They are intense sessions
held in my home and studio.
Does it include your earliest
memories, as well as your
development as an artist?
Yes. It brought back memories of
growing up in London during the
Blitz. My father was Chinese, born in
what was then British Guiana, and
my mother was from Austria, an
orphan sent to escape the horrors.
I was born in 1941 to these exiles.
Did these experiences influence
your decision to be an artist?
With an absent father and a broken
mother, abandonment and
loneliness in the post-war years
meant I was driven into an interior
world at a young age. Images
assumed a huge significance. They
seemed to hold a magic charge and
compensated for the grim reality.
When was your talent spotted?
I went to a girls’ secondary school in
Fulham and was lucky to have a
sympathetic art teacher. Her
teaching was based on
observational drawing and I began
to thrive. She would set homework
of a kitchen still life and these
drawings would be given marks.
Recently I found one I did in 1956
when I was 15, with her comments.
What was the next step?
My art teacher recommended
Camberwell School of Arts as
particularly suitable so, aged 18, I
went to do a four-year course, from
1958 to 1962. Many of the teachers
THE COAST
The artist has
been working
there were connected to William in Hastings
Coldstream and the Euston Road for 50 years
school of thought, which was based
on strict observation.
The experience of art school in
the 1960s must have been very
different to now?
Yes, it was. There were no women
teachers. By the time I was in the
final two years, we were four girls to
20 boys. I had been puzzled by the
attitudes of the male tutors towards
female students. The remarks they
made about us and our chances
were what we now call sexist.

24 Artists & Illustrators


The first drawings
of fishermen on
Hastings beach were
done on the spot
How did your work as a painter
develop after art school?
After I graduated, I needed time to
digest my seven years of being a
student. I decided to work in
watercolour. It was an economic
form and easily transportable
between London, East Anglia and,
later, Hastings. In 1967, after my
partner’s parents died, we were able
to buy a house in Clapham and
Hastings, and I began to experience
a new sense of space and freedom.
So you worked in London as well
as in Hastings?
Yes, we had come to Hastings not
knowing anyone or anything, but I
began to feel a need for a real
attachment. London life was
beginning to tire me. This instinct
stemmed from my work and the
conditions in which I produced it.
Though still on paper, it had
outgrown itself. My largest work was
a scroll-like painting, 9ft high. I
worked on my hands and knees.
How did the new location
influence your work?
I recognised that a radical shift in
my subject matter was underway.
FIGURING
IT OUT
The human
form made
a return in
Laetitia’s art
The human image had
been absent from the
work for nearly 10
years and I felt a great
urgency to bring it
back. In 1974 the first
drawings of the
fishermen on Hastings
beach were done on
the spot. I knew I would
need to be there every day to
understand what was happening
and build my new vocabulary.
You decided to leave London and
settle in Hastings in the 1970s.
I had to make a conscious decision
to turn away from London life and
concentrate on this new direction.
Everything about my working
methods and materials changed,
and gradually I became quite an
able carpenter, making all my own
structures. The next 25 years were
spent creating a cycle of work that
spans the particular history of the
fishing fleet here. During this time I
also met a new partner, had a son
and I kept exhibiting work.
You have recently marked
your 50th anniversary of living
in Hastings. How did you celebrate
the milestone?
Coming to Hastings half a century
ago was such an important turning
point for me that I needed to mark
it. First of all, I produced a small
leaflet that included images of some
of the paintings I did when I arrived
in Hastings, accompanied by a short
essay. A friend has a brasserie at
Rock-a-Nore, Undercliffe House,
near the fishing beach where the
ancient sandstone cliffs of Hastings
begin. The walls are built from
sandstone. The brasserie is where I
decided to hang five of the paintings
that are illustrated in the leaflet.
And we had a small gathering of
friends to help me celebrate. The
work is still on display at the
brasserie during opening hours.
Artists & Illustrators 25
the Lyrical
landscape
To mark the centennial of SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS’s birth, NICHOLAS SINCLAIR introduces
extracts from a never-before-published interview with this defining 20th-century artist
 K
yffin Williams was my
godfather and in the last
20 years of his life I worked
closely with him,
photographing his work, him in his
studio on Anglesey and in the
landscape of North Wales, as well
as publishing books about him. I

COPYRIGHT OF WORKS BY KYFFIN WILLIAMS. OWNED BY THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES AND REPRODUCED UNDER LICENSE
observed the energy, focus and
self-discipline that defined him and
shaped his long and prolific career
as an artist.
When I spoke at his funeral in
September 2006, I described him as
a born communicator. He found KYFFIN WILLIAMS ON FARMHOUSES
multiple ways to engage with people “I’ve always liked the Caernarfonshire cottages and
and knew instinctively how to transmit farmhouses because they were part of the landscape
his message in whatever medium he I knew as a child. People lived in them and they were
chose – an oil painting, a pencil solid, interesting, abstract shapes, sometimes
drawing, a piece of writing, a television against a dark mountain and sometimes against a
interview or a one-to-one encounter. light sky. But I also drew them because I knew that
He understood narrative structure, they would disappear. After the war people wanted to
both visual and verbal, and brought live in more modern houses so they were often
these skills to all forms of abandoned and left to decay and this is why I made a
communication. And what made him conscious decision to record them before they were
so fascinating, both as a man and as gone. I’ve made hundreds of drawings of these old
an artist, was that he could be the stone buildings so that there would be a historical
entertainer with wonderful comic record for future generations to see.”
timing, yet dark and melancholic in his
COPYRIGHT OF WORKS BY KYFFIN WILLIAMS. OWNED BY THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES AND REPRODUCED UNDER LICENSE

painting. He was the light and the dark

simultaneously with no apparent with him in 1998, which has never
conflict. These two Kyffins, the serious previously been published, and in LEFT Gallt Y
artist and the light comedian, lived which he talks about his techniques Wenallt, 2001,
side-by-side for 88 years. and influences. Here are some oil on canvas,
With 2018 being Kyffin’s centenary, exclusive extracts. 122x122cm
I knew I had a unique perspective to Kyffin Williams Centennial by Nicholas ABOVE Snow at
share. My personal appreciation of the Sinclair is published in a limited edition Gwastadnant,
artist, Kyffin Williams Centennial, of 100 signed copies with 47 illustrations. 1966, oil on
includes a long interview I made See www.kyffinwilliams.org.uk > canvas, 91x71cm

KYFFIN WILLIAMS ON MASTERING MOOD

I’ve been looking at paintings for over 50 years and I’ve found that in every
century there are artists who have the ability to express mood in a very
profound way and it is these artists I look at when my batteries need
recharging. Mood is a very important thing in painting. Mood is the pulse
of a painting. It makes the painting something of worth.

Artists & Illustrators 27


PAINTING PEOPLE – NICHOLAS
SINCLAIR ON KYFFIN WILLIAMS
“It was Kyffin’s natural affinity with people from all
walks of life, coupled with his exquisite, idiosyncratic
draughtsmanship and acute observation that enabled
him to become a portrait painter. His portraiture started
at the Slade School of Fine Art in the early 1940s and
continued throughout his career. Some pictures were
made in the studio with the sitter present, others made
from memory and some coming directly from his
imagination or from a composite of different characters
28 Artists & Illustrators
An alchemical
process
took place,
particularly in
the rendering
of the eyes
COPYRIGHT OF WORKS BY KYFFIN WILLIAMS. OWNED BY THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES AND REPRODUCED UNDER LICENSE
he had known. He only ever said he was looking for a
likeness when painting portraits and stayed away from
claims of psychological insight but it is clear, when
studying his best work, he was able to bring great
feeling to his portraits. An alchemical process took
place while the painting was being made, particularly in
the rendering of the eyes, that gives us the sense we are
looking at something beyond just a physical likeness.
He was fascinated by the expressive power of the face ABOVE Rosanna
and the possibility of evoking the physical and Maunder, 1971,
emotional presence of his sitter simultaneously.” oil on canvas,
76x59cm
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Artists & Illustrators 29

 My friends had faith in me and
dumped the press on my doorstep
As LAURA BOSWELL knows, it’s never
too late to start making art. Here, she
shares her inspiring success story
t
o my huge delight, I have been elected to the Royal
Society of Painter-Printmakers. Apart from the thrill
of adding letters to my name, it is a great honour to
have been judged good enough by the finest printmakers
in the UK to join their ranks. Not bad for a woman who,
having taken an arts degree in the late-1980s, didn’t so
much as lift a pencil to sketch for 18 years.
ABOVE Small Trees, I hope my story will encourage anyone who is coming
Big Sky, linocut, late to art, whether it’s to forge a career or to enjoy being
52x27cm creative. It is, literally, never too late to start. For me, the
30 Artists & Illustrators
chance came when friends offered me an old printing
press. I refused for the best part of a year because I was
scared I couldn’t make art after such a long break. To their
credit, my friends had more faith in me than I did, and
dumped the press on my doorstep.
In the face of this generosity, I decided the way forward
was to stop saying ‘no I can’t’ and to agree to anything that
would force me to make art. So I said ‘yes’ – and still do –
to an annual Open Studio. I took prints to art and craft
fairs, with mixed results. I demonstrated to surprised
passers-by at open days and put myself on the spot as
much as possible. This culminated in me blithely pitching
for a public art job and finding myself creating what was, at
the time, the largest hand-painted enamel mural in
Europe. Since then I have landed several public art jobs,
won art residencies, taught myself to teach and become
successful enough to make art my full-time job.
When I look back at my late return to art, I’d say the
most useful thing I did was to accept that most of the time
I would be out of my comfort zone. That’s as true today as
it was 13 years ago when I started. It isn’t easy to keep
saying ‘yes, I’ll have a go’ and even less so to say ‘yes, I’ll
make a start’, but once you make a choice to take your art
seriously and push yourself forward, there’s no stopping.
www.lauraboswell.co.uk
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Artists & Illustrators 31

seeing
Differently
Internationally renowned play wright
WILLY RUSSELL chats to SALLY
HALES about his love of painting

W
illy Russell’s trajectory from ladies
hairdresser to acclaimed dramatist
seems to bear the hallmark of a
polymath with profound creative
gifts, who effortlessly excels at
anything he tries. So it might not, at first, seem surprising
that when the playwright, lyricist and composer behind
stage and screen hits Blood Brothers and Shirley Valentine
turned his hand to painting, two successful solo shows
resulted. Last year Willy Russell: Another Aspect showed at
the Kirkby Gallery, near Liverpool, and Seeing Better: Willy
Russell Paintings 2008-2017 was on display at London’s
Coningsby gallery. What might be more surprising is the
prevalence of landscape in the work of someone widely
regarded as a great son of Liverpool. But, as we meet Willy
at his studio, it becomes clear such simple narratives belie
complex beginnings – and the bags of hard work he puts in.
He explains with typical humility that before he began
painting, he thought of himself as a writer who lacked a
visual imagination: “I would say to stage designers, ‘Until
I see it, I just don’t know.’ I think for a large part of my life
I used my ears first and my eyes second.” This lack of
confidence he blames on the fact that art didn’t form part
of his upbringing. “I have no recollection of having painted
at home when I was a kid,” he says, and school provided an
even poorer introduction. “I was smacked around the head
and told to get out of the art room – the only thing I would
ever be able to draw, if I was lucky, was the dole.”

FIELDS OF JOY
But Willy did enjoy a kind of country childhood. “In every
interview I’ve done I’ve talked about the fact I was raised
rurally, but nobody prints it because I’m indelibly
associated with Liverpool – a city I don’t originally come
from,” he says. Born in 1947 in Rainhill, outside the city’s
boundaries, Willy and his family later moved to Knowsley.
“The estate we were on was thrown up during the war as
cheap housing for munitions workers,” he adds, “but it was
in the middle of fields. I would be out pea-picking, spud-
picking, roaming all day through woods, streams and fields.
That’s why I’m still terribly moved by landscape.”
Yet the idea of responding to it – or any other subject –
© WILLY RUSSELL

in paint didn’t come until he was in his fifties and, even RIGHT Homer Wood,
then, it was almost by accident. “I was in Portugal,” he acrylic on paper,
says. “I couldn’t sleep because of a crisis happening back > 71x89cm

32 Artists & Illustrators

I think for a large part of my life, I
used my ears first and eyes second
home in England. I couldn’t get any mental peace or sleep.
I just started messing with my kids’ little paintbrush and
palette set that had been left on an outdoor table. Half an
hour later I realised that I had had the first mental rest in
days.” Almost unconsciously, he’d created a watercolour
landscape. The next day he painted his wife a birthday
card, and the creative flame was lit.
Since then, Willy has been committed to painting. Like
many amateur artists, he taught himself by grappling with
watercolour before help came in the form of Peter Moore’s
Teaching the Eye to See class at Liverpool Hope University,
which he still attends. “I remember the embarrassment of
my first night. I was terrified beyond belief,” he says. But his
long career in the arts meant he could draw on reserves of
creative stamina and knowledge that success is born of
failure. “As a playwright, the great truism is that plays are
not written, they are rewritten,” says Willy. “Paintings are
the same. Regardless of what the art is, the same rules
apply. There is the same joy, same fear, loss of confidence
and a belief that, finally, you’re creating a masterpiece.”
He also understands the importance of strong
foundations. “As a dramatist, I require structure in a play,
even if you cannot see it. If the structure is good, the play
will look almost improvised,” he says. And the same is true
34 Artists & Illustrators
of painting. “In recent years, I’ve begun What I love
to appreciate very loose painting, such
as the work of the great Northwestern about acrylic
painter Donald McKinlay, who died
recently, and I admire enormously,” he
ink is that I
says. “It struck me that the looseness hardly apply
attests to the brilliance of his
draughtsmanship. It’s what’s a brush stroke
underpinning that looseness that
makes it able to appear effortless.”
HAPPY ACCIDENTS
Willy’s Liverpool studio is a testament of the joyful
eclecticism of his approach. Dotting its walls are his
representational landscapes and group portraits nestled
alongside works by friends and fellow painters, and his own
sketches and adventures in a variety of media. Having
come to art later in life, he has embraced his pupillage,
experimenting widely and exploring boundaries he soon
discovered did not exist. But improving his technical ability
did help him banish his “puritanical streak” which told him
anything not achieved with a brush and consciously
controlled was somehow a fraud. “I discovered acrylic ink a
couple of years ago,” says Willy. “What I love about it is I
 LEFT Os
Pescadores,
acrylic on paper,
65x84cm
RIGHT Meadow/
Hills – Holling
Grange, acrylic on
board, 83x110cm
BELOW Track from
Vau, acrylic on
paper, 62x86cm
© WILLY RUSSELL

rarely, if ever, apply a brush stroke to it. Some of what the
accidental gives you is incredible. Ten years ago I don’t
think I would’ve been able to see it and, not only that,
I would’ve said to you, ‘I’m not doing that, it’s cheating.’”
These days, his technique depends on his subject and
style. He sketches outdoors with pencils and Quink. For
open vistas and works using brushes, he’ll create a watery
wash and draw loosely on a ground, blocking in the main
areas before completing a work using Liquitex Heavy Body
acrylics. For experimental paintings, he’ll add, among other
© WILLY RUSSELL
his tutor’s idea of applying cement-like textures to canvas.
“I hated the gritty effect,” says Willy. “But I liked where it
was heading. I remember thinking ‘There’s another way.’ So
I put a load of kitchen paper in a bucket of PVA.” Now he
uses this mix – to which he adds cardboard and “all sorts
of things” – to create textured works such as Homer Wood.
He utilises syringes, too. “I like to run lines along the ridges
of cling film when it’s on the picture. Sometimes you’ll get
an air bubble and I want to examine what it would be like to
put pure paint in the bubble.” For Willy, art represents

things, an atomiser, Daler-Rowney acrylic inks, bleach and
watercolour, and roll paint around, spraying, shaking, and
creating marks with cling film and other materials. He has
been developing a technique using PVA glue, inspired by
© WILLY RUSSELL
exactly this kind of endless creative experiment, with no
end point. He paints and draws every day, just enjoying
the journey. “I love to learn,” he says. “Love it to bits.”
www.coningsbygallery.com; www.willyrussell.com
I learned how to mimic
the body’s shapes and
textures in ways that
translate into painting
 10 MINUTES WITH…
Emma Hopkins
NATALIE MILNER asks the self-taught artist and youngest member of the
Royal Society of Portrait Painters why she loves painting the human form
When did you start painting?
I would find time to paint alongside studying and working,
but it wasn’t until after I graduated in 2010 [in prosthetics
for performance at The University of the Arts, London] that
I bought a set of oils and became obsessed.
Did your background in prosthetics help your art?
I have always seen myself as a mix of a scientist and an
artist. I had to study the anatomy of the body. I worked with
people and their bodies for long periods of time while
casting, sculpting and applying prosthetics. I learned how
to mimic the body’s shapes, colours, textures in ways I
have translated into my paintings.
You’ve exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Annual Exhibition for three consecutive years. How does it
feel to show work for the first time as a member in 2018?
I am excited and honoured. I was awarded the Bulldog
Bursary by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2014
at a time when I felt a complete outsider to the art world.
Their belief in my work and the support they gave helped
me to believe in myself. Being a member means that for
the first time in my artistic career I have something to look
forward to every year.
Your four works in the exhibition feature two individuals.
Who are they and why did you choose to paint them?
One is Doreen Wallace. I’ve known her all my life. She works
for an education service for young people with complex
learning difficulties and autistic spectrum conditions. I
wanted to commemorate a woman who is, for me, a role
model. Last year I worked with Roderick McClancy, whom I
have known for over five years, to produce a series of eight
paintings exploring his experiences, both mentally and
physically, of becoming ill and effectively dying three times.
Why do you focus on portrait painting?
I have always been fascinated by the human mind and
body, and the connection and disconnection between the
two. I remember as a child feeling distraught at the idea
that I’d only ever see the world from inside my own head.
My work allows me to understand as best I can what it’s
like to live inside someone else’s mind and body.
Tell us a bit about your process.
I tend to work in layers and on a few paintings at the same
time. This allows me to be free and expressive in some and
THE OTHER RICHARD
more methodical in others. The freer works can include
pencil, charcoal, inks, varnishes, spray paint and acrylics.
The more methodical ones are usually oil. The oil paint is
built in layers so that it creates the illusion of skin. Our
skin is translucent. You can see through it to different
layers of colour – veins and blood vessels – and you can
also see this in my paintings.
Why do you work from life?
It helps you experience the world and opens your mind
to really seeing what’s in front of you. I find it equally
important to know the person as well as I can before I paint
them. So we hang out – have coffee, go for lunch – then
I take reference pictures and pull all of my ideas together in
the studio. It’s impossible to capture the huge spectrum of
things that come into play within one singular painting, so
I open it up as a project, normally producing a series of
paintings that can span months or years.
What artists do you look up to?
I come back to Louise Bourgeois, Egon Schiele, Matthew
Barney, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Otto Dix, photographers
Cindy Sherman and Diane Arbus, sculptor Alberto
Giacometti’s paintings and old medical illustrations. One of
my favourite places is the Wellcome Collection in London.
I love how it combines the arts and the sciences.
How does your studio work for you?
It’s organised chaos most of the time. I don’t like drawers.
I like to be able to see the different materials I use so I can
grab them at any time, which is great when I’m in the flow
of painting. Some people have said that my studio can be
overwhelming. I like to see my previous paintings, and
I have inspirational images on most walls and my floor is
fast becoming a palette in itself.
What are your top portrait painting tips?
Be patient. Really look at what it is you are painting and
understand how it is made. I have been painfully drawn to
getting things in proportion, but I admire artists who are
free from this worry. If your work is authentic to how you
feel, this will shine through. There is no right or wrong in
art and that’s why I love it.
What is next for you?
I’m working on a few new projects and I have also teamed
up with an architectural designer. I often paint on
transparent materials that let light through, so I am
designing a show that will finally bring my paintings off
walls and into a space.
See Emma’s paintings at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Annual Exhibition from 10 to 25 May at Mall Galleries, London,
SW1. www.mallgalleries.org.uk; www.emmahopkinsartist.com
Artists & Illustrators 37
 sketchbook

June
TIPS • ADVICE • IDEAS

Top t ip
To use the drip MAKE BEAUTIFUL MARKS
dr y
technique on a USING DRIP TECHNIQUE
ed to
wash you will ne
per
dampen the pa
r OSCAR ASENSIO offers his tips
with clean wate
for creating dazzling effects

T his technique involves taking advantage

of the moment when the paint is still wet
to deposit one or several drips from a
well-charged paintbrush on top of it. The
brush may be charged with pure water, with
the same colour at a different intensity, or
with a different colour. The drip will casually
mingle with the layer underneath, though the
artists should always guide this by inclining
the paper to one side or the other, bearing in
mind how wet it is at that moment.

DRIP TECHNIQUE RESULTS

Dripping paint can change any wash and
produce richer qualities, with excellent
textural effects as with the painting on the
top left. If you want to use the drip technique
on a wash that is already dry, you will have to
dampen it using enough clean water to
soften the previously applied colour. The right
moment to apply drips of paint is when the
wash is soft, without the paper being
excessively saturated with water.
This is an edited extract from A Watercolour
a Day: 365 Tips and Ideas for Improving Your
Skills and Creativity by Oscar Asensio,
published by Promopress, £19.99.
www.promopresseditions.com

TOP LEFT The drip

technique from
a work by Katrin
Johannesson
BOTTOM LEFT What
the paper looks
like after using the
drip technique

Artists & Illustrators 39

 sketchbook

To p t i p held
Use a good hand
in g gl as s
magnify
to help see
fine details

WHY NOT TRY…

PAINTING MINIATURES
VALE RIE G RE E LE Y ARM S shares her
MASTER TIP: REMBRANDT top tips f or working on a small scale
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN, SELF-PORTRAIT, AGED 51, ABOUT 1657, OIL ON CANVAS, 53X43CM @ LONG LOAN IN TO NATIONAL

Discover the techniques of

the world’s greatest ar tist s 1 Make sure your palette is
free from dust. The tiniest
speck can adhere to a brush
This ensures the surface is
free from graphite, which can
smudge and look dirty.
The artist’s Self-portrait, Aged 51, painted and spoil the work.
around 1657, creates an air of intimacy with
5 Rest your hand on tissue
GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND/BRIDGEWATER COLLECTION LOAN. PHOTO @ ANTONIA REEVE

its sombre dark-brown background

contrasting with light from an unseen
source illuminating the face. The head takes
2 Make a detailed preliminary
drawing. Then transfer it to
your base using tracing paper
paper to avoid getting
grease on the work. Use
another piece of tissue to
up much of the surface area, demanding to and a sharp, fine HB pencil. remove paint from the brush to
be the focus of attention, while Rembrandt’s ensure the point is almost dry.
use of impasto around the eyes and
forehead ensures these areas are
particularly textural and expressive, in
3 Paint around the outline
with walnut ink mixed with
water, applied with the tip of a
This will allow a tiny amount of
paint to be used for each
stroke. Build using tiny dots.
contrast to the smooth passages, further fine brush. The walnut ink is Visit the Royal Miniature
demanding the viewer’s direct eye contact. water-soluble and will not show Society’s Annual Exhibition at
The painting is on show as part of Rembrandt: when the painting is finished. Mall Galleries, London, from 28
Britain’s Discovery of the Master, at Scottish November to 9 December. www.
National Gallery, Edinburgh, from 7 July to 14
October. www.nationalgalleries.org 4 When dry, remove the
pencil with a soft eraser.
royal-miniature-society.org.uk;
www.valeriegreeley.com

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Masking fluid or tape can also be easily removed.
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40 Artists & Illustrators

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Artists & Illustrators 41


TOP TIPS FOR DRAWING
WITH COLOUR MEDIA
Control your brush with KIM SCOULLER
1 Playing with watercolour
mark-making is a good
way to get to know what
your materials can do. First,
mix one very saturated
colour. Next, take a line for
a walk across the surface
4 Play with saturation by
of your paper.
2 See how many varied
marks you can make
with the brush, such as
dots, dashes, quick and
slow marks, and so on.
3 Practise brush control
by drawing faint lines
S TU DIO IDEA
As a member of the National Acrylic Painters’
Association, Alice Hole loves having a large library of
colours, but storage had become a
problem. “The solution was
simple and cheap,” she
says. “I screwed
plywood to the wall
and hammered in
panel pins. Then I
attached bulldog
clips to each tube
and hung them
from the pins.”
www.alicehole.
co.uk
42 Artists & Illustrators
sketchbook
with a pencil and ruler.
Then use a small brush to
try to follow the lines.
starting with a watery
mix – it should only have a
light tint. Make puddles
with the mix and before it
dries, drop in saturated
colour and watch it grow.
Kim Scouller’s five-week
course Learn to Use: Colour
Media in Drawing starts on
5 May at City Lit London.
www.citylit.ac.uk;
www.kimscouller.com
Top t ip
tty vista
A postcard-pre
arily
will not necess
go od pa in ting.
make a
ty of
Look for a varie
tona l sh ap es
TRAVELS WITH
MY SKETCHBOOK
G R AHAM E B O OTH f inds time and
space to work on a f amily holiday
Lanzarote is a wonderful winter destination for a family
holiday and it is easy to leave the resorts behind in search
of beautiful painting subjects. I suggest you don’t overload
yourself with painting equipment on holiday. I have found
the more equipment I take, the less likely I am to use it. A
sketchbook fits the bill perfectly. For colour work, a pencil,
a couple of brushes, a small snap-top container for water
and a small box of watercolours provides a more than
adequate kit.
Choosing a subject can be impossible but, if it is sunny,
I look for good side-lighting or back-lighting, followed by a
suitable place to sit. For me the subject is less important
than the pattern of light and dark shapes. I dismiss any
subject lit by the sun from behind me, irrespective of the
subject’s attractiveness. Such flat lighting destroys any
sense of three dimensions.
Playa Quemada is not much more than a few houses
and restaurants on the coast and a large rock, which
provided a good, but somewhat painful, seat from which
to paint this dwelling. I moved one of the boats and left
out another to provide a better composition but, other
than this, everything was pretty much as you see. The
sketch took about 25 minutes to complete. Using
cartridge paper means I have to use simple, decisive wet
washes without fiddling and with no excess brush strokes.
Treated like this, the paper will stand up quite well, unlike
me. Rising from my rocky perch reminded me I should
add one of those fold-up foam cushions to the kit list.
www.grahamebooth.com
ABOVE Playa Quemada, pencil and watercolour,
A5 cartridge paper
The
Alchemy
of Paint
ɖɕ – ɖ6 May ɖɔɕɜ See page 51
for a feature with
Image: Andrew Roberts,
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Artists & Illustrators 43

 21
PAINT
PROBLEMS
SOLVED
Our expert artists reveal
their secrets to overcoming
common frustrations
 PAINT PROBLEMS SOLVED

Acrylics
TERENCE CLARKE answers the all-important questions

1
HOW DO I KEEP THE MEDIUM WET?
Keeping acrylic wet, especially in warm weather, is difficult. It can also
be an expensive problem. The best solution is to use a small misting
spray. Bottles are available in chemists. You can use the fine spray at
different distances from the canvas to control the wetness. A regular
little spray can keep the whole painting workable, even outside. >

Artists & Illustrators 45

 3 CAN I CONTROL
HOW THE PAINT
LEAVES THE BRUSH?
present problems.
The solution is to
use this wonderful
As it is much more transparency to overlay
liquid than oil paint, colour on colour in rich
the way acrylic leaves skeins of thinned paint
the brush is subtly to create a kind of
different. Oil is more colour poetry. This
viscous and tends to is what acrylic is so
‘hold’ the paint mark. I good at achieving.
find acrylic marks ‘flow’
a little once they have
hit the canvas. There is
something nice about
5 HOW CAN I
CONTROL
COLOUR INTENSITY?
using that extra bit of Acrylic is a clean paint.
fluidity as part of your When I first used it,
expressiveness. I was amazed at how
even muddy greys

4 HOW DO I USE
ACRYLIC’S
OPACITY TO MY
seemed to have a vivid
quality. For this reason
I wouldn’t use acrylic
ADVANTAGE? for a very tonal study.
Acrylic paint is what is I use acrylic as a
termed semi-opaque. bright, spontaneous
Because it is alternative to oil paint.
essentially a water- My solution to the
filled plastic, acrylic brightness of the
can’t achieve the pigment is to go with
absolute opacity of it and intensify the
most oil paints. So inherent brilliance with
covering an area or a free-flowing, splashy
over-painting can and vivid application.

2
CAN I USE ACRYLICS IMPASTO?
Consistency is another problem with the medium and it
varies between brands. You can’t get an impasto effect
without building layers or using a heavy body white – these are
the solutions to impasto in acrylics. In the image above you can see a To p t i p
wide range of thin to thick (impasto), building the solidity of the pot. To crea
te impa
effec t s st
in acr yli o
will nee c yo u
d to u se
h e av y b a
ody whit
or build e
layers

6
HOW CAN However, if you return
I COPE to a dry painting and
WITH try to match the same
ACRYLICS tone you can see on
DRYING DARKER? the canvas, it will not
Because acrylic is be accurate – it will
filled with water, it dry a semi-tone
reflects more light darker. The solution is
when wet. The tone to mix a lighter tone
darkens as the water and test it on paper.
evaporates. If you are Terence Clarke’s work is
working quickly and on show at the Claremont
using a spray, this Gallery, Sevenoaks, and
doesn’t cause too York Fine Arts York.
much of a problem. www.terenceclarke.co.uk
 PAINT PROBLEMS SOLVED

Watercolour
Painter RAY BALKWILL helps you master this tricky medium

7
MY PAINTING LOOKS WASHED OUT. HELP!
A common problem, particularly with beginners, is using too much water
and not enough pigment. The resulting paintings lack contrast and look
far too light. Squeeze generous quantities of pigment onto your palette
and use less water. I would also recommend using tube colours rather
than pan colours. When mixing, be sure to make the mix stronger than
you think you will need as watercolour always dries lighter. >

Artists & Illustrators 47

 9 HOW DO I FIND
THE RIGHT
PAPER TO USE?
10 WHY ARE
MY COLOURS
SO MUDDY?
This is a top priority Watercolours can be
for artists. Every easily overworked,
watercolour paper, which results in
from the cheapest to paintings that look
the most expensive, over-saturated and
has its own unique devoid of light.
qualities. You will need Sometimes it’s
to consider weight, because not enough
surface and sizing. water is used but, in
There is no such thing most cases, it’s
as the best paper. because three colours
It’s more a case of have been mixed
experimenting to find together. Try letting
what suits your needs colours bleed together
and technique. I on your paper instead
suggest that you buy of mixing on a palette.
individual sheets I suggest artist-quality
rather than blocks paints rather than the
of paper to experiment student ranges, which
with, as it is far have less pigment and
more economical. more filler.

To p t i p
8
HOW CAN I STOP BLOOMS OR BACKRUNS? When e
These happen when you add a more water-loaded colour to a xperime
with wa nting
ter
colour that is drying. They can be frustrating, particularly if paper, b colour
uy sing
they occur in a sky, for instance. Get your second colour on sheet s le
rat her
the paper faster before it starts to dry or let the paper dry completely than blo
ck s
before you apply a second colour. In some instances, blooms can be
removed with a slightly moist brush, working slowly along the hard-
edged mark. Many painters use these accidents to create textures.

11
I’VE MADE A
MISTAKE. WHAT
your darks and lights
will fall in the
CAN I DO? picture. Reserving
Mistakes cannot be the white paper for
easily rectified in highlights early on is
watercolour, so if you vitally important.
start without a plan Masking fluid is
you will soon run useful for this.
into difficulties. Working up quick
Before you begin to tonal studies
paint, think about beforehand is
your procedure and, never time wasted.
in particular, where www.raybalkwill.co.uk
 PAINT PROBLEMS SOLVED

Oil
Get the best from your paint with MARTIN KINNEAR’s help

12
WHY DO I GET to aim for clean
DULL COLOURS? mixes in the first
The medium offers place, using as few
very bright and pure colours as possible.
colour but most Wait before you
people don’t let oil work over an oil
dry, so subsequent painting in progress
layers mix and and practise colour
create greyed-down mixing if you intend
tones. It is also best to work directly. >
PAINT PROBLEMS SOLVED

13
HOW CAN I GET MY OILS TO DRY FASTER?
Oil dries by oxidisation, not evaporation. Working on a
traditional absorbent ground or gesso is the best
solution, but you can also work thinly, and use solvents
or mediums to speed up drying time – or even add special driers or
‘siccatives’ to your mixes.

14 HOW CAN
I REDUCE
NASTY SMELLS?
The paint itself is not
smelly, but solvents,
particularly terpenoids,
are. Use a combination
of modern alkyd
mediums, which are
turpentine free, and an
odour-free mineral
spirit, such as Gamsol
or Sansodor.
This is easily avoided
by working thin and dry
to thick and buttery.
Start with broad
passages of thin paint,
and reserve your
palette knife for the
final impasto flourish.
16 WHY DO SOME
OILS DRY
WITH A DULL FINISH?
It is given lustre by its
oil content, which

15 DO I HAVE
TO WORK
LEAN TO FAT?
Because oils dry from
contact with air, it’s
important not to
smother a thick,
slow-drying layer with
a thin, fast-drying one.
varies from colour to
colour, so will dry
differently. You can
correct this by working
with a medium to even
out lustre or by topping
your finished oil with a
varnish when dry.
www.makinnear.com

50 Artists & Illustrators

 Pastel
Master this versatile medium with
tips from KEVIN SCULLY

17
HOW CAN I GET THE EXACT COLOUR I NEED?
Even if you have every soft pastel ever produced,
it’s still unlikely you will have the exact colour you need
for every element in your painting. You will have to
simulate it by placing one colour over another, or perhaps next to it, to
create the illusion of a single colour. Your painting will retain a livelier
appearance if colours aren’t blended together too much, as this can
deaden the fresh look you should be striving for.

18 HOW CAN I
CREATE A
SMOOTH SURFACE
board with sheets of
lining paper, securely
taped down. If you use
this outside. If you’re
bothered about
inhaling particles,
darken a painting.
Frame as soon as
possible with a spacer
personal choice. You
may like to arrange
them in blocks of
TO WORK ON? pastel card, it will be wear a mask. Softer between mount and colour, including tones.
If you are using pastel sufficiently thick. pastels create more painting. Spray from Break pastels in half
paper, which is dust than hard ones. about 12 inches, and remove the
relatively thin, attach
it to a smooth board
using low-tack masking
19 HOW CAN I
DEAL WITH
THE ACCUMULATION
Pastel card holds more
pigment than paper,
so won’t create as
holding a work
vertically to avoid
drips. A few light
wrappers from one half
but keep the other half
covered to provide the
tape or drawing-board OF LOOSE DUST ON much of a problem. sprays are better than name or reference.
clips. Any undulation in A PAINTING? one heavy application. Kevin will run two
the board’s surface will
cause an impression
when dragging the
Don’t blow it off. Turn
the painting around
and tap the back of the
20 WHAT’S THE
BEST WAY TO
FIX THE FINISH? 21 HOW SHOULD
I ORGANISE
five-day pastel courses
at Marlborough College
Summer School in July.
pastel. Alternatively, sheet so dust falls Spray lightly – too MY PASTELS? www.kevinscully.co.uk;
cover your drawing away. Preferably, do much fixative will This is a matter of www.summerschool.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 51

 YO U R Q U E S T I O N S
PRINTING THE
LANDSCAPE
Printmaker and teacher HELEN BROWN
explains how she captures the magic
and movement of the countryside
Can you explain your process for
creating a woodcut and a linocut?
First I draw the image on the paper from
life, enabling me to capture the feel of
the land. Once I have the drawing, I
transfer it in reverse to the block. It
needs to be in reverse because the
block will print a mirror image.
Once the block is cut, I ink it up to
proof. Next I prepare Chine-collé papers
for the sky and any other areas where I
want paper. I cut these to size. Then I ink
52 Artists & Illustrators
my block using a blend of light to dark
blue in the sky, and brown to green for
land. I roll the colours on the one block.
I lay the Chine-collé papers in place with
glue and print the block using a press.
Once the print is dry I wash the areas
needed with a mix of coloured inks.
Why is printmaking a good way to
depict the landscape?
A relief print is sculptural, just as the
landscape has been sculpted by nature
over time. [For example] the carved lines
on the block reflect the lines carved into
a ploughed field.
You draw directly from the landscape
onto a wood block. How does this
work, and what is the advantage of it?
It is vital. I always draw from life. I spend
the summer months making sure I get
enough drawing done to last the year.
Drawing from life means that I capture
not only what I see but what I feel, the
 YO U R Q U E S T I O N S

TOP TIPS FOR HAND PRINTING

JENNIFER BELL: Can you
print without a press?
Yes. I am lucky to have access
to a wonderful 1844 Colombian
press because I co-own and
teach at bip-Art Printmakers in
Brighton. The only time I hand
print is if I am printing larger
than the press. When printing
relief block by hand there a few
things to consider.
1 BLOCK TYPE
Some linos are easier than
others. Wood needs to be
printed several times before it
releases ink. Vinyl prints well.
2 PAPER
You need a paper that will not
spoil under the pressure of the
barren and that absorbs ink.
Thinner Japanese papers can
be good, but a paper that is too
heavy can be tricky.
3 INK
I always use oil-based inks.
4 TOOLS
A barren is best. A wooden
spoon is a good replacement
but your hand might ache. A
roller is not good: you can’t
transfer enough pressure.

ANN ROBINSON: I like to work with
mixed media and wonder if I could
incorporate it in to my work?
I have many students who have used
printmaking and mixed media. It’s quick
to print once the block is made so there
can be lots to work into. You can collage
and use different paints on top, or
cutouts – there’s a lot to be done.
MARCIA COREY DOUGLAS: I learned
to do linocuts on textiles in college. Is
the process similar?
sun, wind, sound of the birds and the The cutting of the lino is the same, but
ache of the legs – everything. My work the block type may differ. Some people
ABOVE would lack energy and spirit otherwise. use a flocked-in or textured vinyl
Birling Gap, because the inks are different. You need
woodcut What products do you use to achieve an ink that is not oil or acrylic, so it sinks
jigsaw with your bold colours? into the fabric and is fixed for washing.
Chine-collé I buy my inks from India. The Chine-collé
on paper, paper used in the sky is from Japan and How do you create beautiful, fluid lines?
45x60cm infused with gold and silver leaf. Colour Use decent tools. Find ones that fit your
TOP RIGHT is very important in my work. It has hand and you have control over, and
Etching taken me years to source and find make sure they are sharp. Find out if you
press exactly what works for me. like cutting wood, lino or vinyl best. I love
wood and some types of lino but do not
use vinyl. Turn the block slightly as you
use the tool, always keeping your fingers
behind where you are cutting and cut
away from yourself at all times.
What tools do you recommend?
Lawrence in Hove sells a great set of
tools, which I always recommend. The
Japanese Woodcut set costs £35. I use
short, square-handled Japanese tools
from Intaglio Printmaker, London. I have
a range of sizes in the Komasuki and
Sankakuto tools. These are my
favourites but they are expensive so,
if you are a beginner, start with the
Japanese set. Or, if you want a finer
tool, the economy Japanese tools
from Intaglio are good.
Helen is teaching wood, lino and vinyl
printing courses at bip-Art in Brighton in
June and a woodcut taster day at Ditchling
Museum in Sussex. www.bip-art.co.uk;
www.ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk;
www.helensprints.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 53

TA L K I N G T E C H N I Q U E S

returning
home
SALLY HALES visits artist ANN BLOCKLEY at her Cotswolds studio
to find out how her past and future came together in her latest paintings
 ANN BLOCKLEY

t
he beauty of the natural
world is omnipresent in the
Cotswolds village in which
painter Ann Blockley lives.
Ancient trees, open skies and
rambling countryside reveal
themselves around every corner
making her recent obsession with
painting hawthorn trees and
hedgerows seem a natural choice.
But, for this artist, the route to
painting the countryside around her
home has been a long and winding
road – itself a kind of homecoming.
Ann’s childhood was dominated by
the career of her father, iconic
watercolourist John Blockley – who
painted the countryside and wrote
books pushing the contemporary
boundaries of technique. But, until
recently, it was an inheritance she
fought against.
“I didn’t spend time going around
with my dad learning to paint,” says
Ann. “I went the other way. The only
thing I was good at in school was
writing.” She even toyed with the idea
of studying English at university before
taking a foundation art course and
later completing a degree in illustration
at Brighton, under Raymond Briggs
and John Vernon Lord.
When watercolour came calling for
her, success soon followed and Ann
became well known for her expressive
flower paintings, and her own books
featuring innovative techniques. Yet, a
few years ago, she felt the need to
explore a new path. “I had an
interesting conversation with my son,”
says Ann. “He said, ‘Mum, your
biggest influence is the fact that you
don’t want to be influenced by your
dad.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s
absolutely right.’ So I gave myself
permission to try landscapes.” >

LEFT Spring
Hawthorn,
watercolour,
30x35cm

Artists & Illustrators 55


The success of Ann’s 2014 book
Experimental Landscapes in
Watercolour reinforced the wisdom of
her decision. “The book was to do with
this idea of finding yourself as an
artist. So I tried different ideas with
watercolour: collaging and sewing into
it – all kinds of things.”
But this change in direction was
followed by a period of ill health, which
forced Ann to take a sabbatical. “I had
this imposed time out,” she adds,
“and, again, I was at a point of artistic
crisis.” When she was well enough to
restart painting, she wanted to
reassess her priorities and focus
on following her passions and
influences – wherever they came from.
Her return to form has seen her not
only produce a new book about
painting, Ann Blockley’s Watercolour
Workshop, and write a book about her
father’s legacy, but also explore her
love of creative writing and painting
alongside each other. And, of course,
she is obsessively painting hawthorn
56 Artists & Illustrators
I tried lots
trees and a two-metre stretch of
hedgerow near her home. “I suddenly
diagonal direction
to create a sense
of different
realised my thing is the hedgerow,” of movement or ideas with
says Ann. “You’ve got the trees, you’ve point towards
got the tapestries of the nearby fields. something.” watercolour
I’ve been using some of the material
from hedgerow to almost print in the
And, although
she feels
– collaging
watercolour in an abstract way.”
It’s an experimental approach she
it’s important
for artists at
and sewing
has long championed. Despite being a all levels to
hugely popular leader of painting experiment, the fact she understands
workshops, she sees herself as a the realities of creating art is one of
facilitator, rather than a teacher. the many reasons her books – and her
“The reason the book is called Ann paintings – are so popular. “An
Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop is amateur artist has not necessarily
that it is my take on what a workshop got time to experiment. They’ve got
should be. These aren’t step by to juggle kids and jobs. So I give them
steps.” For Ann, experiment more in terms of practical shortcuts.”
is wedded to a practical, thoughtful As an artist who has taken many turns
approach and an understanding of along the path of creativity, letting Ann
core skills. “I like to think that I’m guide you through some shortcuts to
using the techniques purposefully,” success seems like a sensible choice.
she says. “For example, you can See Ann’s exhibition at Bourton ABOVE Teasels in
manipulate cling film but it isn’t just a House Gardens, Moreton-in-Marsh, the Briar Hedge,
case of plonking it down into a wash. Gloucestershire, from 5 to 12 May. watercolour,
You can manipulate it to stretch in a Visit www.annblockley.com for details. 35x47cm

WAT E R C O L O U R WO R KS H O P
ADDING OTHER
MEDIUMS
Here ANN BLOCKLEY explores some
new and exciting ways to work
The opportunities for varying
the look and style of your
interpretation increase if you
change your medium or combine
it with others. Different kinds of
water-based paints and inks are
all compatible. I particularly enjoy
applying opaque gouache on top
of watercolour, sometimes into a
wet wash but often when the
watercolour is dry to cover up
and change direction. The big
advantage of using an opaque
medium in this way is that you
can be incredibly free with your
initial application of watercolour
and the normal rules of largely
working light to dark no longer
apply. You can also use gouache
to paint on top of dry ink. You
could also try acrylic.
You can just add details such
as further pale flowers over dark
washes or change a whole area
such as the sky. Gouache does
not have the same pure, fresh
look of watercolour as it is not
BUT PLEASURES
ARE LIKE POPPIES
SPREAD (TOP RIGHT)
I painted over one of my
watercolour beginnings
using gouache. It was very
busy, with too many marks
and textures in all the wrong
places. The beauty of using
an opaque medium is that
you can cover up and change
an unsatisfactory beginning.
I toned down some overly
bright splashes with a glaze
of dilute paint and then
used thicker paint to add
more defined flowers, a
ANN BLOCKLEY
translucent. However, it can
create a special atmosphere all
of its own and you can add as
much or as little as you like. It
can, of course, be used as a
planned medium in its own right.
A different effect could also be
achieved using opaque crayons
or pastels on top of your dry
watercolour. Press hard to get
solid marks or pass lightly over
the surface for softer, broken
texture. If you prefer a vibrant
style to the chalky look of
gouache another choice would
be to use lightfast acrylic inks.
These are either opaque or
translucent and a very bright
colour can be achieved. I like
the Daler-Rowney ones but it
is good to experiment with
different brands to get a
full range of colours.
This is an edited extract from Ann
Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop,
published by Batsford, £19.99.
www.pavilionbooks.com
pathway, a new horizon and
the moon.
OF FLOWERS WITH
A SCARLET GLEAM
(BOTTOM RIGHT)
This version was painted with
inks. The sky was one of those
lucky but rewarding accidents
that came from a frustrated
last attempt to rescue a bad
beginning. The brightest
poppies are bits of collage on
top of the first layer. They
were carefully positioned to
catch the light filtering out
from the cloud.
Artists & Illustrators 57
 5 OF THE BEST

PASTEL PAPERS
Award-winning artist SOPHIE PLOEG reveals the secrets
to getting your paintings off to a great start
58 Artists & Illustrators
There are dozens of pastel supports out
there. Although it’s fun to try them all,
sometimes you just want to get going
with a good-quality ground. Choosing
the best one for your work depends on
how you paint. A light and fine Ingres
paper might be ideal for a delicate
portrait sketch, but not so good for
those who want to apply numerous
layers of heavy pastel. And, if you like
mixed media, some pastel supports are
unsuitable for water-based mediums,
such as acrylics or watercolour.
www.sophieploeg.com
PERFECT
3 for sketches
Daler-Rowney Murano
A lightweight 160gsm fine art paper,
this has a medium texture comparable
to watercolour paper. It is ideal for
drawings where the paper remains
visible but, because of its nice tooth,
it’s still possible to apply a few layers.
It is also suitable for pencil and charcoal,
and comes in warm and cool colours,
pads and sheets.
www.daler-rowney.com. Available
from Jackson’s Art. www.jacksonsart.com
GREAT for
1 soft effects
Pastelmat by Clairefontaine
Hugely popular among pastel artists, this
heavyweight 360gsm card has a velvety or
suede-like texture. Painting on it gives a
slight fuzzy effect so the paper lends itself to
atmospheric pieces. It can take a surprising
number of layers – I can’t fill the tooth. It is
also suitable for wet media as well as pastel
– handy for mixed-media artists – and comes
in various mainly cool colours, pads, sheets
and 3mm boards.
www.clairefontaine.com. Available
from Jackson’s Art. www.jacksonsart.com
NO NEED FOR
4 BACKING BOARD
Ampersand Pastelbord
Pastelbord is a 3mm hardboard panel that is
easy to work on and frame, and has a special
coating and finish. It feels like a fine
sandpaper and is one of the coarsest
finishes among pastel supports. Because
of its marvellous tooth, it can take a lot of
layering and heavy, thick applications.
It is also suitable for acrylics, pencil, charcoal
and more. It comes in four colours – grey,
green, sand and white – and in various sizes.
www.ampersandart.com. Available
from Cass Art. www.cassart.co.uk
GOOD for fine
2 detail work
Sennelier Pastel Card
(La Carte Pastel)
This heavyweight 360gsm pastel card
has a beautiful soft-but-grainy texture
made from cork. It is much softer than
Pastelbord or Colourfix, yet rougher than
Pastelmat. It is good for multiple layers
and heavy-application pastel painting.
It comes in various colours – including
many earth tones – pads and sheets.
www.sennelier-colors.com.
Available from Cass Art. www.cassart.co.uk
ideal for
5 multimedia
Art Spectrum Colourfix
This hot-pressed heavyweight 300gsm
watercolour paper has a layer of Art
Spectrum’s pastel primer on top, which
you can also buy separately. It is not as
rough as Pastelbord but has a decent
tooth, taking strong, sharp marks and
delicate portraiture. It’s suitable for most
media and comes in various colours,
pads, sheets and 1160gsm board.
www.artspectrum.com.au. Available
from Pegasus Art. www.pegasusart.co.uk
Artists & Illustrators 59
 T H E M AG I C O F M I X E D M E D I A

4. FLOWERS
AINE DIVINE finds inspiration in the everyday
to create bold and beautiful artworks
 WHY WORK ON
MULTIPLE PAINTINGS?

1 You have none of the

preciousness associated
with setting yourself up to
make a single work, when
there can be pressure for an
image to turn out perfectly or
all is lost.

2 You can see with fresh eyes

when you turn away from a
work and then come back to it.
With a new perspective, you
are more likely to know what
the next move should be.

3 You never have to tolerate

boredom because you
always have the other work to
turn to. You can be lively and
inspired at every turn.

4 What happens in one

painting can inform how
you approach the other. Having
some breathing space from an
artwork is a great thing.

5 In a practical sense, your

painting has a chance to
dry between layers.

I laugh out loud

F
lowers are a subject perfectly suited to mixed
media. The light on a petal and the brightness of
the leaves can sometimes only be fully described
by relief. And the life in painted flowers is enhanced when
the shapes and colours are explained with economy,
because the mixed-media approach itself involves a
lively energy.
When I am beginning a flower painting in the studio I’m
like a cartoon character on fast forward, reaching for this
tube of paint, those chalks, tearing and gluing, pasting
and splashing. Sometimes I laugh out loud because it’s
so much fun. When energy like this is injected into your
work in the early stages it can carry you right through
to the grand finale. I like to have a couple of paintings on
the go at any one time. The daffodils sitting on the piano
(left) were painted in my living room. I was also painting
an orange tree which was on the worktop in the kitchen,
and I moved between the two.
DAFFODILS
After a long winter it was lovely to see the daffodils
bursting through everywhere. Putting together this bunch,
I was drawn to the variety of colour and shape, the drama
of the natural light and contrast between the blue mug
because it is
and yellow flowers. I put the daffodil stems in
a small jar and then in the mug so they would so much fun.
stand upright. I wanted to capture the glorious
yellows and jostling flowers.
When energy
I began with a torn rectangle of Ultramarine is injected in
Blue painted paper to represent the mug then,
the early stages
using acrylic paint, I blocked in the midtones
in the yellows. These were dull and muted. it can carry
My purpose was to create a foil from which you through
the light petals could later sing out.
I explained this brightness with oil paint.
When this wasn’t enough, I painted little pieces of thin
white paper with Lemon Yellow oil straight from the tube
and pasted them on. You can see this in the all-yellow
daffodils. In some cases, I continued to paint over the top
of the collage pieces, as in the trumpeted edge of the
daffodil on the far left. I heightened the contrast of dark
and light between the flowers and the background, clearly
sculpting their shapes.
STOCKS
This painting (above) started life as a demonstration in a
flower-painting workshop at the inspiring Chapel Cottage
Studios in Wales. I revisited it later when I had the >

Artists & Illustrators 61


opportunity to pull out some of the darks and lights in the
flowers and leaves with oil paint.
The bulk of the vase was explained with a torn piece
of patterned tissue paper, and the tabletop with a few
splashes of inky paint from a two-inch brush. Once dry,
I masked off the tabletop’s horizontal line and scumbled
on Cerulean Blue with a rag for the background wall.
The underpainting in the flowers was made with broad
sweeps of tone applied, again, with a large brush and rag.
CYCLAMEN
This plant (above) was painted spontaneously one night
before bed, as the potted plant sits on my bedside table.
I came across a torn scrap of watercolour paper with the
remnants of an old painting on it: the greens and pinks in
the watercolour already had a feel of the cyclamen. I
reached for oil pastels, glue and the torn pages of a
gardening magazine.
First, I wanted to sculpt the flowers, so I painted the
negative shapes with oil pastel. I stuck on torn pink
magazine-paper petals and found the shadows on the
leaves with the deep Prussian Blue oil pastel. I always
62 Artists & Illustrators
To p t i p
Apply a ton
al
underpainti
ng in
broad swee
ps with
a large bru
sh
and a rag
seek to explain the most
significant thing. Diagonal
scribbles of oil pastel in the
background knitted together the
collage paper and the green
background to ‘knock’ it back
and let the pink flowers read as
the significant shape. I liked the
diagonal sweep of the leaves –
once I had that upward movement
I stopped and went to bed.
ROSES
These roses (right) started life
in acrylic. Then I worked in oil to
bring out the lights. Suddenly
something inexplicably died – I didn’t know what to do
next to resolve the now-mundane painting.
When painting flowers I resist going for photorealism.
I put the painting to one side and only uncovered it again
months later when I happened to be working in oil pastel
on another picture. The flowers were long dead, but the
oil pastel colours in my hand put me in mind of the
shades they had been. I started to play with the bright
Sap Green in the stem and leaves. I found some bright
reds and crimsons in the shadows on the roses, the
flashes of bright Cobalt Blue brought the surrounding
space to life and, suddenly, I was excited and absorbed
again. I put Turquoise Blue on the table and verticals in
the background – and I was done.
This is the joy of mixed media – anything is possible.
Come with a willingness to experiment and a range of
media, and new life can be injected into a work even
when all hope is gone. Now that spring is at last upon us,
there’s inspiration everywhere. Give it a go.
Aine will teach a flower-painting workshop from 16 to 17
June at Cockenzie House near Edinburgh. Email the artist
for more details at aine@divineportraits.co.uk
I played with
the bright
Sap Green in
the stem, and
flashes of bright
Cobalt Blue
brought the
space to life
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 MASTERCL ASS

DRY BRUSH
ANNE-MARIE BUTLIN uses this Anne-Marie’s
interesting technique to convey materials
the dramatic light and shade she
observed in beautiful woodland •Oil
Winsor & Newton artists’

I
went on a gorgeous
coastal walk with my
husband when staying at a
National Trust house near
Dartmouth. It was a still and
sunny evening, the warm sun
sparkled on the water and
was beautifully framed by
the trees between the
coastal path and the sea.
Having taken a number of
photographs to capture the
moment, I was determined
to make a painting that
conveyed the strong mood of
the scene: the drama of the
contrasting light and shade,
the subtlety of colours in the
deeply shaded wooded area,
and the atmospheric blue-
grey of the sky and coast.
My initial thought was that
I could map in the dark trees
and then use the application
of the lighter background
colours to draw and refine
the intricate shapes of the
branches. I would normally
work wet on wet, but I
decided to experiment with
dry brush, which works well
when light paint is applied
over dry, darker colour.
This technique suits the
quick-drying qualities of
acrylic paint, but I stuck with
my usual oils because I felt
they would give the richness
of colour important in the
darkest areas of the trees.
Anne-Marie is opening her
home and studio as part of
Crouch End Open Studio
on Saturday 12 May and
Sunday 13 May, from noon
to 6pm. www.crouchend
openstudios.org.uk;
www.anne-mariebutlin.com
oil colours: Titanium White,
Yellow Ochre, Cadmium
Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Raw
Umber, Davy’s Gray, Payne’s
Gray, Indigo, Turquoise,
Ultramarine, Prussian Green,
Olive Green, Alizarin Crimson
•Support
60x60cm ready-primed
linen stretcher from Bird
& Davis, Southgate
•Brushes
Pro Arte Polar 32 white nylon
square-edged brushes, sizes
¼in, ½in, 1in; decorator’s
brush, 1in
• Primer
Winsor & Newton
Galeria Gesso Primer
•White spirit
•Turpentine
•Newspaper
•Kitchen paper

To p t i p
To blur
t he e dg
of t he t es
ree s , u s
dr y brus ea
h on it s
to pick side
up the li
sur face nen’s
t ex t u r e

1 Prepare the stretcher 2 Apply a ground

Dry brush needs to be done on a textured or
uneven paint surface. Using a stiff decorating
brush, I applied acrylic gesso primer thickly in
several directions, making sure I was leaving
lots of brush strokes as a ‘key’ to capture the
colour when it was applied.
I used Burnt Sienna which, at this stage,
was slightly diluted with turpentine. Again,
I was deliberately aiming for an uneven,
interesting surface, leaving thicker and thinner
areas. I then had to be patient and leave it for
a few days to dry thoroughly. >

Artists & Illustrators 67

 4 Finish the initial drawing

I was keen to avoid a monochrome effect

and wanted to convey the subtlety of the
colours in the tree silhouettes. I also tried
to make sure the warmth of the Burnt Sienna
showed through. To make the edges of the
trees appear slightly blurred, I used a dry
brush sideways to pick up the ridges in the
surface of the linen.

3 Map the composition 5 Add the background

Mixing dark colours in varying quantities of Having left these slow-drying colours for
Indigo, Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Green and around three days, I used the Payne’s Gray,
Olive Green, I began to draw in the trees using Yellow Ochre and Titanium White, along with
a worn brush, putting the paint down roughly. tiny touches of Ultramarine, to mix the lovely
I wiped paint from the brush onto kitchen blue-grey colour of the land in the distance.
paper, and used scumbling and dry brush to I continued to use a dry brush, aiming to build
push and stretch paint into the linen. the colour slowly in layers.

7 Paint the water

I refined trees by overlapping light paint on

dark trunks and branches. I used Titanium
White with Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and
touches of Davy’s Gray for the darker areas
at the sides. In areas where I needed
strong, opaque colour I used undiluted
paint so I achieved dry, textured marks.

6 Create the sky

I mixed a light blue with Ultramarine, Davy’s

Gray, Titanium White and a bit of Turquoise
and Yellow Ochre. Getting the correct tonal
values for these areas was tricky. It was
important to get the lightness of sky with
the darker hills, while remaining mindful
that the sea would have strong highlights.

68 Artists & Illustrators

 To p t i p
U s e und
iluted p
in areas aint
where y
need s t o
rong , op u
colour t aque
o acheiv
t ex t u r e e dr y
d marks ,

8 Refine the trees 9 Paint the foliage

I began to look more carefully at the tree The flashes of warm green and Yellow Ochre
silhouettes. I felt they were still too dark and on the leaves and foliage brought the scene
uniform in colour. Using warm Burnt Sienna, to life. To paint these convincingly I needed to
greys and the white of the water, I lightly use fairly strong colour, but again tried to use
brushed over the dry areas. This mimicked either a dry brush or undiluted paint. I also
the blurred edges and slightly out-of-focus used a completely dry brush over the top to
effect I had experienced in reality. blur the paint slightly.

11 Balance the composition

I started to check the tones and make sure

the brushmarks had a rhythm across the
composition. I decided the bottom left and
right sides were too rough and began to
refine the drawing, while keeping the energy
of the dry brush effect.

10 Add details 12 Finish the painting

The pattern of branches was important to the When the difficult areas of foliage were done I
composition and I was determined to simplify stopped, pleased with the mood. I don’t think
it. I used paint diluted with turpentine to draw consciously about technique and, although I
thin lines and dots, and filled in background often use dry brush instinctively, I wouldn’t
colour, painting up to – and over – branches. usually use it as the main technique. It was
I also lightly scratched with a palette knife. effective in creating texture and atmosphere.

Artists & Illustrators 69

 You can always tell a
good-quality canvas
by how taut it is.
Think of a drum:
the tighter the better

u
sing acrylics on varnished surfaces will
result in paint cracking and peeling.
You may not notice this for a while but,
if you are planning to paint a masterpiece, it
might not stand the test of time. This also
goes for previously used canvases painted
with oils. The water-based acrylic will not
adhere to the oil content on the surface. If you
are applying acrylics on varnished wood, sand
down the surface beforehand.

KEEP IT SIMPLE
There are plenty of straightforward supports
available, including paper, boards, panels and
canvas. There are also acrylic pads, which
have a surface texture similar to canvas but
are already primed so acrylic can glide nicely
over it. You can use watercolour paper, but it’s
unprimed so paint tends to drag and sink into
the grain. Run some gesso, a priming medium
or white acrylic over it first to seal the surface.
Boards and panels come in wood and
aluminium. Aluminium that has been treated
to take acrylic is a rigid, lightweight support,
which is not prone to warping over time. My
preferred support is canvas for one main
reason: there is less need for framing. Simply
run a cord behind and it’s ready for hanging.

E S S E N T I A L AC RY L I C S PRICE AND QUALITY

Canvases come in rolls, primed or unprimed, with smooth, medium
and textured surfaces. Stretchers tend to be wood, but can also be

5. SUPPORTS aluminium. They can be made to measure. Linen canvas is the most
expensive and is great for flowing applications of paint. Cotton is more
economical and comes in various thicknesses. You can tell a good-
HASHIM AKIB on the options you need quality canvas by how taut it is. Think of a drum: the tighter the better.
to consider when choosing your surface
WHERE TO SHOP
Loxley has a very reasonably priced standard canvas with a lovely
smooth surface. For artist-quality I use Daler-Rowney – it is as close
to a drum as I’ve found – and Winsor & Newton. If you want bespoke
sizes or larger quantities, it’s worth looking up independent makers.
Canvas is great if you want to recycle or repaint the same surface.
I use thick paint and find two to three repaints is the limit before you
start to lose adherence. Avoid leaving a canvas next to
a heater or exposed to sunlight as the stretcher will warp (check
TOP St Paul’s at Night, canvases to see how level they are). Warping can be rectified by a
acrylic on canvas, thick frame but it will be noticeable in an unframed painting on a wall.
45x60cm See Hash’s art and find out about his workshops at www.hashimakib.co.uk

70 Artists & Illustrators

 ARTISTS’
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Artists & Illustrators 71

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 D R AW I N G T H E F I G U R E

4. Proportion In the final part of his series, JAKE SPICER tackles

different strategies for drawing bodies accurately

Top t ip the
Double- check
th e sh ou lder s
width of
the head.
compared to
mos t life
This is where
out
drawings ll fa
of pr op or ti on

Artists & Illustrators 73

F I G U R E D R AW I N G

Top t ip
reliant on
Don’t be too
pr opor tions
conventional
pose s are
– bodies and
ready
different. Be
pe cted
to draw unex
shap es

Jake’s

w
hen I’m teaching life drawing, the
most common question posed to materials
me is ‘how do you draw the body
in proportion?’ To deal with the problems of
proportion, you need to understand why you •A charcoal
are making the drawing in the first place. As pencil
well as being an exercise in representation, •Conté crayon
life drawing allows you to look hard at your •Plastic eraser
subject in order to see the model in front
of you exactly as they are. You will have to
learn to be objective in your looking; so the
process of drawing becomes a means
of exercising your observational skills.
Studying the proportion of the figure
through rigorously observed drawings will
train your eye to see with greater clarity and
teach your hand to respond directly to your
observations. Once you are confident in your
ability to see your model clearly, you’ll be
ready to exaggerate and caricature the figure
effectively to capture the gesture, weight and
balance of the form in selective studies. After
all, a life drawing should never simply be a
technical diagram of a human body.
www.jakespicerart.co.uk

74 Artists & Illustrators

 F I G U R E D R AW I N G

STARTING WELL
Develop a consistent approach that you can
practise and refine. A common mistake beginners
make is to start a drawing from a small area of
detail and complete it piece-by-piece, taking
proportions from the last shape drawn. Standing
back, they realise is has gradually grown or shrunk.
Roughly sketch the entire body in the first few
minutes of the pose. Give yourself time to make
big corrections early on before committing to more
detailed surface shapes.

LIMITS
At the start of your drawing, dash the limits of the
body down on the page – top, bottom, left and
right – giving yourself a rough shape to work within.
Imagine a box around your model. Is it square or
rectangular? Landscape or portrait format?

BIG SHAPES
Look for big, simple shapes in the pose before
drawing the body in detail. Lightly and quickly draw
the shapes and sit back from the drawing to
compare your sketch to the general shape of your
model. Does it look about right? If not, make
changes now and check it again.

Top of the skull

Ears

Chin
Collarbone/
shoulder
CHECKING AND CORRECTING
A life drawing should be made as part of an intuitive
process of looking and mark-making, allowing you to fully
Nipples engage with your subject. Every now and again, it helps
to pull back and check how your drawing is developing,
amending proportions as you go. Here are some
Belly button elements to consider as you draw.
Elbow
NEGATIVE SPACES
Wrist When you are translating a three-dimensional form onto a
two-dimensional page, you are simplifying the body to a
Top of leg jigsaw puzzle of interlocking shapes. The negative spaces
(Halfway
point when surrounding the body can be a good indicator of whether
standing) your drawing is maintaining good proportion. Does the
negative space you are seeing look the same in the
model in front of you as it does on your page? If not,
Knee there might be a problem.

LANDMARKS
As you draw you will be constantly judging the relationship
between points and shapes on the model, and translating
them to the page. Know what those landmarks are to
avoid getting lost. They could be structural – bone
Ankle
Heel masses such as the skull, ribcage or pelvis – or external,
such as facial features, nipples or the belly button. On
the left are some key landmarks to look for.
Toes
Artists & Illustrators 75
F I G U R E D R AW I N G

FORESHORTENING
When you are looking across a reclining
figure, or seeing the end of the knee
in a bent leg, you will notice the
proportions you expect become
distorted. The visual effects of
perspective make the nearest parts of
the body seem larger, and more distant
parts seem smaller. Learn to trust your
eye and simply draw what you see, as
you see it. Start a foreshortened figure
by comparing the height of the pose to
the width to judge and spend plenty of
time plotting out big shapes before
developing your drawing.

HORIZONTALS
AND VERTICALS
Compare horizontal and vertical
relationships between landmarks
across the body to check that your
drawing has stayed in good proportion.
Use your pencil as a visual aid to
compare to the figure and notice which
landmarks should be in line with one
another across the body.

To p t i p t line s
Use straigh
d rniture
fu
in walls an
e subjec t to
around th
the model’s
help judge l
and vertica
horizontal s
relatio n sh ip

76 Artists & Illustrators

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 THE CLASSIFIED DIRECTORY

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THINGS
I’VE
LEARNED:
STEPHEN
CHAMBERS
NATALIE MILNER
discovers this
Royal Academician’s
creative life lessons

1 STAY NATURAL It sounds silly

but I never think I have a style. I believe
that, if an idea brews in your brain, runs
down your arm and spills onto the
surface unadulterated, it will contain your
handwriting. It doesn’t have to be a struggle;
let it spew out the way it does.
4 ANIMATE YOUR PAINTING
Texture is not a big deal, but animation
is. I avoid total flatness, particularly in the
backgrounds, and inject a slight, uneven
movement. In The Court of Redonda (above)
many of the background colours are those of
the original ground.

2 IT’S A BALANCING ACT Before

I start work I am already exploring an
idea. Idea first, making second: both are
5 KEEP IT SIMPLE My paintings are
elementary: oil and turpentine. Buy the
best quality you can (and use genuine turps).
© STEPHEN CHAMBERS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCS. IMAGE COURTESY

important. A good idea without being able to Familiarise yourself with drying time. Love it.
THE HEONG GALLERY/COURTESY STEPHEN CHAMBERS STUDIO

articulate it is as good as whistling in the I’ve never tried to learn a technique, I don’t
wind. Believe in the idea and don’t fuss. know how to glaze, do encaustic, impasto
or whatever, but I can do Stephen Chambers

it doesn’t
have to be
3 COLOUR RULES For me, colour is
the ignition. It is the spice and the
flavour. I don’t, though, underestimate the
paintings better than anyone else.
The Court of Redonda is on display at The
Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge,
a strugglE importance of tone. Where the background
is painted in, it is the last thing I do and it is
until 20 May. www.heonggallery.com

- let it never adjusted. At this point there is nothing ABOVE Stephen Chambers LEFT Magda,
spew out I can do, the painting either lives or dies. la Encantada 1, oil on panel, 39x48cm
visit1066country.com/art

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AMSTERDAM BELIEVES IN THE ARTIST; THE ARTIST
WHO OPENS UP HIS EYES AND HAS THE COURAGE
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CREATIONS. USE AN IDEA, A VISION. LOOK AROUND
YOU. SURPRISE AND AMAZE YOURSELF. DARE TO
DREAM IN COLOR.

amsterdam.royaltalens.com