Innehållsförteckning för Issue 56 från Australian How To Paint

MATERIALS 45cm x 45cm stretched canvas on frame Watercolour pencils for sketching, and the following Atelier and Matisse acrylic paints: Titanium White, Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Cobalt Blue, Yellow Oxide, Payne’s Gray, Alizarin Crimson. A variety of brushes are used, depending on the texture required: soft nylon, bristle, flat, round and rigger. “El cheapo” palette Small trigger-spray water bottle Clear, pressure pack spray varnish to seal and protect the finished painting. A colleague who was familiar with my work, and had seen one of my earlier paintings of “Holly”, a mutual friend’s pet Miniature Schnauzer, asked if I would paint a portrait of her son’s pet cat “Pilot”, which she would like to present as a gift. Normally I like to visit and “meet” the prospective…

Bregje (Becky) Breedveld was born at Leiden in The Netherlands. These days she is a police officer in Donnybrook, Western Australia. She was a police officer in Holland for eight years. After reading about the international recruitment drive of the Western Australia Police, she applied successfully and moved to this country. She has been here since November 2006. As an artist, Becky is self taught. “I am learning by trying different techniques and I feel that with every painting I have done, I have learned something new,” she explains. “I love doing animals. It is a challenge to try and let the character show.” “As a young girl, I was always drawing horses,” she continues. “I moved to painting birds when I was a teenager, using watercolour paints. I stopped…

MATERIALS Half sheet of white Colourfix paper taped to a backing board A workable matt spray fixative and SpectraFix spray for final fixing Art Spectrum and Rembrandt soft pastels: Pale blue, dark brown, mid-brown, mid-pink, light yellow, light grey, orange, white, burnt sienna, reddish brown Faber-Castell hard pastels: mid-grey, dark grey, light warm grey, lavender, mid-brown Faber-Castell pastel pencils: Very dark blue No. 157, black, white, dark yellow, mid-green, dark brown, light grey, mid-grey Conte pastel pencil: Pale blue No.56 Conte Pastel Pencil No.56 No 2 chisel blender No 2 pointed blender Putty rubber Wet cloth or wet ones STEP ONE Firstly I applied a very pale blue soft pastel (gently rubbed in with my finger) to the background immediately around the birds and the very small foliage. This allows…

MATERIALS Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils: In an A3 size drawing I'll need about 6-7 Black (199) & 1 White (101) Smooth Archers Watercolour paper or Smooth White Museum grade mount board you get from the framers Bond or tracing paper 2B pencil Pencil sharpener Electric eraser (optional) I had just got off the phone from talking to Artist’s Palette (when they called and asked me to submit an insight and demo), the screaming, jumping up and down, the phone calls to tell friends and family and posts on social media has stopped… I’m now left with the not so easy task of explaining how exactly I go about doing one of my drawings… So in this day and age of new technology I decided to follow the masses of trying to…

Another rainy day, another chance to stay indoors and draw and paint! Any excuse would do for an 8-year-old whose only desire was to be “an artist when I grow up”! Well almost 48 years later I still have the same passion to paint and draw as I believe I was born with! My father was a house painter and good at sketching and colour mixing. I accredit him with my colour mixing ability. I became very excited every time he was going into the shed to mix paint. He had a container filled with bottles of stainers (concentrated colour) and time after time I watched as he painstakingly mixed and matched colours, adding a little bit of blue here and a tiny speck of red there. He could match a…

Nola Clark has a few early school day recollections which include ‘being the smallest girl in school’. She also has a fond memory of regularly topping the class for drawing and sketching. As a child she can’t remember having many toys, but vividly recalls having plenty of kids’ paints, coloured pencils and loads of paper and Spirax sketchbooks. Nola’s early forays into art clearly laid the foundation for a successful and fulfilling art career … even if it did take another thirty years to crystallise her interest into a serious and pleasurable pastime. Marriage, motherhood and mortgages were her prime concerns until the late seventies when husband Alan began rummaging through old boxes and drawers and located many examples of Nola’s drawing activities from her school days. Alan was astonished…

MATERIALS Canvas: 10 x 12 inches. HB pencil. AS No.1 Medium. Mineral turpentine. Background colours: Titanium White, Manganese Blue Hue. Coat colours: Ivory Black, Payne’s Grey, Titanium White, Tasman Blue, Pilbara Red. Eyes colours: Payne’s Grey, Vandyke Brown, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Venetian Red, Jaune Brilliant. Nose colours: Ivory Black, Payne’s Grey, Titanium White, Tasman Blue. Tongue colours: Titanium White, Pilbara Red, Payne’s Grey. Brushes: Taklon Short Shader 5/8; Taklon Angular Shader 3/16; Mop 9mm; Taklon Angular Shader 1/8; Taklon Mini Liner 18/0. STEP ONE Here, I used a photograph of my Border Col ie (Amber) as a reference. With the pencil, I sketched the outlines and basic features on the canvas. If the sketch is good, the rest of the painting is so much easier to do. STEP TWO…

Nancy was born in Northern Luzon, Philippines in 1956, moving to Boat Harbour on the north west coast of Tasmania in 1984. Together with husband Mike, she relocated to the east coast fishing village of Bicheno in 1987, where their son Oren was born. With Mike busy establishing a marine charter operation based from Coles Bay, Nancy felt the need to express her creative urges by putting brush to paper as it were. At age 43, quite out of the blue she announced to her family over dinner one night, “I’m going to be an artist and paint flowers!” Unperturbed by early attempts to portray her subject of choice, Nancy joined a local art group “The Haphazards” at Swansea, where she enjoyed not only the artistic company and source of…

I was born in Brisbane and have spent a large part of my life here. The sub-tropical climate makes it easy to be outside, consequently I constantly have my camera at the ready. I have travelled extensively throughout our wonderful country from the outback to the coast, and have acquired a deep respect for our native flora and fauna. I have been drawing and painting since primary school, earning the Art Prize in my last year at high school. In Grade 7 I was introduced to Calligraphy, further down the track I gained a Certificate in Advanced Calligraphy from the Maitland (NSW) TAFE, and subsequently studied long distance through the Roehampton College in London. Calligraphy taught me how to write and paint with watercolour and gouache. A great deal of…

Kathy Christian has painted the familiar everyday things that surrounded her for as long as she can remember. She is self-taught. Although she won two art scholarships in the United States of America some years ago, she has never used them. “When I was a kid and interested in horses, I painted horses,” she says. “Later I went on to win the Bay Meadows, CA, Jockey Club Award two years running – for my race horse paintings. Then I got interested in wildfowl and birds and focused on those. I entered many State and Federal duck stamp contests in the USA; but I couldn’t buck the politics, so I let that go … although I did enjoy exhibiting at the decoy and wildlife art shows. For about five years, I…