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Artists Back to Basics Volume 13 Issue 3 (Digital)

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14 Articles

2 min.

Flower Arranger

Jill Kirstein was born in Katoomba, New South Wales – high in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. After the war, her family moved to Bulawayo in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It was at the Bulawayo Dominican Convent where a lifetime love of art first began to emerge in her youthful experience. Many years later, after marrying a Rhodesian cattle farmer, Jill took up painting with renewed fervour. The peace and tranquility of panoramic views from her farmhouse home inspired Jill to rekindle the flame of her passion for painting. As an accomplished flower arranger who had won several trophies and awards, Jill Kirstein followed her natural inclinations to pursue floral art in her personal search for artistic expression. Her particular love of roses reinforced her view that these distinctive blooms were ‘the only flowers with…

4 min.

Fragrant Bouquet

MATERIALS • Canvas on a stretcher.• Palette.• Brushes.• My trusty fingers.• Winsor and Newton Oils, including: Background – Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Yellow Ochre, White; Flowers – Windsor Red, Indian Yellow, Alizaria Crimson, Permanent Rose, Windsor Violet, Permanent Magenta, Viridian, French Ultramarine. STEP ONE I start by outlining my central flowers on the canvas with a thin turpentine wash and brush. This gives a sketchy appearance which forms the basis of where I will put my colours. I don’t try to be too precise – it’s too early and will probably get covered. This is just a start from which I get my bearings. STEP TWO Now, using a brush, I apply a thin turpentine wash to the whole canvas with the exception of where my flowers will be (this would ‘muddy’ the…

15 min.

"Deep End of the Pool- part 3"

The ideas in this article take it all as far as I know to go when it comes to the most difficult aspects of drawing freehand with proportional precision. Micro Sketching All lines only need to be as good as they need to be at any stage of a drawing, and this certainly applies to fine and very fine detail (figure 1). You have to remember that most of the time (until you enter the end game) you are placing lines and shapes on the paper just to help roughly shuffle around and position other lines and shapes. The more lines/shapes added, the more you see what needs to be shifted/modified next and so on. Exactly the same principle’s at play as when laying the first bold, broad sketch lines on the…

3 min.

Connecting with the Ocean

I can remember as a child of around eight years of age marvelling at the Albert Namatjira reproduction paintings that hung in the office at my public school, and wondering how he did it. The colours, the distance and landscape formations, and above all, the emotions these images stirred set me on a path of drawing and painting. At the age of nine I started surfing, and my fascination with surfing and painting waves went with me throughout my art classes at public school and into high school, where I was often chastised for drawing waves on almost anything. Growing up next to the Royal National Park in Sydney gave me an opportunity to discover this amazing place. I would surf, explore, sketch and draw my experiences. The beaches were quite…

3 min.

Admiring the Ocean

MATERIALS Brushes • 2’’ flat• ¾” flat wash• ½” flat round taklon filbert• 2” fan• No 6 flat• 1/8 filbert• ½” stippler Hydroacylic paints • Cerulean Blue• Titanium White• Dioxazine Purple• Ultramarine Blue• Magenta• Phthalo Green• Yellow Oxide• Lemon Yellow• Stretched canvas polycotton tight weave 600 x 800mm• Flow promoter medium• Palette knife• Masking tape STEP ONE Mix 10% Cerulean Blue, 10% Titanium White, apply 10% flow promoter (use a few drops in every mix) and mix. Apply evenly to canvas using a 2” flat brush, finishing with horizontal strokes to more that ¾ of canvas. STEP TWO Use masking tape to define the ocean’s horizon, then back to the sky using a ¾” flat wash brush using Dioxine Purple, Ultramarine Blue and Magenta mixed with Titanium White. Begin to map in the direction of cloud mass using…

5 min.

Lofty Ambitions!

As soon as I saw this beautiful animal I just had to paint it! Frolicking in the yard so happy and carefree it was what I wanted to feel like! Oil was the only choice to make for this painting, as I wanted to capture all of the emotion and atmosphere of this scene. Step one Having selected a 24”x30” canvas I set about with a thin layer of Cobalt blue for the underpainting! I find that using a darker underpainting gives added vibrancy to the colours that will be painted over the top! I also find that it helps when creating areas of intense light as in the fluffy legs and hooves! Step two Next the drawing up of the subject! I am using a white watercolour pencil over the dark background, this is…

1 min.

Inspired by Wildlife

Natalie Barlow was born in Geelong, Victoria. After finishing school, she studied Commercial Art at the Melbourne College of Decoration, and in 1987 attained a TAFE certificate in Promotional Display and Advertising. Since then she has worked as a graphic artist in Melbourne, Coffs Harbour, Sydney and now the Sunshine Coast, where she has lived for the past five years. Since arriving on the Sunshine Coast, Natalie has joined the Pomona Gallery Artists and Friends Group, the Friends of Noosa Regional Gallery and the Queensland Wildlife Art Society. She finds the groups to be very nurturing and supportive in her artistic development. Her interest in art started while studying graphic design. She commenced art classes in 1986 at the local community centre and soon developed an interest in painting wildlife, particularly birds…

3 min.

Outback

MATERIALS • Stretched canvas 20 x 24”• Atelier Gesso• Fine sand paper• Palette knife• Fan brush no. 4• Art Basics 2200 Taklon 000• Art Basics Stiff Synthetic Filbert 95-KF No. 12• Art Basics Bristle Flat 101-F No. 6• Art Basics Bristle Bright 102-B No. 7• Art Basics Stiff Synthetic Bright 95-B No. 2• Art Basics Stiff Synthetic Bright 95-B No. 0• All Art Spectrum colours• Titanium White• Cobalt Blue• Burnt Umber• Light Red• Cadmium Yellow• Raw Sienna• Yellow Ochre STEP ONE Lightly draw out with a HB pencil the outline of the gumtree, horizon line and the mountains. Mix Cobalt Blue and Titanium White and paint the top of the sky. Then mix Light Red and Titanium White and paint the lower part of the sky. Mix a darker version of Cobalt and…

18 min.

Special Buyers Guide

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5 min.

An Extreme Form of Daydreaming

As a teenager I loved painting and did a lot of it. I was encouraged by others and earned money from it. Selling artwork supported my teenage fashion habit and this was naturally a great motivator. I even won art prizes and had my work displayed in Parliament House at the age of 16, facts that I didn’t fully appreciate until much later. After this promising start I stopped painting completely in favour of study, travel, teaching, raising children and dealing unsatisfactorily with domestic chores. I find the lack of painting puzzling now, but I think the absence of a dedicated place and uninterrupted stretches of time to paint in became excuses for me not to do it, so I drew when I had a creative moment rather than painted. I went…

5 min.

Weekend Walk

Brushes I use a range of filberts and flats from #2 to #14. My new favourite is a number 14 Neef filbert. My round brushes are from 0 to #12. I am very careful to keep my oil brushes very separate from my acrylic brushes. I haven’t painted a beach painting for some time, and thought it an ideal subject for a painting demonstration. I needed new source photos for the painting, so I organised family members and their dogs to meet me at the local Perth dog exercise beach on the Easter weekend for a photoshoot . . . and then it rained. It kept raining solidly for 10 days, which is unheard of in Perth, so I started on the background of the painting, occasionally peering out of the shed…

14 min.

"Deep End of the Pool- part 4"

It always starts and ends in the brain this art stuff. Here’s the bit of the really deep end that involves the grey mushy stuff. It’s all exactly what goes on in my head all the time, every day at the drawing board. You’re lucky I’m even sharing such personal stuff really but part of the weird is the start and finish. If I tell you how to draw straight lines I have to tell the whole rest of the story or none of its any good to any of us. Here we go then.... Care Factor Standard As soon as you let slip the tiniest thing you saw but didn’t act on (but knew you could have) the whole care factor aspect slips back a notch to the new ‘care factor…

4 min.

Maitland Regional Art Gallery

Steeped in history, the Federation Gothic building housing Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) in the lower Hunter Valley of NSW is an awe-inspiring example of early 1900s architecture. Officially opened in 1910, it was constructed to house the Maitland Technical College, which it continued to do until 1987. Technical education experienced many changes during this life of the building, and only two years later the building behind the Gallery was added to provide more class space. If you look closely at the brickwork of the two buildings, it is clear that they were to be eventually joined by a walkway. The main building at the front of the site which now houses the Gallery is not only vitally important because of its role in technical education; architecturally, it is one of…

5 min.

Divide and Conquer

In my last two articles I’ve talked about how the sky can play an important part and add so much interest to your paintings (The Sky’s the Limit) and how the light bouncing off and through the clouds creates shadows across the landscape adding drama to the work (Don’t turn the lights out) in this article I thought I’d bring these two elements together but also add a new suggestion Divide and Conquer Divide to Conquer those painting Blues Many new artists are often daunted and apprehensive when confronted with a blank sheet of water colour paper, just like a writers with writers block, not knowing where to start, and when they do start applying paint soon find that what they had in their minds eye and what’s actually happening on the…

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