Innehållsförteckning för June 2023 från Artists & Illustrators

…of Artists & Illustrators, we strive to give you as much variety as possible. And this month is no exception, whether it’s the stimulating practical content you’re after or the motivating inspirational interviews and features with professional artists. Take this month’s cover star and How I Paint It interviewee, Yelena Lamm. An artist since childhood, she didn’t find her true creative calling until she started painting friends’ pets in lockdown – and the results are magical. The Big Interview artist is inspired by the Golden Age of Hollywood films – and stages each painting with real-life models and props before committing paint to paper. If you’re looking to brush up your art skills, we’ve also got a handful of user-friendly step-by-step guides to help you on your way. Terence Clarke…

Panart’s complete range of artist brushes is defined by its excellent paint pick up, hold and release capacity. Each brush tuft has high-quality filament/hair and delivers remarkable shape retention and spring-back action. There’s a brush that is a perfect fit for every artist; from every skill level and style. After rigorous research and development, and manufactured in a controlled environment using state of the art equipment, each brush is handcrafted and put through stringent quality checks to ensure compliance with exacting international standards. The result? Painting brushes that will be your companion for a lifetime. panartglobal.com…

London Art Week (LAW) will run from 30 June 2023 and continue to coincide with the classic summer sales at the leading auction houses. LAW participants will show special exhibitions and highlights in galleries across central London, with the majority in Mayfair, St James’s and at Cromwell Place in South Kensington. This year, LAW is able to offer an extensive programme of exhibitions and events in galleries and museums as well as detailed representation of participants on the website, which also hosts talks and in-depth articles. 30 June to 7 July 2023. londonartweek.co.uk…

Becoming a full-time artist has not been easy and it took me a long time before I started showcasing my work. In 2017, I experienced a period of depression which changed a lot of things, eventually leading to me posting my paintings on social media. I gained a substantial following once I started sharing my art which led to various proposals and exhibitions. Soon, sales – both online and offline – began to accelerate. My love for painting began when I was a child. I studied violin and during my breaks, I would make my way to the children’s art school to look at the paintings. These were wonderful moments, those paintings inspired me a lot. I love music because my parents are musicians, but the visual arts have helped…

LIKE MANY ARTISTS, Will Rochfort’s childhood was spent drawing, copying Disney characters from the TV, building models out of cardboard or making stop-motion animations with plasticine. For some reason, he was also always drawn to the bright lights and colours of American pop culture. It wasn’t his upbringing that influenced this: whilst his family always encouraged his creative output, he grew up in a small town called Lymington on the south coast of England, a long way from the Golden Age of Hollywood that fills his work. He suspects it came from the films he grew up watching and cites Indiana Jones, The Goonies, Superman and Jaws as particularly memorable. He describes his style of painting as somewhere between realism and impressionism. Someone once described it as ‘posed reality,’ which…

GLAZING METHODS ARE OFTEN SHROUDED in myth and mystery because most artists think of them as very complex and made of many layers. The reality is that most glazing procedures are surprisingly simple. The magic comes in what the artist does with them. This portrait demonstration is based upon one of the most simple and direct glazing methods. Late 16th-century painters such as El Greco are the role models for the approach in this demonstration. Among other elements of his aesthetic approach, El Greco creates a mostly Alla Prima, boldly painted, true grisaille underpainting in black and white on brown or grey ground. Many artists interchange the term grisaille with a painting in grey scale. In this case, a true grisaille is meant to be the underpainting for the glazing…

THIS PAINTING REALLY HAPPENED because I wanted to try a slightly different composition. I wanted a central motif to dominate the structure and lead the eye through into the landscape and the distance. Seascapes present particular problems and opportunities. It’s difficult to find just the right view when presented with so much space. The simplicity of the shoreline and sea beyond, need to drive the feeling of space in the painting. The opportunity to use lots of Ultramarine and grasp the special light of the coast is always a challenge I look forward to. This composition was from my trip to the Cote D’Azure near Esterel. I did a series of small studies and drawings to capture the strong linear structure of the trees and generate the idea of the…

AL GURY Al is a painter in oils and a writer. Along with being a specialist in master painting techniques, and a professor of painting and drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the USA, he focuses on colour and its poetry and rhythm in his paintings of landscapes, figures and still lifes. ELAINE LISLE Elaine is a Philadelphia-based artist. She is an en plein air painter who travels widely and has led workshops in Italy and France. Hallmarks of her work include urbanscapes and reflections with vibrant colour and contrast. Her richly painted oils are owned by collectors around the globe. LYDIA CECIL Lydia’s representational work uses life studies as she moves between London and Malta. She delves into the character of a portrait sitter and…

23 APRIL The Gallery wants you to create a 2D artwork for outdoor presentation for the theme ‘No But Where Are You Really From?’ 10 artists will win £2,000 each and it’s free to enter. thegallery.org.uk 28 APRIL Landscape Artist of the Year offers artists the chance to win a £10,000 commission for a major British institution. Free to enter. For UK residents only. skyartsartistoftheyear.tv 30 APRIL Submit your works for the Future Generation Art Prize. Up to $200,000 to be won. UK and International artists aged between 18-35 can enter. futuregenerationartprize.org 1 MAY Enter your artwork for the Margate Art Prize on the theme ‘Hell or High Water’ and you could win £2,000. Free to enter. Submissions to: ramsayandwilliams@gmail.com…

1 Trust yourself and believe in what you do. Don’t shy away from sharing your work wherever possible, so that people know about you and have the chance to buy your art 2 Don’t be scared of criticism because it’s impossible to be loved by everyone. Concentrate on the positive and try not to compare yourself with other artists because every artist has their own style 3 Never give up. Sometimes it needs a little time before people know you and your art…

“There are so many stories and each story is a discovery, you just try to connect the dots…” Morad Montazami is talking about the rich and complex history of the Casablanca Art School – a seat of learning but also a place of revolution and rule-breaking that ultimately became synonymous with an entire cultural movement. It is also the subject of a new exhibition Montazami co-curated at Tate St Ives in Cornwall. The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde 1962-1987 is the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the school and has been a long time in the planning; research has taken place piecemeal over the last 10 years. Works by more than 20 artists, most of which are vivid, avant-garde paintings teeming with colour and…

THE RECENT EXHIBITION of Cézanne in London pushed organic subject matters to the forefront of my mind again. For centuries, the genre of still life painting was considered a bit bland, an uninspiring second to the titan that was figurative art in the Western tradition. Cézanne proved many preconceptions wrong, as he dazzled the world with his apples. Still life painting is anything but boring and ordinary organic forms have huge scope to inspire. They also necessitate a timeline in which to paint them. By limiting my painting to one session, both my subject matter and painting stay fresh and spontaneous. The temptation of overthinking is removed, and every aspect can be manipulated while all the paint is wet. Shelf life can be a great marker of time, so grapes…

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney explores the devotion to four-legged friends across the centuries. Through carefully selected paintings, sculptures, drawings, works of art and even taxidermy, this exhibition highlights the unique bond between humans and their canine companions. Bringing more than 59 works of art to Hertford House, Portraits of Dogs presents a broad range of portraiture showing dogs in all their different shapes and sizes. On until 15 October 2023 at The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN. wallacecollection.org…

IN HER OWN VOICE: THE ART OF LUCY KEMP-WELCH Until 1 October 2023 Join Russell-Cotes for this exhibition celebrating the life and works of esteemed British equestrian artist Lucy Kemp-Welch. In Her Own Voice is the first major exhibition of her work in over 20 years. It is a display which gives power to the painted visual language and spirit of Lucy Kemp-Welch through a major retrospective of her works. As an expert horsewoman, Kemp-Welch held an innate understanding and love for equine subjects. Born in Bournemouth, Kemp-Welch was greatly inspired by the Dorset Coastline and the New Forest. From the late 1890s to the mid-1920s, she was one of the country’s best-known female artists, working in the tradition of British Impressionism. She’s best known for her illustrations of Anna…

MAGGIE SINER BELIEVES that the most important part of painting is dedication, consistency and sensitivity; skills she learned from her parents who were both chemists. Her earliest creative work was making jewellery “out of random bits” in her father’s workshop. “At a young age, I happened to be very good at drawing likenesses and was regularly praised for it by family and teachers, which gave me even more positive reasons for doing it. I was a quiet child and preferred being an observer. This quality developed observational skills and visual sensitivity, which led to drawing and painting,” she says. Her subjects then, were her classmates, characters from her favourite novels as well as “complex scenes from adolescent life.” She went on to study painting at Boston University School of Fine…

THE PROFESSIONAL CAREER of the most influential artist of the 20th century spanned nearly 80 years. He was 91 when he died and had continued working until a short time before he died. His mother said that Picasso could draw before he could speak, which could account somewhat for his prolific output. One of his last self-portraits, The Young Painter created on 14 April 1972 – Picasso dated all his works – is part of a special exhibition Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light! at the Musée national Picasso-Paris. It is curated by the British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, to mark the 50th anniversary and Picasso’s enduring legacy. The diversity of Picasso’s art springs from his early days growing up in Malaga, and La Coruña where, while…

DRAWING is fundamental to my work. I’ve always done it and instinctively look for lines and shapes which interest me the most. I use pastels because they link drawing with colour. Pastels are handheld and make immediate marks which are both fresh and vibrant. The marks are easy to erase and reinstate whilst colours can be layered and nuanced. Best of all, not too many are required, and for this project, I used some darks, mid-tones and lights. I enjoy painting intriguing still life arrangements and quite complex interiors, which have always fascinated me. My kitchen is pretty ordinary, but the windowsill divide always has seasonal flowers and an ever-changing display of pots, plants and jugs whilst the outlook beyond faces southwest and is very light. Regular cupboards contrast with…

MESSAGE OF THE MONTH Vita Zilinskiene I am a multidisciplinary artist and a student from Lithuania, based in Southampton. Artists & Illustrators has been very educational and informative, and I find it quite stimulating when I need to seek inspiration. For me, one of the most inspiring stories was one I read in the November issue; about the huge legacy of Lithuanian artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. He is such an influential figure in Lithuanian culture, not only as a painter but also a composer, writer and poet. He is a pioneer of abstract art in Europe and it was astounding to read his story and see his art in the magazine. Martin Kaprunski I love the way this magazine gives artists a platform to, not just show their art, but…

Light Blue Pond is my most-loved painting from my Kois series. I recently moved to New York, which was a big step for me, and this was the first piece I made in my new studio in the city. I drew sketches for days to create its composition, until I got it right. The lotus flower is my favourite part of this painting; it’s something which doesn’t appear in many of the other pieces from this series. I wanted to evoke a sense of delicacy in the pond with this added accent as well as the contrasting blue in the background against the orange in the fish. Even though conflicting ideas can be difficult to achieve, I was hoping to accomplish a balanced feeling of movement integrated with calm. I…