Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i The Artist

The Women in Art Fair returns to the Mall Galleries this year providing a prominent platform for women artists, gallerists and curators during London's annual arts week, Frieze. From an open call, the WIAF received over 2,000 submissions, responding either to the theme of ‘Tme for Unity’ or reflecting on the creative process: the challenges and setbacks experienced during the journey to produce a final work of art. Works from around 100 artists will be displayed in the galleries, with a programme of talks running alongside the exhibition, which runs from October 9 to 12. Find out more at mallgalleries.org.uk…

Andrew Barrowman was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and studied technical illustration at Leamington Spa, and wildlife illustration at Carmarthen College of Art. He worked in an advertising studio for several years before embarking on a career in illustration and then fine art. Andrew's work is accepted regularly by the Federation of British Artists for exhibitions at the Mall Galleries. He was elected a full member of the Pastel Society in June 2023 and an associate member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in May 2023. Andrew's work is represented by galleries in Cornwall, Devon, the Cotswolds, Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire. During 2020 and 2021 Andrew painted the view from his studio window over 120 times, recording the changing landscape over this period. The resulting studies were made into his first published…

Light plays a huge part in painting as it provides the artist with values, tones and contrast, which are all important elements when considering a design. I have often noted how mundane scenes on dull days turn into vibrant and dynamic designs on sunny days, full of value contrasts, exciting shadow shapes and angles. In fact, shadows can make or break a painting, and it can be great fun creating an artwork from a scene comprising of very little content other than a couple of features that cast dynamic shadow patterns into the picture space. Light cannot be ignored when selecting compositions and it is one of the primary sources of my inspiration because of the value contrasts that can be found between sunlit areas and cast shadows. When I…

Boats offer the painter an enormous choice of subject matter, from small fishing boats, and pleasure craft, through to larger shipping including naval vessels. But before drawing or painting any boat, large or small, it is helpful to have a basic understanding regarding their construction, shape and purpose. This knowledge will enable you to decide not only what can be simplified, or left out, but more importantly, what needs to be included. The sole aim when painting boats should be to capture the essence and character of the craft. Be careful not to over simplify the drawing. Although a basic boat shape can be captured by developing a simple ‘S’ shape, this advice is only really useful for absolute beginners as it often results in formulaic, ‘stock’ boats rarely resembling…

Thumbnails and sketches – it could be a line from My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music, but really, they are certainly some of my favourite things when it comes to painting. There are times when it really helps to do thumbnail sketches first; it's like a trial run with no pressure at all to get things right. What it does do, is clear the mind of peripheral things. It can also reveal what you don't want it to look like! The important thing is to do it quickly – in a minute or two. The whole quickness thing disallows any attention to detail, because a thumbnail is about composition only. It enables you to do several versions of them without too much of a time issue. There is…

Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look at the National Gallery, London until October 27, brings together two paintings by Hockney – one of his mother and father, and the other depicting his friend, the curator Henry Geldzahler – displaying them alongside the painting that ties them together: The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca. The exhibition invites you to take a longer look at these works and to understand the importance that Piero's work has had on the artist over many years. Related events to accompany the exhibition include a Talk and Draw online session on Friday September 27, 4 to 5pm, which invites you to make your own work based on Piero's The Baptism of Christ following a brief talk by lecturer…

Common Ground at the RWS Gallery in Whitcombe Street, London, features the work of four members of the Royal Watercolour Society – Caroline McAdam Clark, Frances Hatch, Robin Richmond and Linda Saul. Each of the artists employs a variety of media to respond to experiences in nature and the surfaces they work on. Caroline McAdam Clark, whose work is reproduced, right, writes: ‘The world about me frames and informs my visual language. From landscape to the magical patterns of indigenous art. Then in the quiet of my studio, I seek to create something new from my swag bag of stimuli, themes and ideas. To this end I use whatever medium or material suits my purpose.’ Common Ground can be seen at the RWS Gallery, Whitcombe Street, London from October 10…

The Royal Watercolour Society was founded in 1804 to be a place where artists working in water-based materials could show their work. The Royal Academy treated watercolour as a lesser medium; Reynolds's Discourses, written as a kind of manifesto of the institution, reflect the 18th-century enthusiasm for classification, ordering and hierarchies, and watercolour, the medium that anyone might take up, provided they had paper and colours and the leisure to pursue it, rather suffered. However, there were queues around the block to be the first to buy work at the Watercolour Society exhibitions; I suspect because the paintings were cheaper, and this phenomenon continues to this day, at least in my studio; my watercolours are definitely cheaper than my oil paintings. Strange, because in contemporary times, the fashion is to…

The idea of having a focal point in a painting is centuries old, but it also follows the biological principles of human vision. The fovea, at the eye's centre, captures the most detail, while everything in the periphery becomes blurrier and simpler. Furthermore, a focal point clarifies the visual story of the painting and its main idea. For a focal point to be a true focal point, it should stand out from the rest of the painting in either value contrast, colour intensity, colour hue, amount of detail, sharpness of edges, salience of the subject (such as a human figure), or a combination of these. By intensifying a selection of these elements of our painting in the focal area, we can choose how much attention we draw to it. Similarly,…

The first thing we think of with the arrival of autumn is the changing of colours from green to dazzling shades of gold, red, and yellow. But it can also herald the first mists rising in the valleys and settling on the surface of rivers as the sun sits lower in the sky and peeps through the haze. We may also think of autumnal winds creating a blizzard of leaves as they whistle through a wood ripping them from the trees. As autumn marks the ending summer, it can be thought of as a melancholy season. Whichever way you view it, it's a season that is unquestionably short, and a few days of strong winds and heavy rain can put an end to any romantic thoughts of crunching through piles…

For many years I rose early to walk my dog in the fields around my village which lies on the very south-western tip of the Cotswolds. Bounded by deep valleys on three sides it is often surrounded by morning mists that are generated in the coolness of the deep valley floors filled with vegetation and babbling brooks. I am drawn to the subject of repeated ridgeways disappearing into the blue distance and so they are the main focus of my painting. They contrast beautifully with the sharp, spiky shapes of winter trees in front and poking through. In this demonstration, wreaths of mist glide between the viewer and the valley sides, dissolving boundaries and making fields and trees disappear. To capture this effect I will show you how careful use…

PRACTICAL OILS I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the setup for my still-life paintings: designing the composition, sourcing the objects, and controlling the lighting. Rushing the setup means handicapping yourself before you even begin. For this piece, I wanted to create an autumnal still life and challenge myself with the different textures and patterns of a variety of pumpkins. I intentionally chose a very plain wooden bowl to avoid competing with the intricate skins of the various gourds. After the setup, I photographed the still life and converted the image to monochrome to assess how the values balanced across the composition. If it doesn't work in black and white, it definitely won't work in colour! The placement of the pumpkins was far from random and was a…