Innehållsförteckning för Issue 8 Volume 3 från Artists Back to Basics

“The landscape is such a dynamic and changing thing; with colour and intensity … and it is interesting to watch animal life adapting to its rhythms.” Some might say that John Murray’s current home at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales makes a dramatic contrast to his Melbourne birthplace – but it doubtless feeds his passion for the Outback landscape. John has a Diploma of Art, and he has always nurtured the same artistic interests. “My full-time career started 25 years ago in Lightning Ridge,” he reveals. “My enduring passion is for painting and working with paint … I love the stuff!” As a professional artist, John has used oils, pastels, crayon and charcoal; but he prefers and consistently works with acrylics. “I love the landscape and the animals that…

MATERIALS MATERIALS • Stretched primed canvas, 600 x 900 mm.• Black and white gesso.• Flat and round soft Taklon brushes of varying sizes.• Fine rigger brush.• Palette knife.• Coloured pastel pencils.• Genesis Heat Set Oils: Cobalt Blue; Ultramarine Blue; Burnt Umber; Burnt Sienna; Black; Titanium White; Yellow Ochre; Alizarin Crimson; Indigo; Genesis Yellow.• Genesis Thinning Medium and Genesis Glazing Medium.• Paper towels.• Heat gun.• Glass palette. Step 1 The first thing I do when confronted with a white canvas is give it several coats of coloured gesso. In this case, because I had already determined the mood and setting, I decided to merge a black gesso at the top into a white gesso towards the bottom of the canvas. Using coloured pastel pencils, I drew in the subject and placements…

Being able to sketch a perfect circle freehand is not so much a good trick as an essential element of freehand drawing. You will rarely find a perfect circle in any representational composition you may be drawing, but you must be able to draw them freehand lightly and confidently in all sizes and both directions (clockwise and anti-clockwise), both off the shoulder (sketching) and off the wrist (drawing). It is a skill essential to being able to lay out your drawings in the initial stages. Perfect circles are the foundation and starting point to understanding, recognizing and drawing all the curves, spirals, tangents and all the subtle variations thereof in every composition you will ever draw. There’s no such thing as “too much practise” with these fundamental skills and every…

MATERIALS • Artists’ canvas.• Artists’ acrylic paints.• Chalk.• Selected brushes.• Turps-based varnish. “It is an interesting example of the power of Nature overtaking man’s futile attempts to conquer the land.” STEP ONE I have drawn in my initial lines and composition with chalk. This can be easily reworked or removed with a cloth, leaving no pencil lines or commitment. Next, I establish my light source by blocking in the poles and shadows with paint. In this case, the light shines from right to left. STEP TWO Even though I am going to have a white surface of the salt lake in the finished picture; in trying to establish the feel of the hot earth under the salt pan, I have applied washes of earthy tones as my underpainting. STEP THREE…

For any artist working in any visual medium the ability to sketch and draw completely freehand would have to be the most important foundational skill to have bar none. It matters not whether your work leans toward representational or abstract art, consciously practising and developing your hand skills, drawing techniques, and proportional judgement would have to be by far the most effective way of vastly improving your arts practice across the board. Although I have worked in a lot of different mediums over the years, 2B graphite for me has always had a magical potential that personally I doubt I will ever find the end of. It’s a perfect medium for both raw beginners and master artists, a true level playing field. My frenetic journeying with this one grade of…

When Ludij came to Australia with her family at the age of six, she first landed at Derby in Western Australia – a far cry from the city life of Amsterdam. Finally disembarking from the ship at Fremantle, the family flew to Cairns via Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. On the flight from Brisbane to Cairns, the plane stopped frequently at towns all the way up the coast. Ludij recalls that the further north they went, the smaller the airports became. The big advantage for Ludij in using Genesis Heat Set Oils was that she began to experience new freedom in her studio. Initially painting in oils, Ludij Peden’s subject matter evolved from the rivers, creeks, canefields, mountains and coastline of tropical North Queensland to stockmen, water buffalo and escarpments…

I grew up in Sydney. After leaving school, I won a scholarship and spent three years full-time at the National Art School. Leaving there, I went out into the world to earn a living. In the early 1950s you could count the number of artists actually earning a living from painting on your fingers. Even such masters as Eliot Gruner had worked in a Sydney department store. Others were teaching, which I was disinclined to do; or else they were involved in commercial art. I travelled, and worked on a Moree sheep station as a jackeroo. I loved the life. Riding, mustering and droving, and all that went with a country existence. However, if you were not likely to become a land owner (which I was not), there was little…

The most asked question of artists by the inexperienced painters is how do you get that colour? When I had my first interest in painting I asked an artist what colours should I use. I was advised to keep my palette simple, just one blue and red and one yellow, these colours are the primary colours, and the basis for all colour combinations, even black can be achieved by mixing the three primary colours. Even 50 or 60 years past it was a practice of artist and other users of paint (sign writers etc) to mix their own colours with the use of dry pigments and various liquid bases. Today all manufactures of artist paints have an extensive range of colours available, however if the beginning artist was to purchase…

For the purpose of this article, I am featuring shells in watercolour and taking you through the necessary steps to create a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface. This information is also transferrable to other mediums or subjects. The light source will indicate shadows and highlights, tone, the reflected light edge, texture, solidity, surface contours, form and perspective. If right-handed, position yourself so the light comes from the left-hand side, so you are not working in your own shadow. The subject should be on your right-hand side so you are not looking into the light when viewing it. All your art materials should be on the right so you are not working across your painting and are less likely to drop paint on your work. If left-handed this is reversed.…

SKETCH AND WRITE NOTEBOOKS FROM JASART Jasart has released an exciting new range of Sketch and Write Notebooks. The series is attractively packaged and very affordable – the perfect companion for students needing convenient notebooks. They’re great for jotting down notes on the run; or for sketching and drawing applications. The unique lined and blank page configuration of the notebooks provides the flexible option of taking down notes on lined pages and freestyle use of the blank pages to suit anyone’s needs in the home, in the classroom, or out in the field. Jasart Sketch and Write Notebooks feature stylish fine grain covers, expandable inner pockets, elasticised closures and handy ribbon bookmarks. Each notebook has 160 pages of 110gsm acid-free paper. Winsor & Newton Visual Diaries are also essential tools…