Australian How To Paint magazine chooses a topic or style of art each issue and gives you a comprehensive guide for you to develop your skills. Over the series we will cover all major painting technques plus popular paint ideas.
The last time we featured ‘Birds’ as our theme was in Issue 5. We have covered many topics since that issue and we thought it was time to take another look at the wonderfuldemonstrations by artists who love to draw and paint birds. We chat with seven talented artists in this issue of Australian How to Paint and have amassed eight demonstrations of birds using different techniques, skills and tips to make your art more pleasurable. We would love to see your creations so please send us an email or letter with photos of your work. Please send them to Woodlands Publishing, PO Box 8035 Glenmore Park NSW 2745 or simon@wpco.com.au . If there is a particular topic or area of art you would like us to cover please send…
The chatter of eastern Rosellas permeates the solitude of an artist’s studio through an open window on a sunny July day. They’ve settled in the winter seed grass outside – left long on purpose to attract many parrots to the garden. King parrots, grass parrots and James Hough’s favourite – the eastern Rosella. Known locally by his moniker Jim, silently he stops work, reaches for his SLR camera – ever present by his side – and begins to photograph. It’s the beginning of yet another wildlife original masterpiece – an acrylic on clayboard. After the Rosellas move on James puts down the SLR and goes back to his easel to paint. His studio is surrounded by photographs he uses to get exact details of his subjects correct. As James develops…
MATERIALS • Acrylic paint on stretched 300gm Waterford water colour paper • Pencil F for preliminary sketch • Acrylic Paints: Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Titanium White, Pthalo Green, Permanent Sap Green, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Black Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre • Brushes: I used Pro Arte Acrylic series 202 round sizes 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 • I use an ARTtec Disposable palette and a small round palette with 10 wells STEP ONE Carefully draw outline shapes of each duck. Add in areas of reflection and water movements. The ducks were feeding at the time I saw them, so I added several lines in line with their bodies, but left area in front of the ducks. STEP TWO Carefully build the body shape and colour of the…
I began my journey to painting in 1987 at a Council of Adult Education watercolour course. At that stage I had no idea what I wanted to paint, but felt that being able to create a painting would be a great creative outlet. I had this misguided idea that watercolour would be easy. Wrong! While on the course, I also learnt about gouache, or opaque watercolour, as opposed to transparent watercolour. That was a medium that I had never heard of. I tried various subjects, mainly landscapes, but eventually settled on wildlife, as I have always loved birds and animals and felt I could be more passionate about these subjects. Wildlife presented a problem in that you have to seek it out. Unlike a landscape, which sits and waits for…
Before any painting is commenced, a number of decisions have to be made. The first for me is the subject. I have thousands of photographs of wildlife (mostly but not exclusively birds) and a decision needs to be made on what species of animal, insect, or bird will be the subject of my new painting. The second decision will be the support base that I use for the painting. For the purpose of this demonstration I will be using the Fabriano 600gm hot press paper. The thickness of the paper relieves me of the necessity of stretching the paper, which is something that always seems to cause me difficulty. Further decisions need to be made on how closely I’ll follow the photograph, the lighting direction and the size of the…
Coming from a family of artists, as a kid I wanted to be anything but an artist. Even driving an ice cream van had its rewards, I thought, compared to slogging away at a painting. While having this pessimistic perception of painting I drew and painted almost on a daily basis, so naturally this is the direction I took as an adult. Who said we had a free will? My earliest oil painting attempts were done using my father’s house paints. I realised after a protracted struggle that these were best left for their intended purpose and managed to procure my first set of proper artists’ oils. From then on, things rolled along, and after attending art classes, winning prizes occasionally and selling quite well, I felt sufficiently rewarded to…
