Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från The Artist

Want to comment on something you've read, or seen? Email me at theartistletters@tapc.co.uk or visit our website at www.painters-online.co.uk/forum Our contributing artists have worked hard to bring you a wealth of inspiring articles to help you develop your own skills, try new techniques and become a better-informed and more confident artist across all media and subject matter this month. There are several new series starting in this issue, from the first of Grahame Booth's bi-monthly demonstrations showing how to simplify complex subjects in watercolour (starting here with some key advice on painting figures), Steve Hall's four-part series on capturing landscapes in pastel (Steve begins with a focus on painting typical Kenlish and Sussex scenes), and new contributor Rosso Emerald Crimson's four-part series on painting more creative portraits in oils, beginning…

Firstsite High Street Colchester Essex CO1 1JH 01206 713700 www.firstsite.uk Until April 14 LUCY HARWOOD Bold Impressions Lucy Harwood: Bold Impressions at Firstsite, Colchester features work by self-described PostImpressionist painter, Lucy Harwood. The exhibition is part of the gallery's ongoing series of exhibitions focusing on painters of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, run by artist Cedric Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines. The exhibition features over 100 of Harwood's works, ranging from landscapes, still life and portraiture, as well as artefacts illustrating her life and career. Lucy Harwood: Bold Impressions continues until April 14.…

I am fortunate to live in the countryside and by the sea, so for my cultural pleasures I visit towns and cities, often taking students to paint and draw. As my wife is Czech, we are privileged to be able to frequent one of the most beautiful cities, Prague, where we are spoilt for architectural gems, from Gothic, Baroque and Rococo to Art Deco and Brutalist. It's certainly able to satisfy all tastes. I belong to an urban sketcher's group so I'm to be found sketching all over the city at all times of day in all weathers. I'm not only interested in the architectural aspects but also the setting and atmosphere that some buildings emanate. Flowing through the city is the beautiful river Vltava, which acts as a mirror…

Sometimes I make a watercolour sketch of a subject which then informs an oil on the same subject. The paintings (above and right) were both painted outside. I consider myself to be primarily a tonal painter and work in both watercolours and oils. However, the ways in which I approach each medium are quite different. I find the use of different media energising and plein-air painting certainly frees me up and enables me to take advantage of happy mistakes. When I resumed painting after many years bringing up a family and doing various jobs, it was to soft pastels that I first turned. I didn't have a studio and working in my dining room I found the amount of dust produced was a problem. So, for a long time, watercolours…

THE BUSINESS OF ART: 2ND OF 12 THE BUSINESS OF ART Sarah Edmonds is the marketing manager for Pegasus Art and gallery manager at Art Cotswold. She lives and breathes art by promoting artists, writing about art, consulting, selling and painting herself. Sarah studied a short course at the Slade School of Fine Art followed by a degree in marketing and has worked in the industry ever since; www.sarahedmonds-marketing.com As artists and humans, we are constantly evolving. Whether you are in your rose or blue period, you'll be absorbing influences from all corners and developing your style and thought processes consciously or unconsciously. Whilst much of this maturing and development will be organic, there is value in focusing your projects with a long-term view. Rather than snatching at short-term ideas which…

LONDON Bankside Gallery 48 Hopton Street SE1. 020 7928 7521 www.banksidegallery.com Mini Picture Show 2023; works on a small scale by members of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, until February 1. Dulwich Picture Gallery Gallery Road SE21. 020 8693 5254 dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk Rubens and Women; until January 28. Mall Galleries The Mall, SW1. 020 7930 6844 www.mallgalleries.org.uk The Pastel Society: Annual Exhibition; January 24 to February 10. National Gallery Trafalgar Square WC2. 020 7747 2885 www.nationalgallery.org.uk The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals; until January 21. Discover Liotard and the Lavergne Family Breakfast; until March 3. Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed; until March 10. National Portrait Gallery 2 St Martin's Place WC2. 020 7306 0055 www.npg.org.uk David Hockney: Drawing from Life; exploring the artist's work over…

Painting Portraits in Watercolour Liz Chaderton Strictly speaking, this is not a book about portraiture, and that's a good thing. What Liz Chaderton actually offers is a way of capturing facial character and avoiding the fine detail that would be required in a formal sitting. Liz uses washes, blending, wet-in-wet and some quite surprising colour choices to create vibrant images that are full of life and character. This is not a substantial volume, but Crowood are adept at presenting all the material you need without crowding the page or leaving illustrations orphaned from the text. Although all the images here appear as if done from life, this is belied by the opening chapter, which explains in some detail how to work from photographs. This is typical of Liz's thorough approach,…

The Affordable Art Fair is marking its 25th anniversary with celebrations throughout the year. The first of these will take place at Battersea Park, from March 6 to 10, bringing together over 100 UK and international galleries showing thousands of artworks from living artists, both household names and rising stars. As usual, the Affordable Art Fair is championing the work of one artist for its poster campaign and this year it features the work of Clare Packer. Clare is a former magazine illustrator and ceramicist turned artist, and draws inspiration for her collage paintings from ancient Greek and Roman figureheads as well as the paintings of Picasso. ‘I am fascinated by the profile of a face,’ she writes/for the profile can be so readily ambiguous – male or female, sad…

Kayla Martell lives and paints in Wicklow, Ireland. She regularly exhibits with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), the Society of Women Artists (SWA), Dublin Painting & Sketching Club (DPSC) and the Graphic Society of Fine Art (GSFA). Her paintings are available at The Doorway Gallery in Dublin and the Killarney Art Gallery, Killarney, Ireland. Kayla was awarded the ROI Themed Painting Prize at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters’ annual exhibition in 2022 and The Artist Editor's Choice Award at the Society of Women Artists’ annual exhibition. In 2023 she received the Royal Society of Marine Artists’ New Generation Award. Kayla's latest paintings can be seen by following her on Instagram @kmmartellart With a focus on the spirit and beauty of…

A chance meeting with an artist in Egypt changed my painting life. The meeting happened at a small desert inn located on the abrupt line between the arid desert and verdant, arable land by the Nile. An unusual British woman with her head wrapped like an Egyptian sat in the shaded courtyard full of lush green plants. She was an artist on a painting holiday, alone. Her room was full of wonderful watercolours of Egyptian people. She didn't pay the models who were always happy to pose, she told me, but gave them in-kind payment. I had been burning to paint people. Drawing on her example and courage, I couldn't get into the field fast enough. And I never looked back. Painting in Peru, while visiting my husband on work…

Prepare six panels identically sized. I usually paint on a 30x40cm gesso panel but you should decide what is the right surface and size for you. Revisit your childhood and think of the passions that you developed at a young age. Find reference material to relate back to those passions. I take photographs of views of the River Avon in Stratford Upon Avon but you may decide to focus on a different genre and respond accordingly. Select colours that you feel a connection with when combined would enable you to create a full spectrum of colour. You may decide to include black although black can be achieved by mixing primary and other neutral colours such as burnt umber. Start to paint your subject following the stages that I've suggested, painting…

As most people see it, a painting is either a print or an original. We see and feel the brushmarks and exclaim, ‘yep, it's an original!’. Several years ago, a gallery in Australia was selling hand-painted copies of Vincent van Gogh's work. Even though they were very close to those original old works of Van Gogh, they were just hand-painted copies, nothing more or less. So, even though they were produced with brushes and paint, did that really make them originals? The answer is clearly no, there was nothing at all original about them. Even today you can go online and order a hand-painted copy of a famous painting. It's a business model and painted copies of Old Masters are available to those who want them. Again, they are all…

Sending-in days DSWF's Wildlife Artist of the Year 2024 Details: Founded by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation in 2008, DSWF's Wildlife Artist of the Year is an internationally renowned wildlife art competition open to amateur and professional artists. The competition uses the power of the arts to celebrate wildlife and raise vital funds for endangered species. The competition is open to both amateur and professional artists, and the organisers encourage anyone who has a passion for both art and wildlife to enter. Exhibition: Selected work will be exhibited at a London gallery; details still to be decided. When: Opens for submissions at 12pm on January 8. Contact: www.davidshepherd.org Derwent Art Prize 2024 Details: The Derwent Art Prize rewards excellence in contemporary graphic art. Artists worldwide can enter works in pencil…

As a painter, my greatest driving force is colour. I am completely obsessed with it! I love everything from laying the colour out on my palette, to mixing and finding exciting colour combinations. In fact, painting is colour in its most basic sense. I trained at Edinburgh College of Art and spent much of my early career working with landscape as my subject. Having been brought up in the Highlands, and surrounded by the raw energy of the north, it felt a necessity for me to find a way to respond to it. ‘As the pandemic hit, I found myself reaching for the brushes and painting the flowers and gardens around me obsessively’ REFERENCE PHOTOS In late 2018 my interest began to shift. I found inspiration in the plant and…

Dream and Refuge at Arnolfini, Bristol features works from the Jerwood Collection that explore home, refuge and movement. Works by artists Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Michael Armitage, Vanessa Bell, Halima Cassell, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Mike Silva and Rose Wylie have been brought together in collaboration with UWE Bristol's MA curating programme in celebration of the Jerwood Collection's 30th anniversary. The Jerwood Collection of Modern and Contemporary art gives public access to a privately-owned collection that began in 1993 with a painting by Sir Frank Brangwyn bought by Alan Grieve. Now owned by Jerwood Foundation, the collection continues to grow with new acquisitions and donations and is widely accessible through loans to national and international institutions and on a number of digital platforms. Find out more about the Jerwood Collection at www.jerwoodcollection.online…