Getting started
Catherine returned to Lacock Art Group in November 2022 to explain and demonstrate her experimentally loose watercolour style in a painting featuring colourful, abstract lake reflections. She also showed us how to create atmosphere as well as maintain bright colours by merging real colours directly on the painting’s surface in a controlled cascade. 

Catherine began by explaining that she used to paint in oils but now paints in watercolour predominantly, which is why she uses 'thick, juicy' paint. Bright colours are a hallmark of her paintings. 

Painting process
Her typical approach to a painting is to start with the focal point of the scene and develops it from there, using photos of landscapes for reference. When choosing water as a subject, Catherine pointed out that still water is easier to paint than fast moving water like crashing waves, waterfalls or rapids, due to there being less white space which makes it easier to control. 
 
When you’ve selected the scene you want to paint, look at the photo closely to find the way in to the focal point. For instance, is there a winding river that leads the eye, as in the example photo above?

To get started Catherine does a sketch outline, putting in shadows and other notable features. She tends to use Daniel Smith paint – they are often quite granular and it’s interesting to see how it contrasts with transparent paint. Moonglow is a good example; a purple grey, which is very granular in texture.

​Once the sketch is down on paper, Catherine wets the focal point area first using lots of water, letting it drip down the page. Due to volume of water applied she uses a watercolour board – watercolour paper that’s glued to card backing board; not only does it cope well with a lot of water it doesn’t need stretching. All good art suppliers stock watercolour board. 

In common with many watercolourists, her technique involves applying layers of paint to build depth and colour. The scene chosen for this demonstration has reflections in the water and Catherine recommends painting the trees and their reflections at same time. A useful tip to check whether the reflections are right is to turn the paper round ie if painting in landscape view, turn the paper to portrait so the reflections appear horizontally on the page. 

Another tip she gives is to twist and turn the brush to make organic shapes rather than punching or stabbing the end of the brush onto the painting. She uses a flat brush for most of the painting. Allow this layer to dry a little and then add more detail. 

Colours are key
Catherine loves to use bright colours, in particular turquoise which is a frequent feature in her paintings. Other colours she often uses are Sap Green, Raw Sienna, and Cad Yellow. Cobalt Turquoise, by Windsor & Newton, is another of her go-to favourites; a very opaque, acidic colour, which she uses to attract attention. 

Colour scheme is always so important in a painting, she believes, because as the artist you really need to like the colours to like your painting. She suggests mixing turquoise and yellow to produce a wonderful lime green. 

You can use the lifting off technique to remove unwanted drips and to reveal white. At the demonstration Catherine used a No. 5 rigger and a ‘stumpier’ brush to lift off paint. If you have any excess paint left on brush don’t discard it; you can use it elsewhere on the picture.

Watercolours dry lighter in colour than they look when wet, so take care not to over-correct the colour when the paint’s wet. If necessary you can lift off later to achieve the right depth of colour. 

In this painting Catherine uses Moonglow for the waterline, applying it quite darkly. As you paint in more detail, reduce the ratio of water to paint to thicken the mixture. Again, you can lift it off later if it’s too dark; this lifting off technique can also be used to produce a softening effect. 

To create the effect of ripples in water, use end of a flat brush to cut into the paint, removing thin, horizontal lines of paint. Catherine showed how she uses a long rigger brush to paint tree branches – the rigger has a bounce to it that’s harder to control, making it an effective tool for painting features that don’t require a perfectly straight line. You can also use negative painting in spaces between branches to make them stand out. 

When this layer of paint had dried, Catherine rubbed out the pencil lines and from this point on recommended keeping additional detail solely to the focal point area of the painting. 

​To bring the whole painting together she often applies a unifying wash, which dampens down the distant view and blends elements together. For example, bring blue in from sky and wash it over the trees to get a single colour. 

Catherine says she often walks away from a painting when it’s finished, returning to look at again with fresh eyes a couple of days later when you can see any problems in the painting. 

Catherine's demo was well-attended with an audience comprising art group members and guests, who fully engaged and asked some good questions. Our thanks to Catherine for delivering an excellent, informative, instructive and informal demonstration, which was very well-received by attendees. We look forward to her returning in the future.

By Glyn Overton

Pastels bridge the gap between drawing and painting whilst giving an extraordinary freedom with colour and mark making opportunities. They often open up for students a much greater understanding of mixing colour and the relationships between them as the colour is laid directly onto the page and unless blended too much they don’t tend to go muddy unless that is your intention. They sometimes give the impression that they are difficult to use but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You can overlay light over dark, blend colours to mix on the page, create exciting marks by using a variety of inventive techniques and generally have much more fun than with other painting techniques.
They come in a variety of forms, hard pastels, soft pastels, pastel pencils, oil pastels and water soluble pastels. 

Soft pastels
Pastels are made from ground pigment and a blender which holds the particles together, the soft pastels having a higher intensity of pigment to inner giving very intense colour and because of this they can be inclined to crumble. The range and intensity of colours, however, will give your work a very painterly outcome. Examples of these are made by Unison, Schminke, Daler Rowney and the better makes will give you stronger colour and a creamier texture. ​

Hard pastels
These are made with more blender and less pigment making them useful for defining detail. They can be used to complete a whole picture though it will be a slightly slower process. I often recommend the “Inscribe 64” box to people starting pastels as this box gives not only the bright colours but also some beautiful subtle colours which give your work a much more natural impression whilst in the early stages of learning to mix pastels. 
They can be used to give linear qualities by using the strong straight edge and fine detail with the corners. 
Conte pastels also fall into this category and were my introduction to pastels as a teenager. They also come in a range of natural colours so you can imitate some of the Renaissance drawings in chalk.

Pastel pencils
Several firms make these, the easiest to get hold of are probably Derwent, Conte and Stabilo. I use the Stabilo ones as I find they work well over soft pastels to give outlines and definition to fine areas. You can just draw with them on their own and I often use them for quick life drawings and sketches outdoors as they are easy to take with you. They come in a huge range of colours and a box is always a good suggestion for Christmas and birthdays! 
The honeysuckle (below) was completed at Lacock Art Group meetings over three evenings and is entirely done with pastel pencils. They are extremely useful where there is a lot of detail as in the Shambles picture in York (below), and worked well for the wet pavements.

Oil pastels
I often refer to drawing with these as like drawing with lipstick as they have quite a sticky, greasy consistency. They can produce some beautiful strong, pattern based images on their own or can be diluted with white spirit or turpentine to give softer results, demonstrated in the pictures below of the pumpkins and the churchyard.

,Water soluble pastels
These also have a waxy consistency, like oil pastels, but if you brush over the drawing with water they can give an even, transparent wash. By varying the amount of water, a damp brush can soften the drawing whilst resting some of the linear quality and once dry you can return to the work and add more drawing if required. These are examples of oil pastel resist with water colour pastels diluted with water. 

Techniques
Pointillism
It is quite fun to build up an image just using dots, mostly to create an optical mix of the colour. This is an example taken from a very small photo 5cm square, which I enlarged to 25cm square in one of my many efforts to stop working in so much detail.

Dashes and dots
Beginning to think about using appropriate marks to achieve textural effects, whether to create fur and feathers, rust and decaying surfaces, or stone and moss on buildings. The marks you make suggest the feel of the subject matter, as shown in these three examples.

Portraits
A variety of different pastels and techniques can be used when creating portraits. Soft pastels make blending easier and can be used in conjunction with pastel pencils for greater detail. Pastel pencils on their own are useful for quick sketches and life drawing. Either soft pastels or oil pastels can give a much stronger and bolder approach. These are some examples of differing techniques.

Methods of working
Pastels are much more like oil painting and acrylics than watercolour. I tend to start by thinking about what is in the background, like the sky and distance and then gradually coming forward in the picture, finishing with the foreground and main detail. This also applies to the use of colour, keeping softer and bluer hues in the background and building intensity and brightness as you move in the foreground. Light colours can be worked over dark much as in acrylics and areas not working can be removed either using a soft putty rubber or rubbing with a soft cloth. It is quite easy to build up an area again. 
​I block in the background colours first and then work through the layers, as shown here.

Mark making skills
Very much like all mediums, mark making skills are paramount. How can I make fur look different from a rough stone wall, or still water with reflections, or a bramble hedgerow? The answer can usually be found in the sort of marks you are making. Learn to play with the pastels. You don’t have to draw as though you were writing with a pencil. They can be rolled or used with the long side to block in large areas, twisted, heavy marks, soft marks, delicate pushed lines for twigs, smudged to create gradation and reflections, imprinted to leave the surface colour of the paper, and softened using a paler colour over the top. Just play and see what can be discovered. Here are some examples of mark making to help inspire you.

I hope you have found this introduction to pastels informative and wish you success and enjoyment as you explore their use in your art.

Getting to grips with figure drawing
In October, professional artist Victoria Jinivizian gave members of Lacock Art Group an informal workshop in observational drawing at one of our Thursday evening meetings.  Her model, Emma, accompanied Victoria along with some furniture props – a chair and stool.

​It was a great session, hugely informative (especially for those with little experience of figure drawing), challenging at times - total concentration required - and, above all, a lot of fun.

Victoria taught us some essential techniques about how to approach figure drawing, and Emma, her model, positioned herself in several different poses for exercises for the class to tackle. ​

​​The session started with Emma in a standing posed. Victoria’s first piece of advice was how to get the body proportions correct; by making three horizontal marks on your paper – one to indicate the top of the head, one at the model’s feet, and a third at waist level. She suggested we focus on four principles when figure drawing; height, width, angle (of limbs), and shape.

Next Emma posed sitting on a stool and Victoria asked us to apply the same principles and tips discussed above. The stool offered a perfect opportunity to put negative space/drawing into practice (you can read more about this in our blog by Chris Crosby about this technique posted at the end of September). Here are a few examples of the drawings produced in the first two exercises, kindly provided by some of our members.

Challenging exercises
After easing us in gently with the first two poses, Victoria set us a more challenging exercise: drawing the figure without lifting your pen/biro off the paper, in one continuous line. Everyone found this very hard to do in practice but we were all more-or-less pleasantly surprised at the results! The aim of the exercise was to help develop skills in drawing the overall shape of the figure. You can see a couple of the end results below and in the sketch above by Joy Tickell, the figure on the far right of the three. 

Don't look down!
​To stretch us even further Victoria’s next exercise involved drawing “blind”. The task was to draw the figure, using a pencil, looking constantly at the model, without looking down at the paper on which we were drawing. In this exercise Emma was sitting on a stool. The purpose of this exercise was to encourage you to study the model closely and continuously in detail. All agreed that this proved to be the hardest of all the exercises! The results were mixed – we suspect some people couldn’t resist a sneak peek at their paper! Interestingly, members appeared reluctant to share these drawings for the blog. Perhaps the attempt shown below on the right explains why, although apparently this is what the drawing is supposed to look like in this exercise!

Strike a different pose
Attendees sat around the outer edges of the room with the model positioned in the centre, as you can see in this photo. Therefore, to ensure that everyone had the chance to draw the model from the front and back, Emma changed her pose a number of times. 

​For the last two drawings of the session Emma posed sitting on a chair. At this point Victoria explained how to use the background in the scene to ‘ground’ the model in the space, which helps to get the proportions of the drawing right. For example, the model was sitting on a chair and we observed where the floor met the walls and drew a line on the paper to represent this.  Using this approach helps to position the model in the right place within the space. The drawing below demonstrates this technique very well.

​We each produced six drawings in total during the workshop, with Emma in different poses, and Victoria gave us about 15 minutes to complete most of them. We had a little longer for the final drawing so that we could put in more detail. This featured Emma sitting on a chair, leaning forwards with her head propped up by her arm, which was quite a tricky pose to draw. A couple of examples drawn on the night are below.

To sum up, we all found Victoria’s drawing class a thoroughly enjoyable experience and one that provided us with a welcome challenge. It was good to try something different. Our thanks go to Victoria and to her model, Emma, for delivering such a useful and fun evening, and also to those of our members who provided images of their drawings to illustrate this article.

You can find out more about Victoria’s work on her website. Please do take a look at it.
Thank you.