A &

How to paint great portraits f rom photos

I L L U S T R A T O R S
TI SPIR ATION June 2021 £4.99

SPECIAL ISSUE LEARN

TO DRAW

d
With Sky A
rt
Portrait Ar s'
tist
of the Yea
r

Hockney
Studio secrets, the joy of spring,
and staying creative at 83

Plus •British landscapes

•Sketchbook inspiration
•Jake Spicer's new colour series
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A FEW WORDS OF WISDOM

ISSN NO. 1473-4729

FROM DAVID HOCKNEY

The title of David Hockney’s new book, Spring Cannot Be Cancelled, is
such a Hockneian phrase, if that is such a thing. It is by turns
obvious yet revelatory, witty and wise, curious yet stubborn,
profoundly basic and basically profound. Somehow in just four
COVER ARTWORK WAYNE ATTWOOD words he has conjured the essence of his art, while underlining his
insatiable appetite for art, nature and life. (It is not, however, my
favourite Hockney quote - that title belongs to something his mother
STAY INSPIRED Laura said during a first visit to see her son in California after he moved there
BY SUBSCRIBING in 1964. After spending several days poolside in the environment captured
Artists & Illustrators in his masterpiece, A Bigger Splash, she said with typical Yorkshire logic:
Tel: +44 (0)1858 438789 “It’s strange, all this lovely weather and yet you never see any washing out.”)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy our big interview with the Yorkshire legend, written
Email:
artists@subscription.co.uk exclusively for Artists & Illustrators by his biographer Martin Gayford.
Elsewhere in the issue, other great artists wrestle with the beauty of nature
Online:
www.artistsand in different ways, whether that’s Rob Dudley conjuring memories of a landscape
illustrators.co.uk/subscribe or Halla Shafey’s rich tapestries of vibrant pastels. It’s been a tough time for
Post: Artists & Illustrators, many lately, but spring is here, galleries and flowers are opening, and change is
Subscriptions Department, on the way. Besides, as Hockney once said, “I prefer living in colour”.
Chelsea Magazines, Tower
House, Sovereign Park,
Steve Pill, Editor
Lathkill Street, Market

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Artists & Illustrators 3

 Contents
62
Draw the line
with Curtis
Holder

Making art is a solitary

70 business and the pandemic

has made us more
isolated than usual

46
– L AUR A BOSWE LL , PAGE 27
REGULARS
5 Letters
Tell your stories, share your art
6 Exhibitions
Get back in galleries in June 28 Art Walks 54 Colour Theory
9 Sketchbook Three outdoor strolls inspired by Draw Brighton's Jake Spicer
Short tips, ideas and inspiration Lowry, Constable and Spencer begins a new series on the palette
14 Fresh Paint 36 In The Studio 58 Process
New works, fresh off the easel The Pastel Society's Halla Shafey An alternative approach to working
17 Prize Draw opens her Cairo home workspace from sketches made on location
Win online art courses from Newlyn 62 How I Draw
27 The Working Artist TECHNIQUES Portrait Artist of the Year Curtis
With our columnist Laura Boswell 40 Masterclass Holder opens up on his methods
82 Meet the Artist Build up a suggestive figurative 66 Demo
Illustrator Rob Biddulph, famed for painting in our lead demonstration Paint in the style of Eric Ravilious
46 In-Depth 70 Project if yin g
Ident
#DrawWithRob lockdown classes
s
Seven leading artists share their Follow this simple approach to
l o u r s h e lp
INSPIRATION co them
strategies for using sketchbooks painting from photographs
m i x
18 The Big Inter view 52 Quick Tips 74 Paint Surfaces yo u ately
David Hockney reflects on spring Improve your practice with our Our series on mark making looks a ccur 54
– page
from his new French studio 10 ways to paint with real purpose at ways to load the paint on thick

4 Artists & Illustrators


LET TER OF THE MONTH
MY ART STORY
My art story is possibly not very
exciting, but it feels special to
me therefore I wanted to share
it with you.
I am a nurse by profession and
an amateur artist. During the
first lockdown, encouraged by
my friend, I started practicing
yoga. I have not stopped since.
My love for art and yoga have
joined in my yoga_and_art series
of inspirational watercolours and
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT LETTERS FOR PUBLICATION
ink sketches. I later chose to do
a series of oil paintings too.
I’m slowly coming to
the conclusion that figurative
realism could be something that
I want to do or definitely keep
exploring at this stage of my
artistic journey.
Agnes Graja, via email
A JOINT PLEASURE
My wife and I both enjoyed the
recent Channel 4 show Drawers Off
hosted by Jenny Eclair. Having both
dabbled in watercolour and pencil
drawing in the past we became
hooked. There were some good
artists and some that didn’t seem
to have a clue but enjoyed it all the
same. This spurred us on to have
a go again, which led us to your
magazine. We have found this a
joint pleasure in these uncertain
times. Thanks.
Paul Perry, Halesowen
WHAT NEXT?
At the start of 2020, I decided that
I needed to improve my drawing and
set myself the challenge of doing
one sketch a day, every day for a
year. When lockdown happened,
it helped me no end to have
something to focus on. I joined
people on Twitter to post a
#2020dailydrawing every day.
I started on 1 January with little
sketches in my sketchbook, varying
from household items and
ornaments to birds, flowers, old
Letters
That’s very exciting news, Agnes,
you shouldn’t feel otherwise.
Everyone’s artistic journey is
equally important, whether
you’ve found your audience yet
or not. Making those creative
decisions and pursuing what you
love is what this is all about.
houses, holidays... Whatever I could
think of. Often the biggest challenge
was deciding what to draw.
However, I did complete my final
daily drawing on 31 December.
I now have about six or seven
sketchbooks full of 366 sketches
and paintings. The question now
is what do I do with them?
Hilary Needham, via email
We’ve been thinking about just this
same quandary recently, Hilary.
Hopefully Rob Dudley’s Painting
from Memory feature on page 58
might encourage you to turn them
into final works. Sky Arts' Portrait
Artist of the Year Curtis Holder also
has great advice on developing
sketches on page 62.
A BIT OF A SCREW UP
Reading the article on Dame Laura
Knight [Issue 428], I find I can throw
a different light on Katie McCabe’s
interpretation of Ruby Loftus
Screwing a Breech Ring. She says
the painting “… shows the worker
looking unbothered as the sparks
from the grinding metal parts throw
light onto her face. Dotted in the
background… women… scrubbing,
Write to us!
toiling, fixing machinery…” Send your letter or email
I think Ruby Loftus is cutting a to the addresses below:
screw thread on a lathe. The light
comes from the lamp over the lathe. POST:
There will be no sparks; you can see Your Letters,
the cutting fluid splashing as it Artists & Illustrators,
keeps the job cool and lubricated. The Chelsea Magazine
The lathe would be on auto feed, Company Ltd.,
to match the revs to the feed, for Jubilee House,
the thread pitch. This is why, for a 2 Jubilee Place,
very short time, her hands are still. London SW3 3TQ
The saddle would be set to stop
feeding at the end of the thread. EMAIL: info@artists
As for the women in the andillustrators.co.uk
background, they are clearly
hand-finishing parts, presumably The writer of our ‘letter
for Bofors AA guns. My mother of the month’ will receive
would have been familiar with this a £50 gift voucher from
type of work, as she spent part of GreatArt, which offers
the Second World War screw-cutting the UK’s largest range of
Typhoon rocket casings. art materials with more
Barbara Payne, via email than 50,000 art supplies
and regular discounts
ENGAGING ORCHIDS and promotions.
Inspired by Simon Williams’ www.greatart.co.uk
masterclass [Issue 428], I borrowed
an orchid from a friend’s collection
and got painting. I’ve been painting
or drawing every day of February as
part of my “lockdown challenge”
and had intended to pack my
materials away for a while, but
Simon’s masterclass was something
that I just had to engage with.
I enjoy Artists & Illustrators so
much, there’s always something
that gets my creative juices going.
Carol Kelly, via email
Share your stories
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Artists & Illustrators 5
 Exhibitions
JUNE'S BEST ART SHOWS

CHANTAL JOFFE: STORY

4 June to 31 July
Although Chantal Joffe rose to prominence
with her figurative artworks based on found
imagery from mail-order catalogues and
magazines, the contemporary artist has since
spent her career painting those closest to her.
True to form, the American-born Royal
Academician’s latest exhibition features
portraits of her mother, Daryll, as she explores
how the relationship between mother and
daughter changes over time. Expect to see
women depicted in Joffe’s trademark distinctly
understated yet powerful manner.
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/© HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2021

Victoria Miro, London. www.victoria-miro.com

MAKING A MARK: DUTCH AND
FLEMISH DRAWINGS FROM THE
ROYAL COLLECTION
11 June to 26 September
We all know how important it is for our art
practice to draw every day – even if we don’t
always get round to it – and, as it turns out,
so did the Dutch and Flemish masters.
Inspired by the saying “no day without a
line”, the likes of Rubens, Van Dyck and Jan
Brueghel the Elder were encouraged to draw
daily. The results collected here vary from
quick pen-and-ink preparatory sketches to
highly finished watercolours.
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.
www.barber.org.uk

BARBARA HEPWORTH:
ART AND LIFE
21 May to 27 February 2022
From modern abstract carvings to iconic
strung sculptures to large-scale bronze
© BOWNESS, HEPWORTH ESTATE PHOTO: JERRY HARDMAN-JONES

works, Dame Barbara Hepworth’s legacy

© CHANTAL JOFFE. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND VICTORIA MIRO

spans more than five decades.

On display alongside her iconic
sculptures will be plenty of 2D work,
including early life class drawings,
a post-war series of paintings capturing
surgeons at work, and lithographic
prints inspired by a visit to Greece.
The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
www.hepworthwakefield.com

6 Artists & Illustrators

 Dates may
change during
the Covid-19
restrictions
Always check
gallery websites
beforehand

BEN NICHOLSON: FROM THE STUDIO

26 June to 24 October
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS ART COLLECTION. © ANGELA VERREN TAUNT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2021

Once immortalised, the objects that inspire

still life paintings are often forgotten about.
This clever exhibition brings to the fore the
distinctive striped jugs, Mochaware mugs
and glassware seen in the works of Ben
Nicholson, the modernist artist and second
husband of Barbara Hepworth.
For example, a real 19th-century jug
will go on show alongside Nicholson’s first
representational painting of it, 1914 (The
Striped Jug). To add an extra layer of intrigue,
it will sit beside a second, later abstract work
in which the jug’s pattern remains but its
form is reduced to a flat, rectangular plane.
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
www.pallant.org.uk

WALTER PRICE: PEARL LINES

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, THE MODERN INSTITUTE/TOBY WEBSTER LTD., GLASGOW AND GREEN NAFTALI, NEW YORK

21 May to 29 August
Stickers, tape and metallics are
not usually associated with fine art,
yet the offbeat materials crop up
throughout the work of the young
American painter Walter Price, as he
seeks to disrupt what is considered
conventional in the art world.
In his first major UK show,
the former military man gives a
masterclass on blurring the lines
between figuration and abstraction
with his thick application of paint,
bold exploration of colour and
recurring motifs that invite
interpretation.
Camden Art Centre, London.
www.camdenartcentre.org

Artists & Illustrators 7

 PART TIME
DAY &
EVENING A range of courses for beginners as
well as more experienced artists

COURSES ALSO: Full time Diploma courses in

portraiture and sculpture
Enrolling now

Heatherley School of Fine Art

Chelsea
HEATHERLEYS
Established 1845
020 7351 4190
info@heatherleys.org
www.heatherleys.org
 SKETCHBOOK
June TIPS • ADVI CE • ID E A S
CONTOUR
DRAWING
LEO NARD O PE RE Z N IETO suggest s a simple daily sketch exercise
Fasten a sheet of inexpensive
paper to a drawing board with
rubber bands or clips. Sit on a
chair, resting the lower edge of
your board on your legs with the
upper part on the back of
another chair. Position your
subject in front of you.
Observe the contour of your
subject, its silhouette. Pick a
point on that silhouette, any
point. Place the tip of your
pencil on the paper to start
drawing the outline, focusing
your vision on the location
where you want to begin.
Move your eye slowly around
the silhouette, while at the
same time drawing the contour
with your pencil without looking
at your drawing. Move the pencil
over the paper as if it were
connected to your vision, slowly.
Draw the contour of your
subject at the same time you
look at the different parts, not
before or after.
Imagine your pencil is actually
on the object, and that it moves
over the surface as you advance
your eye. Try to stop as little as
possible and don’t lift the tip of
the pencil from the paper. If you
arrive at a dead end and need
to come back to draw another
feature, don’t raise the pencil
tip. Just back up and draw
another line.
If at any point you feel lost,
look at your paper and find
where you are. Place the tip of
your pencil where it should be to
continue the drawing, and then
continue with the exercise,
slowly moving your eyes around
the contour, drawing the line at
the same time. Don’t erase.
Don’t rush. Give yourself 10
or 15 minutes for each drawing.
Do this each day until you have
at least five hours of practice,
even if you feel like you “get”
this exercise sooner. You’re not
trying to get a beautiful drawing,
or to understand the exercise.
You’re working on practicing
your perception and
coordination.
This is an extract from Leonardo’s
new book, Basics of Drawing:
The Ultimate Guide for Beginners,
published by Sixth & Spring.
www.sixthandspringbooks.com
Artists & Illustrators 9
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 SKETCHBO

“TIME,
TO SEE TAKES
LIKE TO
HAVE A FRIEND
TAKES TIME
”
— Georgia O'Keeffe

MASTER TIP influenced by his love of Japanese art,

John La Farge was a masterful appears equally lit up.
19th-century American illustrator, Three white gouache marks were laid
famed for his stained-glass windows over a variegated watercolour wash that

British
in Boston and New York. The flower in shifts from a warm cream (probably
Nocturne, painted around 1885 and Naples Yellow) to a cool lilac blue.

TEA-BREAK
CHALLENGE
Art Prize
The shor tlist f or the Viking
Cr uis e s British Ar t Prize 2021,
7. FOLLOW THE FORM the new Ar tist s & Illustrator s
Take a pencil and sketchbook. Find yourself annual comp etition , has b e en
a subject with some interesting shapes and announce d. Head to our
© METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/ISTOCK

natural forms: a figure or a bowl of fruit, say. web site to view the f inal 50
As you draw, focus on the planes of your ar t work s and vote f or your
subject. Rather than making uniform marks, f avourite to win the reader s’
concentrate on creating lines that follow the choice prize – a £ 1,0 0 0 voucher
forms. Mimic curves and draw lines in the f rom Zieler. (O ur last winner,
direction of different planes. This will help Kir st y O wen’s Tusk , picture d)
you think about form and replicate it. W W W. A RTI S TSA N D
I LLU S TR ATO RS .CO.U K

Artists & Illustrators 11


BOOK OF
THE MONTH
Joan Mitchell by
Sarah Roberts
and Katy Siegel
While abstract
paintings benefit from
being seen in the flesh,
the beauty of a lovingly
curated monograph
such as this is that
when dozens of
images are accrued in
one place, the subtle
shifts in execution and
the development of an
artist’s visual language
becomes clearer. Joan
Mitchell emerges as a
fascinating character
and underappreciated
20th-century talent.
Yale University Press, £50
www.yalebooks.co.uk
Why
staining
matt ers
Most watercolour tubes
show a “staining” rating, but
what does it really mean?
Simply put, a heavily
staining pigment is hard to
remove from the paper,
making it ideal for building
layers of colour. Meanwhile
a low or non-staining
THINGS WE LOVE…
pigment will lift off more
easily, useful when picking
out highlights. Get to know Landscape artist Sarah Evans has taken time out from her commissions to paint tiny seascapes
your paints and you can on teabags. “I love the texture of the material,” she said of the bags. “I find it similar to watercolour
enjoy greater control. paper.” Sarah has also painted on matchboxes and antique spoons. www.sarah-evans.art
SKE
The Diary
6 JUNE NEW HUES
COBALT TEAL
Entries close for the
Holly Bush Emerging
Woman Painter Prize, Discover a new colour
which culminates in a ever y month
July exhibition in This intense, pure turquoise has origins in
Hampstead. ancient Egypt, yet the modern opaque hue
www.hollybush is made from a mix of oxides. Use neat for
paintingprize.com tropical seas and Hockney-esque skies,
mix with Transparent Red Oxide for subtle
24 JUNE grey-greens, or make use of the high
Submit by today for granulating quality of most watercolour
The Society of Women versions to add a patina to weathered
Artists’ annual show. materials.
Online only this year,
there are still £4,000
worth of prizes.
www.society-women- Why not try…
artists.org.uk
Tri-Art Sludge
27 JUNE If you want to apply a neutral
Woolwich ground to a surface, here’s a
Contemporary Print cheap and eco-friendly option.
Fair is holding an open Canada’s Tri-Art recycles waste
call for printmakers acrylics to create this gesso
wishing to exhibit in alternative. While the colours
November’s event. vary from batch to batch, it is
www.woolwich still 100% pigment and retails
printfair.com at a fraction of the cost of an
equivalent tub. www.tri-art.ca
ISTOCK/SARAH EVANS/TRI-ART
TRADITION & INNOVATION

MADE IN GERMANY

www.davinci-defet.com
 WAYNE’S
TOP TIP
“I use a lot of Alkyd
medium, diluted with
solvent, depending
on how fluid I need
the paint”

RIGHT Wayne
Attwood, The
Fetch of a Wave
is Defined by the
Distance Travelled,
oil on canvas,
101x101cm

14 Artists & Illustrators

 Fresh Paint

Fresh
Paint
Inspiring new artworks, straight off the easel

Wayne Attwood
When we last caught up with artist Wayne Attwood, he’d
been reacquainting himself with his native Birmingham in
paint; quite the shift after seven years sailing the
Mediterranean on board a 35-foot yacht. He’s since been
elected president of the Royal Birmingham Society of
Artists (RBSA) and embarked on a series that he’s calling
Ghosts of the Memory of Feeling. These larger, more
ambiguous figurative pieces play with themes of nostalgia
and human relationships, which has given them added
resonance this year. “I started this series quite a while
before lockdown, but it was pointed out to me recently how
many of the paintings depict people connecting: hugging,
kissing, and so on,” he explains. “Not being able to
physically connect with our friends and family has added
an unintended dimension to the work.”
As one might expect from an RBSA president, Wayne is a
big believer in the need to experience paintings in the flesh
and his new larger canvases are a reaction to art being
increasingly consumed via small phone screens. The Fetch
of a Wave is Defined by the Distance Travelled, for example,
measures a metre square and has changed the way that he
applies the paint. “Larger canvases allow me to work freely,
keeping the active paint layer alive without being forced to
tighten up,” he says. “I also want the integrity of the paint
passages and intersecting marks to remain distinct, even
when viewed at a distance in a gallery or home.”
While The Fetch of a Wave… appears to have a fresh, alla
prima finish, this contemplative painter actually spends
plenty of time deciding which elements need to retain
sharpness or be knocked back. He manipulates oils with
various implements, ranging from traditional brushes
through to old credit cards, squeegees and grouting tools.
“Improvisation is fundamental to my process,” he stresses.
With a suggestive finish such as this, it is hard to avoid
overworking things. Wayne says it takes confidence to
know when to say enough is enough. “I don’t particularly
consider my works ultimately ‘finished’ anyway – they
either get exhibited and sold, or I just stop applying paint,”
he says. “When a painting comes back from an exhibition
and sits in the studio for a while, I will quite often add new
layers or rework areas.”
A great artist’s work truly is never done.
www.wayneattwood.com

Artists & Illustrators 15

Fresh Paint

Richa Vora moment. This leaves her room for some “spontaneous ABOVE Richa Vora,
Evoking the rich, vibrant and colourful atmosphere of an decisions”, yet a lot of planning is still involved in every Gail’s, oil on
Indian festival in a painting of a quaint London lane may finished painting. “I do lots of black-and-white and canvas, 51x41cm
sound like a rather incongruous ambition. Yet Portfolio three-tone colour sketches before I start to help
Plus member Richa Vora has deftly merged these two me understand temperature
seemingly opposed worlds in her recent oil painting, Gail’s. and value.”
On a hot July day walking through north London, the Such preparation pays off.
artist was struck by how similar the harsh sunlight, dark Whether she’s capturing the Every month, one of our Fresh Paint
shadows and bustling, narrow streets of Hampstead were harsh light of a midday sun, the artists is chosen from Portfolio Plus,
to those found in her native Kolhapur. She duly set out to shadowy folds of an unmade our online, art-for-sale portal. For your
capture this rare moment. bed sheet or a strong direct chance to feature in a forthcoming
Richa began her painting by laying down a neutral- light hitting a life model’s face, issue, sign up for your own personalised
coloured wash and blocking in the main masses with a big the play of light in Richa’s art Portfolio Plus page today. You can also:
bold brush. She then worked alla prima, using energetic is incredibly arresting, • Showcase, share and sell unlimited
brushstrokes to bring the paint surface to life. “The secret lies in the middle artworks commission free
“I find the details that were done fast and with a few tones,” she reveals. “When you • Get your work seen across Artists &
touches of paint are the most lively and artistic,” she says. have harsh sunlight and very Illustrators’ social media channels
“In this particular painting, it was quite bland and flat until dark shadows, if you get your • Submit art to our online exhibitions
I added in the people sitting outside the bakery.” middle tones correct, the • Enjoy exclusive discounts and more
The London-based artist has studied at Southwark’s luminosity always comes.” Sign up in minutes at www.artistsand
Art Academy and usually finishes her paintings in a few www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/ illustrators.co.uk/register
hours, finalising the composition at the last possible richcompose

16 Artists & Illustrators

 £950 WORTH
OF ONLINE ART
COURSES
Celebrate the first ever Penzance Arts Festival with
virtual workshops from Newlyn School of Art
Technology has proved a lifeline for many
over the past 12 months, with online art
courses and live drawing demos keeping
us all connected and creative. Excelling in
this department is Newlyn School of Art.
Based in the historic artists’ colony in West
Cornwall, this dynamic and innovative art
school provides a wide range of high quality
and exciting short art courses in disciplines
such as painting, drawing and printmaking.
And this summer, the popular institution will
be bringing its digital offerings to the first
ever Penzance Arts Festival.
To mark its involvement with the festival,
Newlyn School of Art is offering one lucky
Artists & Illustrators reader the chance to
win £950 worth of virtual art tutorials.
The winner will be able to pick from a
selection of four-day short courses, ranging
from “Abstracting the Landscape” to the
“Modern Portrait”, but all led by some of
the best art tutors in the UK.
Also on offer are weekly two-hour life
drawing classes led by a roster of award-
winning artists. At just £9 a session, the prize
voucher is enough that you could book up
one a week for the next year and still have
credit left over to spend on a few short
courses, costing £145 each. The prize
also includes two tickets to a livestreamed
Andy Warhol talk.
To find out more about Newlyn School
of Art, browse its catalogue of courses
and buy tickets to the Andy Warhol talk,
visit www.newlynartschool.co.uk
THE PRIZE
One winner, selected at random, will win:
• £950 to spend on online life drawing
classes and online short courses at Newlyn
School of Art
• Two tickets to a livestreamed Andy Warhol
talk by Tate Modern curator Fiontán Moran
at 6.30pm on 19 June 2021, worth £4 each
NEWLYN PRIZE DRAW
Name:
Address:
Postcode:
Email:
Telephone:
The closing date for entries is noon on 11 June 2021.
Please tick if you are happy to receive relevant information from
The Chelsea Magazine Company Ltd. via email , post or phone
or Newlyn School of Art via email
HOW TO ENTER
Enter by noon on 11 June 2021 at
www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/
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Artists & Illustrators 17
THE B I G INTERVIE W

18 Artists & Illustrators

 THE BIG INTERVIEW

David
Hockney
Writing exclusively for Artists & Illustrators , author
and art critic MARTIN GAYFORD speaks to the
great Yorkshire artist about the joys of spring,
his enduring inspirations, and how his latest
French studio has given him a new lease
of life – and cured his limp!

F
or the last two years, David
Hockney has been living in
a novel location. From the
Hollywood Hills, he’s moved
to La Grande Cour, an old farmhouse
in the countryside of Normandy,
France. It looks, as he says
approvingly, like the cottage “where
the seven dwarves live in the Disney
film… There are no straight lines; even
the corners don’t have straight lines”.
David’s life and work, as well as
the thoughts that existence in rustic
seclusion have brought him, are the
subject of a forthcoming book we
wrote together, Spring Cannot be
Cancelled, published in March by
Thames & Hudson.
Because David is an artist who
© DAVID HOCKNEY
a suitable studio there. Accordingly,
before he moved to Normandy in early
March 2019 (and immediately after
the opening of the Hockney – Van
Gogh exhibition at the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam), a spacious
and airy working space was created
for him inside the ancient wooden
beams of an old barn on the grounds
of his new dwelling.
He was delighted by it. “Right now,
I need to be somewhere like this.
When I signed the lease on the second
Bridlington studio a decade ago, I felt
20 years younger, and the same thing
happened here. I feel revitalised.
It’s given me a new lease of life.
I used to walk with a stick, but since
I came here, I’ve forgotten about it!”

paints and draws for much of the David had two studios in East
day, every day, this change of place Yorkshire. The first was in the attic
meant, first and foremost, he needed of his house near the seafront at

Artists & Illustrators 19

THE B I G INTERVIE W
The studio’s given me a new lease of life.
I u sed to walk with a stick, but since I came
here, I’ve forgotten about it!
Bridlington; the second – the one he
signed that lease for – was located
in an industrial estate on the edge
of the town. It was huge, more like a
film studio than a painter’s workshop.
This was conceived and arranged with
the enormous pictures he was making
at that time in mind by the artist’s
principal aide, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves
de Lima (known affectionately as J-P).
20 Artists & Illustrators
The Norman studio was also devised
by Jean-Pierre, but its scale and
feeling are quite different.
As David explained in the summer
of 2019: “When Jean-Pierre first
came here, he told me, he realised
that we wouldn’t have to drive
anywhere, whereas in Bridlington
I had to get in the car to go to my
subjects. That’s why we got [this
studio]. It makes an enormous
difference because I get to know the
trees a lot better. I’m always looking
at them. Always. This afternoon
I might draw the apple trees and
pear trees again because now they
have fruit on them, hanging there.”
Every artist’s studio is different
because it is a reflection of their
personalities, habits, and, above
all, what they need to do: their work.
Some are huge, others tiny; some
are orderly, others chaotic. Each of
David’s studios that I have seen (this
is the fifth) has had its own particular
qualities. This new one in the French
countryside is a studio immersed in
a subject, amongst the trees, in the
midst of silence and living plants.
So, the principal models for David’s
recent work are growing all around:
those apple and pear trees he
mentioned are among them. They and
others – a favourite cherry tree, for
example – feature now in many of his
pictures and will soon be familiar to
the thousands of visitors who are
likely to see The Arrival of Spring,
Normandy, 2020, his forthcoming
exhibition at London’s Royal Academy
of Arts, which opens in May.
“Trees are fascinating things,”
observes the artist. “They are the
largest plant. Every one is different,
like we are; every leaf is different. ABOVE David
In Yorkshire, one day a guy asked us Hockney, No. 180,
why we were always filming the trees; 11 April 2020,
he thought they were all the same.” iPad painting
These days, David is taking the
advice famously offered by Voltaire’s LEFT David
character, Candide, in his 1759 in Normandy
© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: JEAN-PIERRE GONÇALVES DE LIMA
novel of the same name: “We must last spring
cultivate our gardens”. However,
he is doing so artistically, which
makes a big difference.
What a painter finds interesting
will not delight every eye (“willows, PREVIOUS SPREAD
old rotten planks, slimy posts, and David Hockney,
brickwork” were on the great English No. 599,
landscape painter John Constable’s 1 November 2020,
list of his favourite things). iPad painting
 HOCKNEY SPIRIT THREE WAYS TO CREATE, INSPIRED BY THE YORKSHIRE ARTIST
LEARN TO LOOK
As a child in Bradford, Hockney would run
upstairs on buses, always keen to get the
best view. That curiosity has stayed with
him throughout his career and much of his
work is his way of communicating that time
spent looking.
He often tries to do so as simply as
possible. Whether painting on canvas or
drawing on the iPad, saturated colour is
blocked in first, often with a second layer
of pattern or texture applied on top. Other
details are kept to a minimum, save for
occasional contour lines to describe forms
and separate colours.
TRY SOMETHING NEW
Reflecting on his famous 1967 painting
A Bigger Splash ahead of a Tate Britain
exhibition 40 years later, Hockney
concluded that there was no fixed way
of making a masterpiece. “If there was a
formula, there’d be a lot more memorable
pictures,” he joked.
Challenge yourself to try something
different with each new painting you make,
whether that’s as drastic as changing your
whole way of working, or just something
simple, such as adding a new colour to your
palette. A change will keep you present and
engaged, while freshening up the results.
PAINT THE WORLD AS YOU SEE IT
Although Hockney often relied on his trusty
Polaroid camera, he also thought most
colour photography was a bit dull. The artist
didn’t see colour like that, hence the bright
hues in his own work. Colour, like all
aspects of painting, is subjective and
must be adapted accordingly.
Likewise, Hockney always painted his
environment, attaching an importance to
his chosen subject in the process. In his
eyes, Bridlington is every bit as important
as Los Angeles. Staying true to that belief
has resulted in great artworks produced
with real conviction.
Artists & Illustrators 21
THE B I G INTERVIE W
I started drawing on the i Pad again.
You can make wonderful textures if
you build the pictures up in layers
So, arranging a garden for an artist to
paint is different from making one for
a horticulturalist, a tree fancier, or a
lawn lover.
Conversely, what makes for a good
painting or drawing is not necessarily
the sort of prime specimen that would
please a landscape architect or
arboriculturalist.
“The three big pear trees are all
dead at the top; that’s why there are
no leaves on them. But I want to let
22 Artists & Illustrators
them stay there like that, because
they look like hands clapping or
something. It’s the same with those
trees with the mistletoe, which kills
them eventually. But I think they are
wonderful to draw, because they set
up a plane. Even in the winter they do.”
After overseeing the conversion of
the old barn into a studio, Jean-Pierre
went on to oversee the surrounding
grounds. Just as the first was
tailor-made for David to work in,
the latter was arranged specifically ABOVE David
for him to depict. In other words, it Hockney, The
was a specialised place: a painter’s
garden, like Claude Monet’s at
Entrance, 2019,
acrylic on two
Giverny on the other side of canvases,
Normandy. With this in mind,
Jean-Pierre ignored much advice
91x122cm each
from landscape gardeners, who told
him: “This should come out and that
should come out; it’s got no value”.
“They want to replace the trees
with better, nobler ones,” Jean-Pierre RIGHT Vincent van
complained. “But I know that for Gogh, Farmhouse
David, visually it’s the shapes and in Provence, 1888,
© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: RICHARD SCHMIDT
forms that count. He can make a bit oil on canvas,
of gravel with some weeds growing 46x61cm
on it interesting. They don’t see that.”
When the artist began his FAR RIGHT Joan
new life in France in March 2019, Mitchell, La Grande
he was supercharged by three Vallée 0, 1983,
recent encounters with supreme oil on canvas,
draughtsmen from the past. 263x200cm
 THE B I G INTERVIE W

FRENCH EXIT FOUR OTHER ARTISTS WHO WENT IN SEARCH OF LA BONNE VIE

VINCENT VAN GOGH PABLO PICASSO

The Dutch master’s After enjoying many summers on the French Riviera, the Spaniard
reputation largely eventually moved there, living in various grand villas in Antibes,
rests on the many Vallauris (where he practiced pottery) and Mougins. He was buried
masterpieces he privately at the family estate in Vauvenargues.
created during his
final two years in JOAN MITCHELL
Provence [see The great American
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON/© ESTATE OF JOAN MITCHELL

1888’s Farmhouse Expressionist painter swapped

in Provence, right]. Manhattan for Paris in 1959,
Arriving in Arles in later buying a cottage and
search of light, he found sunflowers and starry nights before his two-acre estate in Vétheuil,
suicide at Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890. next to where Claude Monet
once lived. Though she never
CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH loved France unconditionally,
Growing disillusioned with his architecture practice, the Glasgow art the lifestyle suited Mitchell,
nouveau pioneer spent four of his last five years living a peripatetic whose abstract works included
life in France. He produced more than 40 large graphic watercolours the 21-painting La Grande
of the local landscape during this period. After his death in 1928, Vallée suite, inspired by a
his artist wife Margaret scattered his ashes in Port-Vendres. valley in Brittany.

Artists & Illustrators 23

THE B I G INTERVIE W

In Amsterdam he had been showing

his own work beside that of Vincent
van Gogh, while simultaneously
there was a glorious exhibition
of masterpieces by another of
his heroes, Rembrandt van Rijn,
at the city’s Rijksmuseum – All the
Rembrandts welcomed more than
450,000 visitors. The previous
autumn David had made a journey to
Vienna to see Once in a Lifetime, a
great retrospective of Pieter Bruegel
at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
So, the spring of 2019 was a
spring of drawing on paper, often
like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, with
a reed pen (and using dots similar
to the ones Van Gogh was fond of,
to represent the gravel paths that
Jean-Pierre mentioned).
“There’s a particular line you
get from a reed pen,” said David.
“Everything makes a different sort of
line. And I’ve always enjoyed making
different kinds of lines.”
There were affinities in the kinds of
marks he was making with the works
of both of those great Dutch artists. By 2020, however, David returned Leeds to make a new version of the ABOVE David
But there were also fresh, and to the iPad, a medium of which he Brushes app, which I think is very Hockney, No. 316,
characteristic, Hockney ingredients: famously made great use around a good, even better than the previous 30 April 2020,
several of the drawings he made were decade ago. He explained the change one, which is now unobtainable.” iPad painting
360-degree panoramas, executed to me in an email at the beginning of With the iPad, the artist found, “you
on sketchbooks which pulled out like last spring: “I have started drawing can make wonderful textures if you TOP RIGHT David
a concertina. And they were often on the iPad again as Jonathan build [the pictures] up in layers”. Hockney, No. 556,
drawn not in black or sepia, but in [Wilkinson, Hockney’s assistant in all Shortly afterwards lockdown 19 October 2020,
coloured inks. technical matters] has got a man in descended on us all, but Hockney iPad painting
was undismayed. Indeed, he
thrived on the consequent lack of
interruptions and opportunity for
deep concentration. By the end of
spring, he had created a hundred
works using the enhanced range of
effects offered by his improved iPad
app. By the end of the year there were
200 – and still they keep appearing.
The harvest from the Norman farm
has been marvellously fruitful.
David thinks so too. “I think these
iPad works are much better than the
last lot I did. There is more detail in
them; I’ve done it more thoroughly.”
© DAVID HOCKNEY/PHOTO: JEAN-PIERRE GONÇALVES DE LIMA

Just now the 83-year-old artist is LEFT David

poised to begin again in spring 2021. contemplates his
Martin and David’s new book, Spring latest canvas with
Cannot be Cancelled: David Hockney in Ruby the dog in his
Normandy, is published by Thames & Normandy studio
Hudson. www.thamesandhudson.com.
The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 RIGHT David
runs from 23 May to 26 September at Hockney, No. 340,
the Royal Academy of Arts, London. 21 May 2020,
www.royalacademy.org.uk iPad painting

24 Artists & Illustrators

 Trees are fascinating things… Ever y one is
different, like we are – ever y leaf is different

READER OFFER
Spring Cannot be Cancelled:
David Hockney in Normandy
is an uplifting manifesto that
affirms art’s capacity to divert
and inspire. It is based on a
wealth of new conversations
and correspondence between
Hockney and the art critic
Martin Gayford, his long-time
friend and collaborator.
Artists & Illustrators readers
can enjoy 25% off the cover
price, a saving of £6.25. Simply
© DAVID HOCKNEY

use the code CHELSEA25 at

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Artists & Illustrators 25

Atlantis Art, Unit 1, Bayford Street Industrial Centre, Bayford Street, London E8 3SE
Tel: 0207 377 8855 | www.atlantisart.co.uk | office@atlantisart.co.uk
 COLUMNIS T

Social media groups are

invaluable when you need
a mystery tool explained

to start. Whatever your technique and

interests, there will almost certainly
be a suitable group to join.
You may like to sign up to several
groups for a broader perspective,
or to gain an insight into a range of
techniques or subjects. I belong to
several printmaking forums and their
content and atmosphere differs
widely, ranging from the deeply
intellectual to the fun and playful.
Remember you can engage by
showing work, commenting, or just
observing. Check the rules of any
group you join and whether they have
mediators who will intervene if the
group goes off topic. In my experience,
mediated groups are friendly and
supportive places where everyone’s
work is embraced and celebrated.
In most bigger art groups, members
range from absolute beginners to
professional artists, and they are
often spread across the globe.
Groups are valuable places for
asking questions. From finding a
good supplier to asking for a friendly
critique, you’ll have fellow specialists
ready to help. These groups are also
invaluable when you need an artwork
identified or a mystery tool explained.

Artist
Someone somewhere will pop up with

The Working an explanation and there’s often a

fascinating back story included.
Do remember that these are open
groups so be cautious when it comes
to sharing personal details, however.
If you keep the focus on the artwork,
you can enjoy the chat without
compromising your privacy.
Our columnist LAURA BOSWELL loves the Groups grow and change all the
community and support of online art forums – time. Splinter groups often arise to
could now be the time to find your tribe too? address specialist interests within
main groups and then develop a life

S
ocial media can be an effective
place to grow an audience.
ABOVE Laura It can also be a great forum for
Boswell, West selling artwork, but have you thought
Coast Summer, of it as a means to find your tribe?
woodblock print, Making art is often a solitary
29 x45 cm business and the pandemic has
meant that most of us have been
even more isolated than usual.
If you haven’t considered using
social media to join – or perhaps build
– a community of likeminded artists,
now is the time to give it a go. Joining
an established group is a good place
of their own. Don’t be shy if you want
to instigate a new thread or sub-
group; you may end up finding your
own special network of artist friends.
Laura co-hosts a podcast, Ask an Artist.
Listen to new episodes at www.artists
andillustrators.co.uk/askanartist

Artists & Illustrators 27

 The
Art of
Walking
Discover the landscapes
that seduced three of
the nation’s greatest
artists with walks
through verdant valleys,
beside the riverbanks of
the Thames and along
the rugged coast of
north east England
Willy Lott’s Cottage
on the River Stour
in Suffolk, which is
featured in several
John Constable
masterpieces

©NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES/JUSTIN MINNS

John Constable, The Leaping
Horse, 1825, oil on canvas,
142x187.3cm

CONSTABLE’S
Key Dates
JOHN CONSTABLE’S
1776
Born in East Bergholt,
Suffolk
Suffolk
1799 A gentle walk through the
Entered the Royal heart of “Constable Country”,
Academy Schools crossing the Dedham Vale and
1802 following the River Stour,
Started exhibiting at the reveals scenes that remain
Royal Academy of Arts largely unchanged from when
1816 John Constable immortalised
Married Maria them in his iconic oil paintings
Elizabeth Bicknell more than 150 years ago.
1819 The landscape painter held
Moved to London an unbounded affection for his
Flatford Mill
1821 native Suffolk countryside and
Exhibited The Hay Wain there is much to uncover when
1824 exploring the area on foot. that belonged to the painter’s Bridge Cottage
Moved to Brighton due father, Golding Constable, and
to Maria’s ill health Willy Lott’s Cottage still stands today.
1829 Of all the artworks by John The artwork formed one of
Elected to the Royal Constable, The Hay Wain is Constable’s seminal six-foot
Academy of Arts probably the most well-known. canvases, comprising views on
1835 Painted in 1821, it depicts a the River Stour and painted to
Died and buried in harvest wagon crossing the impress the Royal Academy.
Hampstead River Stour and, on the left, Another in the series is The
Willy Lott’s Cottage – a house Leaping Horse, pictured above.

30 Artists & Illustrators

 A R T WA L K S

I associate my ‘careless
boyhood’ with all that lies on
the banks of the Stour; those
scenes made me a painter,
and I am grateful

Flatford Mill
Next to Willy Lott’s Cottage is
Flatford Mill, another property
owned by Constable’s father
and depicted in Flatford Mill
(Scenes on a Navigable River).
Some say the artist’s flair
for accurately painting clouds
stems from having to closely
© THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON; ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS; NATIONAL TRUST IMAGES; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY
Dedham Vale’s charms did not
escape Constable’s attention.
The view in his artwork The
Vale of Dedham can be seen
from Gun Hill, looking towards
Dedham Church.
With its thick application of
white paint that enhances the
shimmering light, this painting
Willy Lott’s Cottage St Mary’s Church,
Dedham
Another church not to miss is
St Mary’s in Dedham, as on
display inside is one of John
Constable’s three religious
artworks, The Ascension.
The church’s 131-foot tower
also appears in some of

observe the skies to predict
the weather while he worked
at this redbrick watermill as
a teenager.
Bridge Cottage
A prosperous miller, Golding
Constable also owned Bridge
Cottage in Flatford. Tenants
would have collected tolls from
barges passing through the
lock, but today it’s home to a
tearoom and exhibition on the
artist. You can also see the
cottage in Constable’s 1813
painting Boys Fishing.
Dedham Vale
Now designated an Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty,
prompted Constable’s election Constable’s other paintings.
to the Royal Academy in 1829. For more details on the area and
a map of the walking tour, visit
East Bergholt www.nationaltrust.org/flatford
Constable was deeply attached
to his birthplace, East Bergholt John Constable, The
House, and it appears in his Hay Wain, 1821, oil on
c.1809 painting of the same canvas, 130.2x185.4cm
name. Demolished in the early
1840s, today a plaque marks
where the house once stood.
Across the road is St Mary's
Church, where his parents and
Willy Lott are buried and where
his wife Maria Bicknell's
grandfather was once a rector.
Also nearby, in Cemetery
Lane, is Moss Cottage, the first
studio the artist rented for four-
and-a-half old pennies a year.

Artists & Illustrators 31

A R T WA L K S

LOWRY’S LS LOWRY’S Town Hall and

Marygate
Key Dates
1887
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Born in Stretford When you think of LS Lowry, Dewar’s Lane
1905 industrial scenes of northwest and Sally Port
Studied at the England are bound to come to Depictions of quiet, cobbled
Manchester School of Art mind. But less well-known are lanes are a rarity among
1910 the seascapes and cobbled Lowry’s work, yet he was
Became a rent collector lanes the artist painted while fascinated by the ancient
for the Pall Mall Property visiting Berwick-upon-Tweed. alleyways of Sally Port and
Company Lowry first travelled to the Dewar’s Lane. On the trail’s 18
1915 Northumberland town in the interpretation panels, you can
Began evening classes mid-1930s, after his doctor see how the artist drew and
at Salford School of Art suggested he take a break painted scenes such as these.
c.1935 from the strain of looking after
Made his first trip to his bedridden mother. He Elizabethan walls
Berwick-upon-Tweed would return many times. In Sally Port, you can spot an
1939 To see 18 local sites related archway passing under the
First solo exhibition to the artist, simply follow the town’s Elizabethan walls, also
Sally Port
in London town’s three-mile Lowry Trail. of interest to the artist due to
1952
Retired from the Pall Mall
Property Company
1955
Elected as an Associate
Member of the Royal
Academy of Arts
1976
Died at Woods Hospital,
Glossop, Derbyshire

LS Lowry,
On the Sands,
Berwick, 1959,
oil on canvas,
size unknown
 A R T WA L K S

I’ve always
been fond
of the sea...
How
wonderful it
is, yet also
how terrible

the way they encircle Berwick.

You may have already noticed
the low walls, fences and other
barriers in the foreground of
many of Lowry’s paintings.

Town Hall
The Georgian Town Hall’s
150-foot tower appears in
works such as A Market Place,
Berwick-upon-Tweed and Old
Berwick (Strother’s Yard). The
latter’s composition [seen in
the panel pictured below] with
the lone tower – a common alongside Old Berwick The Pier
motif in his work – is thought to (Strother’s Yard), appeared in From Pier Road, Lowry LS Lowry, Seascape, 1952,
symbolise Lowry’s loneliness. Lowry’s first London solo show sketched Berwick’s pier and oil on canvas, 39.5x49.3cm
With its harsh geometry and in 1939. The painting is based lighthouse in 1956 and the
mysterious figures, the painting on a pencil sketch the artist scene remains much the same
exudes an air of apprehension, drew while sat on the parapet today. Behind the pier there
despite it being one of Lowry’s of Berwick’s Old Bridge, and is a red-roofed pavilion, the
© ICEBOOM13; THE ESTATE OF LS LOWRY; THE LOWRY COLLECTION, SALFORD; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY

favourite corners in town.
Bridge End
The town hall’s tower also
appears in Bridge End, which,
with flashes of red (known as
his favourite colour), lively
figures and pets, it evokes a
much more upbeat mood.
Tweedmouth
Busy, enclosed yard scenes
were a go-to subject for Lowry
and he captured one off Main
Street (across the river in
Tweedmouth) in his 1943
painting Old Property. The
flagpole and smoking chimneys
appear to be products of the
artist’s imagination, while the
solitary observer separated
from the action by the kerb
resembles Lowry himself.
setting for On The Sands,
Berwick-upon-Tweed.
The artist once said:
“Poverty and gloom. Never a
joyous picture of mine you’ll
see.” Yet this jolly seaside
scene is one exception.
Spittal
Lowry had a lifelong fascination
with the sea, and would walk
along the Spittal promenade
seeking inspiration for works
like 1960’s Spittal Sands –
a joyful, impressionistic beach
scene painted with pastel hues
and thick encrusted paint.
It’s here he also set his 1964
painting, Girl in a Red Hat.
Despite enjoying the coast,
he was rather unnerved by the
sea. This attitude may explain
his empty seascapes (1942’s
The Sea and 1952’s Seascape)
which capture the ocean’s
mystery and infinity.
For more details on the Lowry
Trail and to download a map
visit www.visitberwick.com

Artists & Illustrators 33

A R T WA L K S

Sir Stanley Spencer, The

Resurrection, Cookham, 1924-
’27, oil on canvas, 274.3x548.6cm

SPENCER’S
Key Dates
1891
STANLEY SPENCER’S
Cookham
Born in Cookham, Berkshire
© TATE; NATIONAL TRUST/CHRIS LACEY/HUGH MOTHERSOLE; ESTATE OF STANLEY SPENCER; STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY; ILLUSTRATION: RACHAEL PRESKY

1908-’12
Studied at the Slade School
of Art
1915-18 When Stanley Spencer studied Odney Club
Enlisted in the Royal Army at the Slade School of Art, he In the wall near the entrance to
Medical Corps earnt himself the nickname the Odney Club are two round,
1925 “Cookham”, such was his porthole-like windows that form
Married Hilda Carline adoration of the Berkshire a backdrop to the 1939 work,
1927 village in which he was born Girls Returning from a Bathe.
First solo exhibition at – and spent most of his life.
Fernlea
Goupil Gallery in London The visionary painter set Cookham Church
1932 many of his acclaimed biblical The young Stanley Spencer
Moved back to Cookham scenes among the Cookham was said to be fascinated by
1937 streets and along the banks of the churchyard, and it was
Divorced by Hilda and the Thames, and these spots here that he set one of his key
married Patricia Preece can be visited while on an artworks, The Resurrection,
1940 hour’s walk through the village. Cookham (now on show as part
Commissioned as an of Tate Britain’s “Walk Through
official war artist Ferry Hotel British Art” display).
1945-’59 The riverside lawn of the Ferry A stone angel still in the
Lived at Cliveden, Hotel was the setting for the churchyard appears in 1953’s
Cookham Rise artist’s colourful painting The Angel, while inside the
1959 Dinner on the Hotel Lawn.
Died at Canadian Memorial It forms part of a larger series RIGHT Sir Stanley Spencer, Swan
Hospital, Berkshire which portrays the resurrection Upping at Cookham, 1915-’19,
in the context of a regatta. oil on canvas, 148 x116.2cm

34 Artists & Illustrators

 A R T WA L K S

church is where a 15-year-old 1921, it commemorates Stanley Holy Trinity

Spencer drew the now famous
pen-and-ink drawing, Roy.
The River Thames
Sitting in church one Sunday
morning in July, Spencer could
hear the annual Swan Upping
ceremony taking place outside
on the riverbank. It inspired his
painting Swan Upping at
Cookham (on show as part of
Tate Britain’s Stanley Spencer
display), which he started in
1915 but could not finish until
back from the war in 1919.
(among others) the death of
Spencer’s brother Sydney.
High Street
Halfway up the High Street, a
blue plaque marks Fernlea, the
house where Spencer was born
and lived with his family for
many years. The artist looked
upon the road as the nave of a
church and made it the setting
for many of his paintings, such
as 1920’s Christ Carrying the
Cross and 1933’s Sarah Tubb
and the Heavenly Visitors.
Spencer Gallery Church
Converted from a chapel the
artist attended as a child, the
Stanley Spencer Gallery faces
the Tarry Stone (depicted by
the artist in 1929). Many works
mentioned above are on show
here, making it a brilliant finale
to a walk around the village.
For further details, visit
www.cookham.com and
www.stanleyspencer.org.uk

Cookham Moor Berries Road

This idyllic area is the site of
several of Spencer’s artworks,
including 1936’s Cows at
Cookham and 1937’s Cookham
Moor. In his later years, the
artist painted landscapes here
for commercial necessity.
Cookham War
Memorial
The war memorial is depicted
in 1922’s Unveiling Cookham
War Memorial and 1937’s
A Village in Heaven. Built in
Off the High Street, this road
is where Spencer painted the
view of Cookham in his 1936
artwork Bellrope Meadow and
you can also see the tree that
appears in 1938’s The
Magnolia Tree in the front
Cookham Moor
garden of Westward House.

When I left Slade, and

went back to Cookham,
I entered a kind of
earthly paradise

Artists & Illustrators 35

36 Artists & Illustrators
 IN THE STUDIO

IN THE STUDIO

Hall a
Shafey
2

The winner of the Artists & Illustrators Award

at the Pastel Society’s annual show talks to
REBECCA BRADBURY about prompting a pastel
renaissance from her home studio in Cairo

S
witching careers is never a
decision to be taken lightly,
especially when trading more
than 25 years of experience
as a high-flying professional for the
unpredictable path of an artist. Yet a
mid-life occupation switch was a risk
that Halla Shafey was willing to take.
After a successful career as an
economist, she is now a full-time
artist – and that gamble has paid
dividends. Not only has the Cairo-
based artist won numerous awards
for her wonderfully textured,
multicoloured artworks – including
the Artists & Illustrators Award at
the Pastel Society’s recent annual
exhibition for her painting, A Walk in
the Fields – but she has also been
praised by Egyptian critics for
revolutionising the medium.
breaking in the wider art world but is
rarely seen among the international
pastel community. While most stick
to the medium’s realist roots, Halla
works spontaneously, responding to
observations, emotions and colours.
On top of this, the artist experiments
with non-traditional media. Despite
protestations from pastel purists,
she works over acrylic paints, linocuts
and monoprints creating textures so
lifelike that some of her paintings look
like patchworks of rich fabrics.
Although appearing slightly uneasy
with the notion she’s led a pastel 1 Halla’s
rebellion, Halla is clearly not afraid award-winning
to break the so-called rules – “I am pastel, A Walk
always experimenting with different in the Fields
techniques and trying to push the
boundaries of pastel” – and notes 2 Her studio
how her global success has instigated in Cairo is filled

1 Firstly, Halla’s art is abstract – a a renewed interest among Egyptian with books and
subject that is by no means ground- artists. “Pastel hasn’t been very family photos

Artists & Illustrators 37

IN THE STUDIO

I’m a risk-taker… I want

each painting to be a
completely new experience

popular in Egypt,” she explains.

“There’s definitely been a renaissance
after people have seen my work and
my international exposure.”
Growing up in Egypt, Halla loved
painting and drawing as a child, but
with no art department at the
American University in Cairo, which
she first graduated from in 1987,
becoming an artist was not on her
radar – hence her academic route.
When the artist turned 40, however,
she felt an overwhelming urge to be
creative again, taking lessons in
photography, writing, pottery and, of
course, fine art. It was while attending
the atelier of renowned Egyptian
artist Magd El-Sagini, son of the great
sculptor Gamal El-Sagini, that she
was first introduced to pastel. “I
started really falling in love with it,”
she recalls. “The reason why, I think,
is the immediacy of it. The luminosity
of colour is unparalleled.”
While nature has a huge part to
play as a source of inspiration for
Halla, colour is what she values above
all else. Viewers may unearth legions
of organic-like shapes within her
compositions, but it is the hypnotic
combinations of exquisite hues that
hook you first. “Colour is the most
important thing for me as a person,”
she explains. “For me it’s a language.
I can’t live without colours. I’m drawn
to colours, I express myself in them.”
With no other media quite able to
match pastel’s saturation, it seems 3
obvious this self-declared colourist
would be drawn to the medium. After
those initial workshops, she soon
began immersing herself in all things 3 This work
pastel, working hard to develop her was shown at
own style. In 2012 she was ready to Cairo’s Nile Art
commit to the life of an artist and has Gallery in 2020
been working from her home studio
on the outskirts of Cairo ever since.
“I have bigger rooms I could use,” 4 Halla’s love
she says, “but I don’t like big spaces, of pastels even
I feel lost, so I like to work in a small 4 extends to her
intimate space.” choice of cup!

38 Artists & Illustrators

 IN THE STUDIO

There’s definitely a cosiness to

Halla’s studio, with orange walls
adorned with certificates and awards,
shelves packed with books, and
family photographs dotted about.
Beautiful sunlight floods in through
a huge window and behind her desk
are trays brimming with pastels –
arranged by colour, not by tone.
The French brand La Maison du
Pastel probably has the edge, though
the artist enjoys collecting pigments
from her extensive travels, which
have included attending workshops 5
with the Pastel Society of America
and our own Pastel Society – and she
is now an elected member of both.
A day in the studio begins by
turning off her phone. “I don’t like any
interruptions, especially when I’m
starting to work,” she says. “It needs
clarity of mind and a hell of a lot of
concentration to get the first thing
going. Then it’s easier after that.”
Some of Halla’s paintings begin
by throwing colours onto a support;
others start out with a printed layer,
often linocut or a monoprint. In the
example of A Walk in the Fields,
acrylic marks were added to a linocut
base to create a background of
“beautiful, spontaneous and
haphazard textures” before the
pastel mark making began.
“The painting starts to have an
identity of its own, it starts taking
you on its own path,” she says of this
stage. “Then there’s always a process
of stepping back and analysing it, 6
making sure there’s balance.”
From vein-like constellations of
5 Another ridges to gritty passages of colour painting to be a completely new Over the last decade, she has
pastel from to soft, buttery lines of detail, the experience.” made artists on both sides of the
her Cosmic textures are many and varied. “I don’t like repeating the same Atlantic, as well as back home in
Messages show Are they practiced beforehand colour palette or repeating the same Egypt, reconsider the role of the
or do they come spontaneously? design. I like diversity, so I give myself pastel painter. “Everybody said you’re
“Both,” Halla replies. “We have a chance to make mistakes,” she crazy, you can’t do that,” she says,
6 This untitled to keep ourselves open to happy adds. “Very important to me is actually recalling the time she told her friends
piece is part of surprises when we’re working, and we enjoying the process of discovering she was starting out as an artist,
her Rivers of have to be risk takers. I’m a risk-taker and experimenting.” Settling for the “but I’ve never looked back.”
Paradise series – I have nothing to lose, I want each status quo is not an option for Halla. www.instagram.com/hallashafey

Artists & Illustrators 39

 Expressive
MASTERCL ASS
FIGURES
Royal Institute of Oil Painters member
LUIS MORRIS shows how working
from a sketch and mixing up a range
of colours early can allow a more
creative, painterly finish
40 Artists & Illustrators
I
find drawing a figure from life exciting but Luis's materials
intimidating. One is presented with such a
wealth of visual information – and so little
time in which to gather it. Success
•Paints
Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium
depends upon the ability to decide what is
Red, Alizarin Crimson, French
important, and to leave the rest out. I like
Ultramarine, Viridian and
taking sketches made in life sessions and
Titanium White, all Winsor &
using them as the basis for a painting.
Newton Artists’ Oil Colours
The drawing is my only record of my subject.
•Brushes
With no tempting photo to copy, the studio
Pro Arte Sterling Series 201
painting is free to take on a life of its own.
short flat brush, size 4
As with a lot of my figure studies, I am
•Support
looking to capture something of the essence
Colvin & Co stretched cotton
of the form using a minimum of detail.
canvas, 30x23cm
I do this by shedding bright light on a few
•Low odour thinners
selected areas and allowing the rest to
•Palette knife
be cloaked in shadows. I want my figure
•WypAll Industrial
drawings and paintings to have a certain
Wiping Paper
mystery about them. For all the abstraction
and stylisation, the end result needs to have
a sense of warmth and animation if it is to
be successful.
It is important that the reference sketch
has an essential quality that can be brought
out in the final painting. The challenge then
is to make sure this chosen quality doesn’t
get trampled on during the course of making
the painting. In this case I felt my initial
sketch [pictured left], made in pastels
across a 90-minute session, had an overall
sense of calmness and poise. I was also very
happy with the colour relationships I’d found
in the body and was keen to enrich those
in the painting [pictured right] to create a
more vibrant picture that celebrated the way
natural light bounced off a human body.
MASTERCLASS

2 L et colo ur s v ib rate
From here onwards, all other colours,
shapes and marks must relate to that first
keynote. The next hue added was a pinkish
lilac to represent light reflected from the left

1 Mix o n t h e p alet te
For me, the palette is the oil painting’s driving force. I started by mixing each of my colours
with Titanium White to form bright, saturated tints. I then mixed a black from Ultramarine,
hip and thigh. I chose a tone similar to the
golden brown and felt these two initial
colours vibrated together in a pleasing way.
Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow, which I then mixed with white to give shades of grey. I also used my fingernail to reiterate a line
These greys in turn helped create more subdued versions of the highly saturated colours. for the front central axis of the body, with its
My first mark on the canvas was a patch of warm golden brown. This light vertical swipe gentle backward slope, as well as a vague
was my first guess at where the central axis at the front of the stomach belonged. indication for the back of the ribcage.

Top tip
Try using a piece of blue
WypAll Industrial Wiping
Paper wrapped around
your finger and dipped
in turps or low-odour
thinner to rub out or
adjust the positions of
shapes on the canvas

3 Lo ok f or ex t r em e s
With two mid-tone colours down, it was
important to find extremes. I traced the line
of the left arm using a warm pink and a dull
orange separated by a warmish grey for the
lower bicep. The darkest colour then denoted
where the arm ended and the background
began. I also ran the left thigh to the bottom,
anchoring the figure within the canvas.
4 Pu sh t h e colo ur s
A tutor once described the process of painting as a
search “for where one colour ended and another colour
began”. When one sees a painting as a set of abstract marks
jostling for position on a canvas, one doesn’t get so attached
to an individual mark. This makes it a lot easier to rub them
out and reposition them. Using a piece of blue WypAll paper
dipped in low-odour thinner, I pushed back the line of the
model’s left hip, allowing a new colour to be introduced.

42 Artists & Illustrators

 MASTERCLASS

5 B r o a den t h e sp e c t r um
I continued setting out extremes of colour by adding patches of
fresh, clean hues of widely varying temperatures: a patch of French
Ultramarine mixed with Titanium White to go behind the upper arm,
and a hot pink transitioning into an orange for the model’s right arm.
Against these strong chromatic colours, I added a silvery ochre
mix, made with a pale grey and Cadmium Yellow, to redefine the left
hip bone. I also scraped and drew with my fingernail and the edge of
the brush to find the collarbone and the angle of the right arm.
6 Fin d t h e h e a d
I had really started to find the figure on the canvas and needed
to make a decision about the placement of the head. I drew a light
line that sloped gently from below the ribcage to the collarbone,
in order to continue that central axis up the front of the body.
I drew some of the essential angles of the head and neck using
a combination of warm ochre, hot pink and cooler purple mixes.
I also added more background colours in the bottom corners to
further connect the figure with the edges of the canvas.

7 Take it to t h e top
Using the axis line as a guide, I added
light orange for the right breast and a deeper
salmon pink for her right shoulder. These
shapes were given definition by a patch of
blue similar to the one behind the figure.
Parts of the hair were made as dark as
8 M ake a dju s t m ent s
I realised the shoulders and upper torso were too narrow, so I began repositioning
the basic shapes around the model’s left shoulder and ribcage to make her shoulders
anything else on the painting and then wiped appear thrown back and her upper body more substantial.
off the top edge of the canvas to complete a I used a small tick of dark olive green to define the armpit, the front of the upper arm,
pleasing, symmetrical composition. I also and the shadow on the ribcage. Similarly, I used a vertical line of deep purple to define
drew some simple vertical shapes to hint at the front of her left forearm. A constant process of checking and readjustment is required
background pillars and window elements. so that the drawing and painting happen at the same time.

Artists & Illustrators 43

MASTERCLASS

9 L e ave light an d sp a ce
I wanted to leave a lot of white canvas showing to create the
feeling of daylight flooding through large windows behind the subject,
illuminating the figure in some places and casting shadows in others.
It was important to suggest this while keeping the background
at least as abstract as the figure itself, so that the painting of the
model could stay pleasingly abstract without looking unfinished.
10 D evelop t h e draw in g
I made some basic adjustments to the overall shape of the
figure here. For example, I moved the edge of her right hip slightly to
the right, which helped to accentuate the overall curve of her body.
I also added a little more mass to the lower half of the painting,
meaning that the majority of pure white canvas was now in the
upper half of the picture.

12 Kn ow wh en to s top
Knowing what you wanted to achieve

11 Ke ep it s u g g e s t ive
I made a few refinements, including a little more work on the head. Although it
needed to be convincing, I wanted the head to be painted as simply as possible so as
– the statement you wanted to make or the
feeling you wanted to convey – helps you
to know when to stop painting. In this piece
not to be out of keeping with the rest of the figure. I had wanted to capture the light and space
I hoped that the figure as a whole might convey something of the personality and in the studio, and the calmness and poise of
bearing of the model, without having to make a detailed study of her face. To this end the model. I felt I’d achieved this economically
it helped that the head was, for the most part, silhouetted against the light of the windows. so it was time to put down the brush.

44 Artists & Illustrators

 ov

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An
ARTISTS’
ART FOR ALL AGES VALUE
You don’t have to be Picasso
to become an artist. All you
need is your imagination.
In An Artist’s Tale, British
author and artist Sue Exton
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shares how to get started
creating your own drawings.
In this work, she presents
a collection of a variety of
her drawings from flowers,
to landscape, to abstracts.
Exton discuses the creation of each piece and gives tips, tricks,
advice, and techniques for creating on your own.
An Artist’s Tale includes more than sixty colour pictures
accompanied by short stories, encouraging people of all ages to
pick up a colour pencil and get started scribbling.
This book can be purchased from Amazon for £32.11
plus most other booksellers or direct from lulu.com

Artists & Illustrators 45

 Sketchboo k
IN-DEPTH

STRATEGY
Although you only tend to see finished work,
a sketchbook is often a key part of the process.
We asked seven top artists to open their
books and share their methods

Rose Dufton
ARTIST AND PRINT DESIGNER
“I use my sketchbooks for a few different reasons, and
I have several on the go at once. My favourite would have
to be Moleskine’s watercolour sketchbooks, they come in
varied sizes and are landscape in format. I have also just
bought some Royal Talens’ Art Creation ones, which I am
enjoying working in for a change as they are portrait
format. I mainly use watercolour paints, as well as brush
pens and gouache.
“I sometimes use sketchbooks to make thumbnail
sketches for larger paintings. However, the main use would
be to experiment in. I like to see them as mini journals of
ideas, rather than curated places with pretty pages. Don’t
be scared by a sketchbook. Try not to keep them precious
and perfect as if you do you will never use them. In my
opinion, sketchbooks should be played with and used as
a place to let ideas flow, as that is when the best kind of
accidents happen that can spark incredible ideas.”
www.rosedufton.com

46 Artists & Illustrators

 IN-DEPTH

Jen Russell -Smith

ILLUSTRATOR AND
AUTHOR OF THE JOY OF SKETCH
“How I use my sketchbook varies a lot. I aim to do a quick
sketch – anything I’m thinking about or that has caught
my eye – each morning before I start work, but that often
doesn’t happen. Those daily sketches are always my
favourites, though, because they turn into an illustrated
diary that has captured that moment in time. And because
they’re not themed or planned, I often end up with
something a little different to my usual work. I also use my
sketchbooks to test out colours and techniques that I’m
planning to use on commissioned pieces. I primarily work
in Moleskine or Pink Pig sketchbooks as both have good,
robust watercolour paper options. I use waterproof black
Platinum Carbon ink with watercolours for the most part.
“My book, The Joy of Sketch, has lots of tips for
beginners but my primary tip would be to draw what you
love – don’t force yourself to draw flowers if you find them
boring. Use your sketchbook as a moodboard for noting
decorating ideas, compiling outfits you want to wear,
capturing quick sketches of your children or pets –
whatever you like looking at and are excited by.”
www.jenrussellsmith.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 47

IN-DEPTH

Robin Olsen
ABSTRACT ARTIST
“My sketchbooks are primarily a place for testing and
exploration. I consider them a place to try out ‘what-ifs’.
What if I mix ink and coloured pencil? What if I try stitching
on top of paint? What if I cover most of my collage with
white paint? They are a place where I can play with ideas
and experiment fully.
“As an abstract painter, I refer to my sketchbooks
frequently as a source of ideas to try in paintings. They
often are the impetus I need for a new series. They also
serve as a reference. When I want to make the perfect
shade of pale, ocean blue, I check my colour charts to
see which colours to use. When I make a colour chart,
I often do a small sample painting next to it to see how the
colours relate. It’s a quick reference for future paintings.
“The important thing about sketchbooks is having
everything in one place to refer to easily later, but that
doesn’t mean it has to be created in that place. If you
struggle to experiment freely in your actual sketchbook,
or consider the pages too precious, work on separate
sheets and glue or tape them in afterwards. The important
thing is to record all your ideas, but it doesn’t really matter
how they get there.”
www.robinolsenart.com

48 Artists & Illustrators

 IN-DEPTH

Megha Kapoo r
VICE PRESIDENT OF THE
WATERCOLOR SOCIET Y OF INDIA
“My sketchbook is an important part of my life. Earlier they
were only for practising anatomy, figure drawing and
everyday sketches. But now they have become an integral
part of my life’s journey. They are like a journal of my life.
The moments I come across or everyday experiences.
“I love the Art Creation sketchbooks from Royal Talens.
I bought a few of them from a store in Spain and I loved
them. And now I buy them online through Amazon. I love to
use watercolours and inks. I have a beautiful collection of
nibs that are quick and handy for capturing the moment.
“My tip would be don’t try to make a perfect piece
of artwork in your sketchbook. I think that's the best place
where you can be yourself. Just be free and journal each
moment of your life in them. They will become the
bestest friends.”
www.meghakapoorart.com

Jill Leman
PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL
WATERCOLOUR SOCIET Y, UK
“My sketchbooks are a visual diary – I enjoy drawing.
I use sketchbooks for drawing something I might want
to put in a painting later – this might be flowers, china,
a view through a window or in the garden, or other
bits and pieces.
“I often use sketchbooks that are roughly A4,
spiralbound ones can be useful if you are out and about as
they are lighter. When I am working in them, I tend to use
2B or 4B pencils, pens, coloured pencils or paint –
watercolour usually.
“The one piece of advice I’d give a fellow artist is this:
don’t think your sketchbook has to look perfect!”
Jill's work features in Chelsea Physic Garden, which runs
12-30 August at Bankside Gallery, London. www.jillleman.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 49

IN-DEPTH

Andrea Hentze
ABSTRACT PAINTER
“My sketchbook is my sacred place to explore and let my
art flow freely through me. When I started out, I felt like
there was a friction within me: the longing to create
abstract art and these niggling questions of what it will
be all about. My sketchbook gave me the room to just
explore without constantly wanting to answer this
question. The white page of a sketchbook is less
frightening than a blank canvas. Knowing this creates the
freedom to explore art and listen to my heart’s desires
instead of wanting to figure it all out with my mind.
“The key to find this focus for me is daily practice.
It’s like I write a story in my sketchbook every day. Over
time I can see how themes emerge, created day by day,
but discovered in reflection afterwards. I reflect a lot after
my art sessions: what do I like? What was fun? What
associations come to me? This reflection ties everything
together and over time, you look back and you see themes
arise and threads are weaving together beautifully.
“Limiting the endless possibilities makes it so much
easier to start. You might like to choose a special theme
(such as ‘black and white’) or use new materials.
Nevertheless, stay flexible and change the limitation up
if you feel like it. It’s your sketchbook and you are free to
explore whatever comes to your heart so trust that.”
www.andreahentze.com

50 Artists & Illustrators

Robb ie Wraith
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIET Y
OF PORTRAIT PAINTERS
“My advice is to always have the habit of carrying a
sketchbook, and never be afraid to try a subject, even if
you think it might not work. My sketchbooks have been a
constant companion for more than 50 years, I’ve had one
in my pocket every single day.
“I always draw from life, never photographs – the
essence of drawing, especially in a sketchbook, is your
reaction to the moment. Your state of mind becomes part
of the sketch: the changing light, the unpredictable and
fast-moving subject. My sketchbooks are packed with
these moments, from lunch with Nelson Mandela to
dustbins in Dunstable.
“Every sketch is an experiment: your subject leaves the
restaurant, the light changes, someone yells at you for
staring at them across a crowded pub (that’s happened
more than once...). It might well not work to your
satisfaction, but even so it is an honest drawing.
“I have a huge variety of old sketchbooks, but nowadays
I use a Moleskine book with watercolour paper, usually a
couple of Schneider’s Slider Edge ballpoint pens, a
fountain pen with Noodler’s ink, a tiny watercolour box
(both for watercolour sketches and also more manageable
monochrome washes), and a pencil or two. My jacket
pockets are always loaded and ready.”
www.robbiewraith.com

Artists & Illustrators 51

Paint with Purpose
QUICK TIPS

Newlyn Art School’s popular Defining

Practice course will soon be available online.
Tutor FAYE DOBINSON shares 10 tips to help
you become a more focused artist

1. NOTICE WHAT
YOU NOTICE
Whether you are a painter, a
printmaker or even a sculptor, gently
instigating a regular drawing habit
will feed your practice enormously.
Quick sketches of anything around
you, whether in your home or out in
the environment, will soon show you
what it is that your eye is drawn
towards and where your gaze
naturally falls.

2. GATHER YOUR
INSPIRATIONS
Making time to research artists that
resonate with you is both inspiring
and validating. You can begin to think
of yourself as part of a lineage and
themes that you might not be able
to see clearly in your own work may
emerge in that of the artists to which
you are drawn.
Trust your instincts. Keep a
sketchbook, a folder or a Pinterest
board and collect inspiration from
magazines, books or the internet.

3. CALM YOUR
INNER CRITIC
Our internal critic can run roughshod
over our dreams and our enthusiasm,
leaving us questioning good ideas
when we have them.
LAURA ADAI/UNSPLASH/EMMA GRIFFIN/NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART

Before you dismiss your next idea,

try to give it a form first – be that as
a drawing, a gathering of objects,
or a note in a sketchbook. In doing
so, it is easier to look at the idea
from all angles, so that you can ask
questions of it, and decide whether
you wish to pursue it further.
Dismissing anything in its tender
phase does the creative conversation
a great disservice.

52 Artists & Illustrators

 4. LET THE PROCESS LEAD
I am what I would call a very “process
led” artist. This means that rather
than working towards a specific idea,
I lay out the materials and mediums
that are resonating with me and
then I begin to make, letting those
materials begin their own journey
towards a finished piece.
If you struggle to settle on an idea or
a subject, why not try this approach.
By establishing a fertile space where
inspiration and “happy accidents”
can occur, I end up creating things
that I never could have planned.
5. MAKE WORK
ABOUT WORK
Try viewing a problematic piece that
you are working on as a source for
other artworks. If a painting feels
unresolved or intriguing yet
unsatisfying, try making a drawn
study of it, or a collage based upon it.
Viewing your art through the filter
of a different process pushes you to
respond in a different way and not
just look but really see.
6. REMEMBER
YOU ARE USEFUL
LAURA ADAI/JASON LEUNG/UNSPLASH/NEWLYN SCHOOL OF ART
7. WORK IN SERIES
A wonderful way to take the pressure
off yourself and your current painting
is to work on more than one at once.
Far from diluting the results, it
enables concerns, decisions and
imagery that we might pour into one
piece to be explored in several.
Pieces developed simultaneously
often begin to speak to one another,
gelled together through proximity and
a particular method. You’ll be more
productive too, able to work on one
while another dries.
8. TRY NEW
WAYS OF MAKING
Sometimes we tire of our own artistic
language yet don’t know how else to
express ourselves. A comfort zone
is necessary and even restorative
sometimes, yet a foray into another
way of making can also refresh us yourself and try to see it instead as
and our work. one that needed to come out – one
At Newlyn Art School, we often that cleared the way for the next.
encourage students to use
photography to look at ideas of place 10. FOLLOW ENTHUSIASM
and landscape. This can help them There is an idea that great art only
to notice that their way of seeing the comes from suffering. While that
world is as individual and valid as can be true, it can also come from
everyone else’s. joy, exuberance, tenderness

The arts have had a rough time of and enthusiasm.

late. One thing I’ve taken great heart
from has been the restoring of the
role of art and creativity into the lives
of many through these testing times.
Art is a language and a means of
expression that speaks to people on
emotional and psychological levels;
it can uplift, restore and inspire. We,
as artists, must not forget how useful
we are in reminding people of that.
9. DON’T TRY TO
FINISH EVERYTHING
Think of each piece that you make as
a stepping stone to the next. Holding
this truth allows a little more freedom
within – and a little less pressure
upon – our creative process.
If you get easily disheartened when
a piece has not turned out the way you
had imagined it might, avoid berating
Follow your enthusiasm and
curiosity for they are your wayfinders,
your creative GPS. Think of them as
a huge well of energy that will sustain
you on the (often rocky) road to
making great art.
Faye is a leader on Newlyn Art School’s
year-long Defining Practice course.
An online version will be available from
May 2021. www.newlynartschool.co.uk

Artists & Illustrators 53

 CO LO U R THEO RY
1. COLOUR
LANGUAGE
JAKE SPICER begins a new four-part series on understanding
colour by showing us how the use of more accurate
descriptions can help us better identif y and replicate hues
T
he language we use to describe
colour affects our ability to
represent it accurately. Take
the robin redbreast [above] as an
example. On many Christmas cards,
the demonstrably orange-breasted
bird is depicted with an eponymous
red bib and most children would
reach for a red felt-tip if they came
across one in a colouring book.
PRE-16TH-CENTURY COLOUR CATEGORIES
Yellow Red
Colour categorisation has improved over the years and that changes how artists imagine and represent those colours.
54 Artists & Illustrators
This imaginative distortion of the
robin’s colouring no doubt happened
because the nickname “redbreast”
was given to the bird prior to the
word “orange” even entering the
English language.
The word “orange” initially appeared
in reference to the fruit, only later
being used to describe a discreet hue
from the 16th century onwards.
MODERN COLOUR CATEGORIES
Yellow
Lacking the linguistic category of
orange, our predecessors were forced
to use either red or yellow instead.
In fact, when Geoffrey Chaucer tried
to write about a fox in The Nun’s
Priest’s Tale two centuries prior to
that, he had to call it simply a colour
“betwixe yelow and reed” [sic]. Such
descriptions echo through our visual
culture and lead to the miscolouring
of small birds on seasonal greeting
cards in the 21st century.
I give this example to show how we
are prone to misrepresenting colours
if we do not have the adequate
vocabulary to describe them. It is only
by first broadening and clarifying our
written and spoken language that we
can learn to visually represent the full
spectrum more accurately. In this new
four-part series, I’ll be looking at how
we can use an understanding of the
fundamental properties of colour to
look at the world around us and
create more compelling artwork.
Orange Red

Fundamental colours LOOKING AT COLOUR
To describe colour, and ultimately
to represent it accurately, we must
learn to look at colours specifically.
In day-to-day life we use colour
language to refer to the local colour
of a subject, its fundamental colour.
We say, “I will wear red socks
today” or “pass me my blue coat”.
However, if the sun is going down,
shining a golden light upon one half of
that coat and casting the other half in
shadow, we don’t then say “pass me
my yellow and grey coat”, despite the
shift in our visual experience.
Don’t just focus on the local, fundamental colours of the subject [top left];
try instead to distinguish between discreet areas of different hues [below].
Observed colours
C O L O U R T H E O RY
The skill of extrapolating
fundamental colour from a perception
altered by changing light and shadow
patterns is a complex one that we
have developed unconsciously, but
it is also one that we as artists must
reverse in order to better represent
the colours of the world in our
paintings, drawings and prints.
The first step towards a better
perception of colour is to be specific
– you must learn to see each jigsaw
puzzle piece of your subject in
isolation, described and depicted
as its own unique colour.
Artists & Illustrators 55
C O L O U R T H E O RY

DESCRIBING VARIETY
Once you have isolated an area of
colour in your subject, try to describe
the colour that you see. Finding the
right words to describe what you see
will help you to mix the right paint or
pick the best pencil with which to
represent it.
While colour theorists like Albert
Munsell attempted to codify colours
with numerical values, I find it better
to combine both the objective
qualities of a colour – the hue,
saturation and tonal value – with the
subjective colour language that we
are often most familiar with. After all,
the ability to perceive colour varies
from person to person and our Describing the differences between similar
application of it in art is poetic, so colours using a mixture of objective and
a malleable language reflects our subjective language will help you practice
experience of colour better than your colour distinction.
a completely objective system.
While we are all familiar with the
language of hues (red, green, blue,
and so on) people often confuse tone
(how light or dark a colour is) with its Mid-tone, dull
saturation (how bright or dull it is). yellow-green
Also note that the common categories (olive-like)
of “pink” and “brown” – prevalent in
our skin tones and therefore our
imaginations – are not hues but
rather catch-all terms for pale reds/
magentas/purples and desaturated
reds/oranges/yellows respectively.

HUE
Hue describes the position of a colour along the spectrum
of visible light. We often describe a colour in relation to
the neighbouring hue – contrasting a red-orange to a
yellow-orange, for example.

TONE
The tone of a colour can range from light to dark – all colours
have a value of tone that can be ascertained intuitively,
or by turning an image black and white.

Mid-tone,
desaturated
red-orange (like
terracotta)

SATURATION
The saturation of a colour describes its intensity, ranging Mid-tone
from bright (saturated) to dull (de-saturated). blue-grey

Dark,
desaturated
red-brown

56 Artists & Illustrators

 C O L O U R T H E O RY

Mid-tone,
saturated green
Exercise 1 Winsor Yellow Light, saturated yellow
Name game
(grass-like)
We’ll delve more deeply into colour
mixing over the next few issues but Yellow Ochre Mid-tone, dull yellow
the first step towards better colour
Dark, saturated mixing is to understand the properties
blue-green of the media you are working with Burnt Sienna Dull red-orange
(like ivy) by applying the same principles of
perception and description that you
applied to the subject itself. Winsor Red Saturated red
Paints are often named for the
pigments from which they derive
(Titanium White, for example) or else Alizarin Crimson Dark, saturated purple-red
they have more poetic descriptions,
such as French Ultramarine, which
refers to French chemists’ lab-made Winsor Violet Dark, saturated purple
replacement for the expensive lapis
lazuli pigment that was mined in
Afghanistan beyond the sea – French Ultramarine Mid-tone, saturated blue
or ultra marinus.
While these subjective paint and
pencil names might create helpful Winsor Blue Dark, dull blue, tending to green
associations, they are not universal.
It is important to be able to simply
see the colour in isolation and make Winsor Green-Blue Saturated blue-green
a judgement about how well it will
match. To help with this, take all of
your colours and make swatches of Sap Green Dull yellow-green
them in a sketchbook, noting both
their tube or pencil names and the
colour properties that you perceive
in them, as I have done on the right.
Light, saturated
yellow (like an
unripe lemon)

Saturated yellow flowers Buds of pale,

desaturated
Pale, less- magenta

Exercise saturated
yellow petals
Colour notes Dark,
All learning should beg dull-green
and the best way to de leaves
appreciation of colour i
to notice it around you.
collection of visual note
the colours in objects,
and artworks in your sk
using whatever coloure
have to hand – paint, in
pencil – alongside writt

Next
Draw from life when
avoid the colour distort
camera’s settings and
do not have time to ma Month:
start to give names to Understand hues
see, describing them to with a neat new
you go about your day. exercise
www.jakespicerart.co.uk
Painting
PROCESS
from
memory
After a year in lockdown, our visual memories
are more important than ever. ROB DUDLEY
shares a method that will help you utilise
them to create more artistic paintings
S
ome landscape painters
work on location, others
from references back in the
studio. I have done both over
the years. Working en plein air in oils
or watercolour, I would essentially
paint or draw what was in front of me.
I would then take these notes and
sketches back to the studio and
develop them into more “finished”
pieces. For many years this has been
my process when painting the
landscape and I’ve had very little
reason for it to change as it had
served me well.
Recently, I learnt of an artist
who had a very different approach
to landscape painting. He began
much as I did: working on location,
sketchbook and camera in hand,
before returning to the studio armed
with numerous photos and sketches.
The difference being that he would
then put these reference materials
away in a drawer and proceed to
make a painting without looking at
them. The studio painting process
would rely instead on his memory
and experience of the location.
The reasoning behind this approach
was that his memory would, to a large
58 Artists & Illustrators
part, inform what the painting would
be about. It acted like a filter, sifting
out all unnecessary elements and
leaving only the strongest as a basis
Final painting
for the painting. This approach was
very different to my own but one that
lockdown gave me the perfect
opportunity to try.
I was less stringent though.
I decided to work from my memory
of the location for as long as I could,
at least until the plan for the painting
was almost complete. Only then
would I refer back to sketches – and
only if I deemed it essential to the
painting’s progression. Otherwise,
I was more than happy to paint
without them.
If you look at the following case
studies and compare my final
“memory” paintings with the photos
of the actual locations, you’ll see they
Location sketch
are similar yet lacking topographical
accuracy. However, as artist friends
have suggested, the paintings seem artists, regardless of experience.
to be more concerned with the spirit It can sharpen the visual memory
of the location and I find that to be and also help you filter out unwanted
most encouraging. or unnecessary elements of a
While painting from memory might composition in the process, allowing
seem tricky, I would suggest that it is you to produce more artistic results.
beneficial on a number of levels to all www.moortoseaarts.co.uk
 PROCESS

Original scene

Case study 1
The Stour near Dedham ,
oil on board, 30x18cm
Memory sketch
The Stour near Dedham was inspired by an afternoon
at Flatford Mill in Suffolk. I took a few photos and made
some drawings of the river and fields. I also made sure
I committed to memory many of the things that I had
noticed while out walking that afternoon.
Back home in Devon, I set about planning a painting.
I produced a number of small drawings, focusing on my
memories of that afternoon and trying to distil the essence
of a summer walk by a rather beautiful river. I found it to
be quite freeing to draw without the sketches or photos
in front of me. The lack of reference allowed me to
concentrate on what the scene was about; how I felt
towards it became as important as how it looked.
It was only with planning underway that I began to refer
back to my sketches and notes. Notice how the location
drawing and final painting are similar in some respects
– and quite different in others. For instance, I failed to
include the fence and the cattle turned out to be geese!
However, the painting more closely resembled the mood
Memory sketch
I wanted to convey, so I was satisfied with the outcome.

Artists & Illustrators 59

PROCESS

Case study 2
Mist on the Marsh ,
oil on board, 30x20cm

This very simple oil study was the result of a visit to a

rather misty bird reserve in south Devon. An atmospheric
scene such as this is almost perfectly suited to this
process of painting from memory, particularly as the light
was changing so quickly. After a few hurried sketches and
photos, I retreated to the studio to make a painting.
When comparing the location work to the finished
memory painting, notice how I simplified the complex tree
shapes in the distance and the grasses in the fore- and
mid-grounds, concentrating much more on their overall
shape rather than fussing over the detail. I also clearly
remembered the near pool to be much wider than it was,
which helped to lead the eye into the painting, particularly
without the fence acting as a barrier.
If you tend to slavishly copy a subject, this method of
memory painting can help you get away from that. Even a
good memory is selective and so the process forces you
into making artistic decisions that will in time improve your
practice – and your paintings.

Original scene

Location sketch

Final painting

Memory sketch

60 Artists & Illustrators

 PROCESS

Original scene Location sketch

Memory sketch

Case study 3
Moorland Stream , Harford,
watercolour on paper, 22x29cm

I recently spent the best part of a spring morning walking

across the southern parts of Dartmoor. Although I know
the area well, I still discover new things. On this occasion
a stream that was normally a trickle was more like a small
river after heavy rain. I took photos and made sketches,
Final painting
noting the sparkles on the water and the turquoise colours
of the granite boulder.
Back in the studio, I drew several small thumbnails to the studio painting was finished. I realised I had
test my composition ideas before making a painting, all completely overlooked the fallen tree in the stream. It was
from memory. The stream, the boulder and the small tree in my location drawing, but my memory had filtered it out
became the focus of the painting, while the colours were of the finished watercolour. Perhaps it was for the best
those that I associated most closely with my experience as including it would have taken something away from
of Dartmoor on a clean and crisp spring morning. the stream and the bright spring sunlight falling upon it,
This time, I didn’t look at the reference material until making this a very different painting.

Artists & Illustrators 61

H OW I D R AW

62 Artists & Illustrators


Curtis
Holder
The winner of last year’s Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of
the Year shares his techniques, his honest approach to
portraiture, and his shameless art shop confessions
C
urtis Holder was born
in Leicester in 1968.
He completed a
foundation year, prior to his BA
in graphic design from Kingston
University. A postgraduate
diploma in character animation
from Central Saint Martins
followed in 2005.
While working as a primary
school teacher, Curtis entered
and won last year’s seventh
series of Sky Arts’ Portrait
Artist of the Year. His winning
commission, a portrait of
dancer Carlos Acosta, is now
part of Birmingham Museum
and Art Gallery’s collection.
www.curtisholder.co.uk
Art as therapy
Self-portraits are strange things.
I’ve had to get into using photography,
which is better for me because I have
to really think about what it is that
I want to draw. Drawing an individual
is about a conversation, it’s a two-way
thing. With a self-portrait, it’s hideous.
It’s like going to see a therapist.
Why put yourself through that?
That’s one of the questions I’ve been
LEFT Family, asking myself. I think to be a good
coloured pencil on artist and have a good life, you need
paper, 120x120cm to keep asking yourself questions
H OW I D R AW
about who you are, what you are, and
where you want to go. Before entering
the Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year,
I was a primary school teacher. I got
to a stage where I thought, ok, either
I’m going to be a headmaster or I’m
going to be selfish and embrace that
part of myself that I’ve ignored. I said,
right, I’m going to stop teaching and
I’m going to give this a go. It was time
to flex a muscle I thought was there,
but I wasn’t sure. What the show has
done has fast forwarded my practice.
I did have a stint as an illustrator,
but I didn’t put myself out there and
say this is what I do, take it or leave it.
I would be asked to emulate other
people’s styles and that made me
embittered. I had to stop before I
confused that anger with a lack of love
for the craft and all things creative.
For me, drawing has been my
oldest companion. It speaks to me
in a way that nothing else does and
it reveals to me more about what is
going on inside my brain than I could
Family is one of the most difficult
drawings I’ve ever done... I had to
trick myself to make that piece
do sitting with a therapist. At times
I find it difficult to articulate what I’m
feeling through words, so I feel that my
language is best expressed through
the marks that I make. There’s a direct
line from your eye to your brain to your
arm and out through the pencil. There’s
an immediacy and a comfort to that.
An honest approach
I’m in a same-sex relationship, and
being black and male in a primary
school is an unfamiliar situation for
a lot of people anyway, so you have
to have discussions at home that
someone who wasn’t all of those
things would probably take for
granted. Most teachers, especially
primary school ones, will bring their
home life and private life into their
teaching without a second thought.
I had to think, right, what kind of
teacher did I want to be? I didn’t want
to be someone who holds things back
because, for one, children can sniff
that out in a second. I decided
Artists & Illustrators 63
H OW I D R AW
I had to be very transparent about
everything. At first it was very scary,
but in the end very freeing. I think that
openness spilled out into my art.
A portrait usually starts with a
conversation – it’s about making a
connection. And then turning those
Drawing reveals to me
more about what is going
on inside my brain than I
could with a therapist
64 Artists & Illustrators
conversations into portraits starts by
sitting and unpicking how I’m feeling.
I then make marks in a sketchbook
that interpret that feeling, just basic
marks, scribbles. Over several small
drawings, that grows into something
more substantial and slowly it will
transform into a composition.
Family was probably one of the
most difficult drawings I’ve ever done.
I basically had to trick myself to make
that piece. I’ve been with Steve for 18
years and I’ve only drawn him once.
I find it really difficult drawing someone
who is really familiar, because your
brain messes you up and makes you
draw those things you think you see.
I had to understand what I wanted to
say with it. I had conversations with
myself about what it meant to be
confined with this person that you’re
in love with and you’ve been with for
a long time, and it made me question
what was “family” – what was my
“family” – and what that meant to me,
and how was I going to show people
who looked at this piece.
When I’m doing a larger piece,
I tend to work with Derwent Lightfast
coloured pencils. I use different ones
for different circumstances. I don’t
tend to vary the pressure of the

ABOVE Caron in marks; I use similar strokes to build
Sunshine, coloured up the tone instead.
pencil and acrylic I don’t like to be precious when
gouache on paper, I’m working. Buying a single sheet
120x115cm of paper constrains me so I like the
convenience of paper on the roll.
I can draw as big as I want and then
if I need to trim it down, I trim it down.
I use a 200gsm roll of Fabriano paper
– it’s substantial and it has just
enough bite to the surface.
I will begin with a very rough
under-drawing, usually in a shade of
red because I draw a lot of people
LEFT Friday, and it feels quite fleshy. It’s also
coloured pencil on something that I can work on top of.
paper, 85x105cm I like to leave all the lines there,
because I like to show people the
start, the middle and the ending.
Shameless experiments
The yellow wash in Caron in Sunshine
came about through trial and error.
I knew exactly what I wanted in my
head. I wanted flat colour, but I
needed to draw on top of it and also
see the drawing underneath it.
I experimented a lot with different
types of paint and application.
I love talking to staff in art shops,
especially Cass Art, because they’re
all artists. I have very little shame, so
I will go in there and say: I don’t know
anything, this is what I want, how can
I do it? I eventually arrived at acrylic
gouache. I then started experimenting
with an airbrush too – I watered down
the acrylic gouache and it dried to a
matt finish. I’m also experimenting
with liquid graphite and liquid
charcoal. I love the quality of those
mediums. I don’t want to move away
from drawing: I want them to enhance
the marks I’ve made, not take over.
One piece that I fought with a lot
was Friday. It was about three months
from start to finish. In my initial sitting
with Martin, we had a conversation
about many things: connections, love,
the past… He was going to visit a new
partner overseas and they didn’t
know each other very well.
After the sitting, he got the all-clear
to go out there and he’s fallen in love.
I thought, this picture is not finished,
this doesn’t have the complete
feeling. At one point, I thought I would
have to discard the drawing, but I felt
I needed to get the rest of this story
first and see how it feels, see if we
can work that into this piece.
I don’t know whether “complete” is
ever a word I would use with a piece.
But my mantra from start to finish
is: what is the feeling I want from
the piece? I will keep going if I can
make that feeling more pronounced.
Once I’ve got it, I will stop.
Artists & Illustrators 65
 P ai n t
DEMO

LIKE RAVILIOUS
Eric Ravilious’ intricately cross-hatched watercolours recall his training
as a wood engraver. In this exercise, DAVID CHANDLER employs his
method to explore contour and texture
66 Artists & Illustrators

David's materials
•Watercolours
Payne’s Grey, Phthalo Blue,
Forest Green, Yellow Ochre,
Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow,
Vermilion and Chinese White
•Brushes
Round brushes, sizes 2,
4, 8 and 12; short flat
brush, 3/4”
•Paper
Cold-pressed 300gsm
watercolour paper
•3H pencil
•Mixing palette
•Water pot
•Scalpel
1 2
3 4
1 E xamine the s ource
From the rural idylls of
his early years to his wartime
airplanes and battleships,
Eric Ravilious’ intricately cross-
hatched watercolours recall his
training as a wood engraver.
By the time of 1940's Submarines
in Dry Dock, it was still the “dot
and speck and dash and dab”
(as his biographer, James Russell,
called it) of the wood engraving
that informed his work.
2 D r aw lightl y
Rounded, mechanical forms
like Ravilious’ submarines were
on my mind for this painting and
the beached fishing boats at
Smeaton’s Pier in St Ives seemed
ideal. Like Submarines..., I have
attempted to channel the viewer’s
gaze between the beached fishing
boats and towards the brickwork
of the pier. Start by drawing your
design lightly onto the paper with
a 3H pencil. If your boats have
registration codes, mask these
with masking fluid.
3 B lo ck in grey s
With the size 8 round brush,
paint dilute Payne’s Grey on any
surfaces that will be dark or in
shadow – in my example, this was
the pier, the coastline, the boats
and the shadow under the boat
on the right. On the cabin of the
DEMO
boat on the left, I scrubbed the
Payne’s Grey on using a dry size
4 round brush. With the same
brush, I drew parallel lines across
the sea (top right corner) and
radiating lines over the sand in
the foreground.
4 Intro duce detail
With a dry size 4 round brush
and a scrubbing, dotting stroke,
darken shadows where necessary
on the boats and on the pier.
I’ve also added fine detail on the
distant coastline using the size 2
round brush. Then, once the
Payne’s Grey is dry, paint the sky
with dilute Phthalo Blue using the
size 4 round brush.
Artists & Illustrators 67
DEMO

5 6

T t
7 8

o p ip
5 7
important to D e ep en s hadow s Cro s s contour s
S h a p e wa s y My lifebuoy is pale Vermilion
o a carefull
Ravilious, s Adjust the values where With the size 2 round brush, and the fishing floats are pale
rawing
executed d necessary. I added more Payne’s crosshatch the hull by placing Vermilion and Lemon Yellow. The
is key here Grey to the boat on the left, more more strokes of Forest Green at seaweed-covered rope is Forest
Phthalo Blue to the sky, and a mix 90 degrees to the previous ones. Green. Take care not to make
of the two to the boat on the right. With the same brush, paint the your colours too bright. Darken
boat on the right with thin strokes the hulls, if necessary, and peel

6 Add new colour s

With a round size 12 brush
dipped in dilute Yellow Ochre,
paint the sand in the foreground.
Allow the colour to fade as you
move towards the sea. When this
is dry, darken the foreground by
scrubbing and dabbing on more of
the same colour with a dry size 4
brush. Paint the hull of one of the
boats with thin strokes of the size
2 round brush in Forest Green.
of Phthalo Blue, following the
contours of the hull. Add ripples
of Burnt Sienna and Phthalo Blue
where the water turns transparent
on the shore. Use the No.4 round
brush to darken the shadows
under the boats with dilute Burnt
Sienna, then dry the brush and
scrub more onto the foreground.
8 T id y up detail s
Now add finishing touches.
off the masking fluid. Tidy up any
uneven letters or numbers with a
scalpel blade and Chinese White.
Use the size 2 round brush to
paint brickwork and shadows
with Payne’s Grey. I added
radiating lines on the sand in
pale Burnt Sienna.
This is an edited extract from
David’s new book, Tate: Master
Watercolour, published by Ilex
Press. www.octopusbooks.co.uk

68 Artists & Illustrators

 PROJECT

Painting
FROM
PHOTOS
Former BP Travel Award winner
EDWARD SUTCLIFFE shares his simple
seven-step plan for making striking realist
paintings from your source pictures

RIGHT Nora,
oil on canvas,
170x110cm

W
hether you are a
beginner or have been
interested in art for
a period of time,
below are seven principles, skills
and philosophies that, if followed,
will make you a more accomplished
realist painter.
I guess there’s only one caveat
here: that the responsibility for
putting these principles into practice
is down to you. There is no “silver
bullet” when it comes to painting;
it will make demands of you and you
will find it difficult. However, if you
enjoy the act and if you put in the
hours over a period of time, then
there is nothing stopping you creating
wonderful art. While this piece has
been written from the perspective of
painting from photographs, many of
the principles can be equally applied
to working directly from life.
1. STATE YOUR INTENT
At the beginning of each painting,
write down a very short statement of
intent: one or two sentences about
what you want your artwork to say
and do. This will give you clarity
and help you to avoid the creative
cul-de-sacs that many painters
find themselves drawn down.
Think about how you want to work.
Most paintings, regardless of their
originality, are in some way attached
to a genre or style. Do you want to
be a photorealist? An impressionist?
An expressionist or work in a
traditional academic style?
It’s also worth thinking hard about
how your painting will be interesting
and engaging to other people when
they see it. Good art is packed with
emotion; it tells honest stories from
the artist’s own experience. People
will want to see your story, your
observations and your experiences
interpreted in paint, so write them
down first to give you a focal point
when creating.
2. LEARN HOW TO LOOK
Your eyes are your biggest asset
when painting. Just as a chef must
cultivate an ability to taste and a
musician to listen, a painter must
learn how to look. Start with some
exercises. The next time you are out
in your garden or go for a walk, take
a close look at the trees. Notice the
textures and subtle greens that
exist within the bark and think for
a moment about how this would
translate to paint.
The act of looking is in many ways
the most crucial aspect of any realist
painting. Before you even get to
looking at the photo, your subject
matter should be burned on the back
of your retina! The more you have
looked at your chosen subject, the
easier it will be for you to translate
it into paint. If you make a habit of
looking in this way, the effort will
be repaid. And if you are always on
the lookout for interesting things in
everyday life, you will often find the
inspiration for your next painting
hiding in plain sight too.
Creating paintings from photos can
make the practice of looking easier.
Colours and tones are locked into the
image; they will always be consistent
and won’t change. This makes the job
of finding them and mixing them
precisely on your palette an
achievable skill.
PROJECT
3. USE GOOD TONES
Painting from photographs requires
a good source image. Try to take or
choose a photo that has a clearly
defined tonal structure – in other
words, one made up of distinct areas
of light, mid- and dark tones.
Using a photo of a well-lit subject
with a clear tonal structure does a lot
of the work for you and actually makes
it easier to translate the subject into
paint. You are also able to edit the
image by adjusting the contrast,
exposure, saturation and so on.
If you are working from a photo, or
even from life, and you are struggling
to see the full tonal structure, get
yourself a sheet of green or red
acetate and hold it in front of your
source. Blocking out the full spectrum
will help reveal the range of tones.
4. MAP OUT SHAPES
Before starting a painting, you are
usually confronted by a white canvas
or sheet of paper. However, white isn’t
always the ideal surface to work on
because it is too bright. If not dealt
with properly, it can make the colours
and tones of the resulting painting
lack richness and depth.
It’s always best to “kill” a white
surface with a thin wash of neutral
paint (either acrylic or oil, though the
former dries quicker). This needn’t
be too dark or thickly applied, just
enough to ensure you are not painting
on brilliant white. Then it’s time to
start drawing.
The choice of drawing tool isn’t
a concern – it’s what you draw, not
what you draw with that’s important.
Any realistic painting is made up of
a patchwork pattern of colours and
Artists & Illustrators 71
PROJECT

RIGHT Gridding up your drawing should aim to delineate

your reference the edges or contours of this
photo and canvas patchwork. Forget details for now and
can help you see try to construct a map that you will
things accurately later fill with colour. Remember to look
hard and search for those shapes.
Sometimes a grid can help with
accuracy. Draw a simple grid on
your photo and do the same on your
canvas or paper, varying it according
to scale. The shapes and contours of
a subject are easier to see accurately
with grid lines to judge against.

5. COLOUR A PATCHWORK
Now you need to fill your patchwork
pattern with paint and for me this is
where the fun starts. Locate a colour
from your source, mix that colour in
paint, and put it down on your canvas
in the correct place. I say “put down”
because it’s best to avoid any mixing
or blending of paint on the canvas; if
you do this, your painting can become
a muddy mess and will lack definition.
Mix colours on your palette instead.
Having the ability to mix any colour
you see is simple, but it will take time
to master. Avoid having too many
pigments on your palette. I’ll usually
have Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow,
Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Alizarin
Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber,
French Ultramarine and Ivory Black.
Mixing colours can be a challenge,
which is why working from photos can
simplify matters. Having the image
and the painting next to each other
and within your field of vision will
enable you to get a quick measure
on the accuracy of your colours. 6. GLAZE FOR DETAIL It takes time to master but persevere
Try this approach out. Locate a Try to get as good and as convincing – glazing gives paintings a rich lustre.
specific colour in your photo and a likeness as you can with your initial
make a rough mix of it. Now look hard painting. However, it is possible to 7. ENJOY THE PROCESS
at it and ask yourself questions. Is it create more detail and richer colours I love working from photos as I never
too light? Add yellow or white. Is it too through a technique known as glazing really have to worry about light
dark? Adjust with blue, black or earth [see Issue 429]. conditions or models not turning up.
colours, perhaps. Now stop again and If, like me, you’re using oil paint, That in turn allows me to lose myself
look at what you have made. Should it the glazing stage is when you should in the act of painting. It’s important to
be more yellow, red or blue? Add the start adding linseed oil to the mix. stress that you must find a process
required paint. This makes the paint more translucent that you enjoy. This enjoyment will act
Now loop around and repeat the and gives it a rich gloss. (If you’re as a fuel to power you to improvement.
whole process again, first changing using acrylic paint, add acrylic medium Find a way of working that you enjoy
the tone (the relative lightness or and water instead of linseed oil.) and keep going. Feel free to take out
darkness) and then changing the Before beginning to glaze, allow and add things to the methods that I
hue. Keep looking and continue with your painting to fully dry. Look hard at have written about. It’s important that
this looping process until you have your photo then turn to your painting. you make paintings that give you a
OPPOSITE PAGE a colour match. If you repeat and Search for the details and nuances in sense of excitement and anticipation.
On Assi Ghat, practice this loop of assessments the photo that you can’t see in your That will breed confidence and help
oil on canvas, and adjustments, you’ll eventually be painting. Once found, start adding your work engross other people too.
55x40cm able to mix and put down any colour. them into your painting as thin glazes. www.edwardsutcliffeart.com

72 Artists & Illustrators

Artists & Illustrators 73
 . Super
FACE S
Impasto
Our former Artists of the Year winner
Norman Long continues his look at how
to create interesting surface textures with
a guide to a thicker form of impasto painting
O
ne of the biggest
obstacles to creating
a great surface is a
reluctance to use
generous amounts of paint.
This month’s challenge should shock
you out of any restricting habits.
I am suggesting that you use
frightening amounts of paint, more
than you have ever used before.
I often ask my students to test
the limits of their taste in painting.
How much strong colour before your
stomach turns? Can you make some
RIGHT Arjun, oil on really ugly brushstrokes and leave
canvas, 51x51cm them in? That push to excess extends
74 Artists & Illustrators
to paint quantity. What may look
like frightening mounds of paint to
you or I would be mere stains to
someone like George Rowlett, the
Scottish impasto artist.
There are certain obstacles to this
approach, not least of which is the
cost of oil paint. If you get hooked on
this technique, I suggest searching
online for the best price on large
tubes of inexpensive paint, such as
those from Winsor & Newton’s Winton
range. Oil painters have also devised
ingenious ways of saving paint from
one session to the next, the rationale
being that if you never waste any
 PA I N T S U R FAC E S

paint, you can paint like a millionaire.

It’s not just clean piles of paint that
are worth preserving. At the end of
a session, I scrape my “palette mud”
into distinct piles of neutral colours
for use in the next painting. When I
find myself overrun with saved paint,
those muddy colours are ideal for
making textured surfaces on which
to paint. Creating these grounds of
various colours and textures without
concern for subject matter is
tremendous fun. Once dry, you simply
have to wait for the perfect marriage
of surface and subject.
An interesting ground can save
a lot of work. I find that some subjects
can be teased out of a canvas
covered in random smears of leftover
paint, while Arjun was painted on
a mottled surface that I had applied
with a palette knife. I was able to drag
paint across the surface to produce
some lively textural effects in places,
while also leaving large areas
untouched. If you really want to
pile on the paint, a heavily textured
surface also provides good “tooth”
onto which the subsequent layers
of paint can attach.
This “super impasto” is a truly
liberating technique of working with
large quantities of paint. Armed with
a heavily loaded brush or knife,
we are forced to interpret the subject
in terms of simple shapes, letting
the paint itself fall into the most
surprisingly delicious accidents.
How far you take things is up to
you. I developed my landscape in the
demo over the page to a certain level
of realism, but equally I could have
left it at an earlier stage for a more
expressionistic feel.

Artists & Illustrators 75

PA I N T S U R FAC E S

HOW TO MAKE…
A TEXTURED GROUND

1. To create a thick, textured base

layer, I spread leftover oil paint
over a gesso-primed board using
a palette knife.
2. I could have stopped there,
but I decided to add further
texture by lightly dragging a
soft brush through the paint.
3. I added a stippled effect in
places by “tonking” – lightly
applying paper to the wet paint
and lifting it off.

DEMO
Loading up the surface

Autumn by the Ribble was painted

en plein air, using a brown oil ground
[see above] which I had prepared
a few weeks before. When painting
outdoors, I like to bring boards of
different shapes, colours and textures
and select the most suitable for the
subject. My clear, horizontal palette
was laid out with colours around the
edges, including multiple piles of
primaries and white (1). This allowed
for strong, clean colour mixes at the
outset, which naturally muddied
themselves as the painting
progressed. Piles of “palette mud”
saved from previous sessions were 2
placed inside the pure colours.
On the left are reddish neutrals
moving down to bluish neutrals. The trick to good thick impasto
On the right, warm to cool neutrals, painting is to load the canvas with
with a few greens at the bottom. as much paint as possible, as soon
as possible – think of it as “paint first,
draw later”. I took the time to make
a rapid thumbnail sketch in my
sketchbook first, then placed just a
few lines on the canvas to indicate
the major divisions before mixing
large batches of colour with a palette
knife. Mixing with a knife is slower
than a brush, but it is easier to
generate larger quantities. Avoid
mixing pigment on your palette too
thoroughly, however, if you want to
leave some interesting streaks in
the paint application.
After about 40 minutes of piling on
paint with a palette knife and large
1 3 brushes (2), it was time to slow down
and assess what was needed. Canvas

76 Artists & Illustrators

 PA I N T S U R FAC E S

and palette were both covered in

thick paint, so carrying on at this
pace would lead to mud. I cleaned
the palette instead and refreshed it
with piles of clean colour, which also
provided a useful break from looking
at the painting. When I was done
cleaning, I turned the painting upside
down, stood well back and assessed
the progress in a pocket mirror.
What struck me was that the
surface was uniformly thick and rough
(3). As I continued to work on the
shapes and colours of the painting,
I also wanted to consider the balance
of textures. Using a knife to flatten
the impasto in recessive areas of the
subject helped to reinforce the sense
of depth and also created variety (4).
Paint application can occasionally
be made to mimic the texture of the
subject itself. The sky and water were
relatively smooth, the foreground
grasses were thick and jagged, while
the finest branches were suggested 4
with a scratchy brush (5).

5
PA I N T S U R FAC E S
Next
month: any primed support (though
try to avoid extremely dark
Bring abandoned
paintings to life mixtures). Enjoy experimenting
by reworking the with the application, using
surface knives, brushes and paper
to achieve your own distinctive
textures. The palette knife is also
useful for flattening areas that
become too pronounced. Try
preparing a few supports in one go
and let them dry for at least three
weeks before you paint over them.
Before painting on your dried oil
ground, rub the edge of a palette
knife or a sheet of sandpaper over
the surface to remove any loose
ridges of paint. If the texture is too
smooth, use rough sandpaper to
create some “tooth”. If the surface
is too rough in an area of your
painting that you want to be more
delicate (such as a face), you can
also sand it smooth. Remember you
will be painting over dried oil paint,
so if you need to dilute the
subsequent layers, use a medium
including oil not just solvent.

EXERCISE
When you finally start painting
Process from your subject, challenge yourself
Recycling your paint This exercise begins at the end of to load the canvas with prodigious
your previous painting session. Get in amounts of paint in the first hour.
Aim the habit of saving leftover paint by That way, no matter what the
This month’s exercise gives you three placing it on a piece of glass inside a outcome, you will guarantee a
ways to beef up the surface of your tin and storing it in the freezer. If the rich and sensual surface.
oil paintings. freezer’s full, make cling film parcels Norman’s book, Oils: Techniques and
that can be easily cut open instead. Tutorials for the Complete Beginner,
Materials That leftover oil paint can then be is published by GMC Publications.
• A selection of affordable oil used to create a coloured ground on www.normanlongartist.com
or acrylic paints
• A selection of paint brushes
and palette knives
• A hard-wearing support (try a
wood panel or flexible linen canvas)
• Cling film
• Sandpaper (optional)

Subject
Choose a subject you can both paint
from life and also have a strong
ABOVE Loading emotional connection towards –
the canvas with these elements will encourage you
paint early on to be more expressive with the paint.
can guarantee a
rich and sensual What you will learn
surface Have you ever finished a painting,
only to be disappointed by the
RIGHT Oil paint meanness of the surface?
preserved in This exercise will show you simple
cling film parcels ways to save wastage, which will free
can be re-used you up to be more generous with your
as a ground application later.

78 Artists & Illustrators

 THE CLASSIFIED DIRECTORY

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Unit 12 Minerva Works
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Artists & Illustrators 81
 My advice is don’t be too
self-conscious… Just draw
for the love of drawing

When I was five, I entered a drawing competition.

I drew a picture of children dancing around a maypole
and I remember the day the headteacher came into
class to tell me I’d won. It was a formative moment.

I also loved reading anything by Richard Scarry. His

illustrations were packed with detail. I could pore over
them for hours and spot something different every time.

During my art A level, I became obsessed with

Stanley Spencer. The skin tones in his figurative works
were revelatory to me. He used greens and blues that

Rob
really made me look beyond the surface level of colour.
MEET THE ARTIST
After my degree I worked as a junior designer at Just
Seventeen magazine. The job was super glamorous,
we went on photoshoots with the Spice Girls.

I had an epiphany while looking through an Oliver

Jeffers book. I thought maybe I could create a picture
book too, so I wrote a story and got an agent straight

BIDDULPH
away. It took me another four years to get published.

A lot of my inspiration comes from my own children.

The children’s book illustrator famed for his
world record-breaking online draw-alongs.
Interview: REBECCA BRADBURY
One of my books is about a boy who has an imaginary
friend called Kevin. His name and the way he looked all
came from my daughter – he was her imaginary friend.
Writing doesn’t come so easily to me. I write in rhyme
and I’m very pernickety about it. Drawing comes much
more naturally. I can draw away happily listening to
music but when I’m writing I have to be alone in silence.

#DrawWithRob began just before the first lockdown.

I thought if I filmed my draw-alongs and stuck one up
online a few times a week, I could provide respite for
parents. Monday I recorded my first video, Tuesday I
put it online, and Wednesday I was on BBC Breakfast.

Last May, I broke the world record for the largest

online art class. I needed 16,000 households to break
the record and in the end I had about 46,000.

I’m a big fan of Kuretake brush pens. I use them for

all my #DrawWithRob illustrations. I absolutely love the
different textures you can create by pressing harder.

People think there is a right or wrong answer when it

comes to drawing – but there isn’t. My advice is don’t
be too self-conscious, just draw for the love of drawing.
Rob’s latest book, Draw with Rob: Build a Story, is
published by Harper Collins. www.robbiddulph.com

82 Artists & Illustrators

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