An introduction to oil painting by Melissa Wishart One Saturday in mid-February, 17 of our members took part in a day-long workshop all about oil painting, delivered by well-known Wiltshire artist, Melissa Wishart. These workshops are exclusively for Lacock Art Group members and it’s great to have expert artists/tutors like Melissa giving us their undivided attention to help us learn and improve our art. Melissa’s workshop was the first one featuring the use of oils. Several attendees have considerable experience of painting with oils while others’ experience of the medium is limited to non-existent, so a few of us approached the day with some trepidation! We needn’t have worried; Melissa pitched the tone perfectly for all levels of experience, with good humour, knowledge, and a relaxed, guiding hand. To find out more about Melissa’s art and background please visit her website. In addition to this blog post about the workshop, please take a look at the Oils Workshop gallery page to see more images from the day. First steps and fundamentals Melissa started us off on the fundamentals of oil paint, and surface; paint brands to use, canvas vs boards, and went on to talk about dilutants (to thin the paint), and techniques like glazing (transparent layers of paint that reflect light). Other tips include:
Exercise 1 – palette preparation and colour mixing Melissa explained that with oils, the bulk of the work of a painting happens on the palette, through colour mixing, and recapped on warm and cool colours (warm = red, orange, yellow, cold = green, blue, magenta). Our first task was to lay out a palette, putting large blobs of paint around the edge of the palette in a circle, following the colour wheel sequence: Titanium White, Lemon Yellow (for brighter greens), Cadmium Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue (aka French Ultramarine), Burnt Umber, and Cerulean Blue. Using a palette knife (not a brush), in the middle of the palette we mixed a large amount of grey, either from Ultramarine, Burnt Umber and White, or from black and white. This grey, which Melissa calls her ‘mothership’, forms the basis of all mid-tones. We then put blobs of grey around the palette and mixed them with a spot of each colour to mute them. A palette knife is easier for mixing as you can simply wipe it clean with a rag. It’s important not to contaminate different colours on the brush because you tend to end up with muddy colours. Composition essentials Having sorted out our palettes ready for action, the workshop moved to the topic of composition. Careful planning here is key – this applies to all drawing/painting not just oil painting, of course. We would be painting a landscape or a seascape during the workshop, a scene of our own choice. Melissa suggested using a viewfinder to select the section of the reference picture that interests you most. For a painting to be successful it’s crucial for the artist to have an emotional connection with the subject matter. Our tutor guided us through a number of decisions that need making, in particular:
Exercise 2 – composition thumbnails We each brought a couple of reference photos with us to the workshop to base our paintings on. To help us decide on our compositions, Melissa tasked us with drawing four quick thumbnail sketches of our scene to explore and experiment with different compositions. Decide on the view that works best for you, that piques your interest and engages you, she said. Is it better portrait or landscape? What should you leave out of the composition? Where are the light and dark areas? Mark making Having settled on a preferred composition, we then got to work with the paints. Melissa asked us to bring along two canvasses, or boards, suitable for use with oils, about A3 in size, and primed with a ground of burnt sienna acrylic paint. On the first canvas Melissa asked us to sketch the main lines of our painting with a brush. Next we applied an initial layer of paint to block in the different colours of the main areas, using a palette knife or a silicone wedge to spread the paint on. The wedge allows large areas of the canvas to be covered quickly. We continued to build up our paintings, adding more colour, trying different strokes, blending colours as we painted, and gradually adding more detail. Melissa encouraged us to use the second canvas to experiment with applying paint thickly – this is known as ‘pasto’. It produces different textures to the painting, adds variety and depth. It’s also useful practice for those who usually use watercolours or pastels, which have a uniform texture. One or two of us, however, tried this out on our first canvas! She also suggested we try out different techniques to vary the type of marks made on the canvas.
Summing up Everyone thought the workshop went incredibly fast, which is always a good sign. We all had a great time and learnt a lot, thanks to Melissa’s calm guidance and expertise. She remarked that our group was full of energy, enthusiasm and had a keen willingness to get stuck in. Some of us even surprised ourselves with the paintings we produced on the day! Plus, there may even be a few oils converts among us. With grateful thanks to Melissa for sharing her knowledge with us, and apologies for forgetting to include her in one of our results photos - mainly due to the mayhem involved in herding people into groups! Finally, if you'd like to see Melissa's work she is exhibiting with Maxine Harraway in Bath at the Pop Up Art Studio Gallery in Milsom Place from 22 March to 7 April, 2024. For those who'd like to take their oil painting further with Melissa she's holding a two day summer school in Bradford-on-Avon on 30-31 May, 2024. Information is available on her website.
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A glimpse into the art of painterly screen printing Gail is an award-winning painter printmaker who has a reputation for semi-abstract landscapes designed to imbue a sense of calm, which she creates through screen printing. She delivered a demonstration to members of Lacock Art Group and guests towards the end of January. The focus of the first part of the demo was an overview from Gail of the screen printing process and her particular approach, while the second part involved audience participation giving people a chance to have a go at printing. Gail is, understandably, protective of some aspects of her own artistic process so this blog gives more general explanation of what’s involved. What is screen printing? In its simplest form, ink or paint is pressed through a fine mesh screen to transfer it onto paper (or other surface, such as fabric) and produce an image. The mesh is blocked with something to prevent ink/paint going through in places where you don’t want it to. In this way, an image is built up by printing several layers of different coloured paint, each time masking specific parts of the mesh. You can block parts of the mesh with pieces of paper (newsprint), which can have hard edges or ripped edges to allow a varied effect. For example, if your image is of large stones/boulders you would print, let’s say, three layers, blocking out different parts of the stones at each layer with a different colour, creating light and dark areas that give the stone a rounded effect. The printing process is all a bit experimental so happy accidents can occur; you’re never quite sure how a colour might come out when printed over. Another way to block parts of the mesh screen involves a photographic process. This consists of spreading a light-sensitive emulsion on the mesh. Once the emulsion is dry, you draw your image on a transparent, mark-resistant surface (like an acetate sheet) with black mark-making tools (like graphite or chinagraph) and expose the screen to UV light. The black marks prevents the light from fixing the emulsion thereby creating spaces for the ink to be pushed through. The UV light makes the emulsion harden, and the hardened areas prevent paint being pushed through the mesh – a stencil effect. The emulsion is washed off, leaving clear areas where the paint can be pushed through to print an image. Screen printing has been around for centuries and is also known as silk screen printing, due to its Chinese origins when silk was used as the mesh for creating wood prints. Screen printing was popular in the 1960s, partly because it lent itself so well to making posters and prints of the type featured in pop art. In the 1990s a new, grained plastic was launched that enabled lithographic marks like washes to be created. Monotype v monoprint The two main forms of screen printmaking are with and without stencils. The two different kinds of print are monotype, and monoprint. Gail uses the monotype approach. A monotype print is a unique edition of a single image – a wholly unrepeatable one off. Gails finds this exciting, you build up the layers, and respond to the printed result as you go, which is more like painting. Monoprint has an element of a repeatable matrix - is a print made in a series where the main image is repeated but each print has slight individual differences, marks or embellishments. Essential equipment Gail made her screen printing unit herself, to her own specification. As shown in the photo, it consists of a bed section onto which paper is placed. A hinged frame, containing the mesh screen, sits on top of the bed. There’s a small gap between the mesh section and the bed, known as the ‘snap’, created by attaching a piece of thicker card to the bed at the top and bottom sides. Likewise, registration stops have to be put in position on the bed section to line up the paper and ensure the image is in the same place for at each print layer. A potential issue with using a DIY setup rather than a professional print setup is that paper can stick to the mesh during printing, which can cause unintended marks – known as ‘halos’ - that you may not want. You also need a squeegee rubber blade, to move the paint from one end of the screen to the other and push it through the mesh. Printing surface and paints For screen printing you need paper with a smooth surface, thick enough not to buckle when it’s wet. Gail used a paper called ‘bread and butter’ for the demo but she prints on ‘Somerset satin’, which is a heavy watercolour paper. You can print onto anything, including fabric (think calico bags) but you’ll need to change the squeegee blade and use a 40 count mesh to allow more paint to go through. Gail uses acrylic paints with a medium mixed in to act as a retarder to slow down drying. Screen printing is a fast process because the ink dries on the mesh quickly and blocks it, sometimes where you don’t want it to. Alternatively, you can use watercolour paint, or water soluble pastels. Charcoal and water soluble graphite also work well, says Gail. Getting stuck in As part of the demo, Gail gave members of the audience the chance to have a go at printing, using the screen printing equipment set up in the hall and under Gail’s guidance. Joy Tickell, Victoria Cleverley and Tracy Warne gamely stepped up to the plate, with Joy and Victoria first up doing a double act. Using a variety of colours, they painted directly onto the open mesh with large, random strokes, filling the entire mesh area. They also applied a medium (similar approach as masking fluid) to the mesh to block the places they wanted to leave white when printed. When Joy and Victoria were satisfied with their application of paint it was time to make a print. Gail showed how to hold the squeegee, with the blade at a 45 degree angle to the mesh. Her recommended technique when printing is to stand with one foot behind you and pull the blade down the screen, towards you, pushing down on open aperture. Remember to stop the blade just after the edge of the mesh, and wiggle the blade up slightly before lifting it up to avoid the paint splodging. Joy went first. She applied an initial ‘flood coat’ to prime the mesh with paint – supporting the screen as she pushed the paint down the screen with the blade but without any pressure. After making the first print Joy did another flood coat back by pushing the blade and paint up to the top, ready for the second print. Before Victoria’s turn to make a print, they applied more paint to vary the image, creating a different version of the print. You can see the difference in the images shown. Tracy was next to wield the squeegee. This time Gail suggested not doing a flood back with paint, instead using medium only to create a ghost print that produces a much more muted print. When finished, wipe off the paint from the screen with a plastic knife and reserve it in containers to re-use another time. Wash both sides of the mesh screen with sponge and water to ensure all the paint is removed, ready for the next print session. It was interesting to learn about a technique that most of us are aware of but probably have never tried. Our thanks to Gail for sharing her knowledge with us. You can find out more about her work on her website, where you can see plenty of examples of her amazing artwork.
Painting and screen printing demonstration by Gail Mason Our first art demonstration of 2024 is by Gail Mason and features her approach to semi-abstract landscapes, which 'crosses the boundaries of painting and printmaking' producing delightful, inspirational art. To find out more about Gail her work please visit her website. An example of her work is shown above. Demo date: Thursday 25 January, 7.00pm to 9.00pm Venue: Lacock Village Hall, East Street, Lacock SN15 2LF Guests are welcome to attend, with an entry fee of £5 per person payable on the door. Please arrive by 6.45pm so that the demo can start on time. We look forward to seeing you on the night. Follow us on Facebook
Exhibition, art demonstrations and member workshop dates Please check out our events page, where you'll find the dates of initial activities planned for 2024. There's much to look forward to, kicking off with a demonstration by Gail Mason in January that will feature screen printing and painting and will be open to guests as well as members. You can find out about Gail's work by visiting her website. Our Saturday workshops for LAG members only, which were introduced in 2023, have proved a popular addition to our activities so we will be holding these again in 2024. The first workshop of the year takes place in February; it will be given by Melissa Wishart and focus on oils. More dates will be added to our events page in the weeks/months ahead so do check back regularly to see what's new. Our last life drawing session of 2023 - a brief review As 2023 drew to a close, at the end of November we were treated to a life drawing session, featuring a lovely model, Joy, who was making a repeat visit to our art group. It was quite a challenge, not only from a drawing/painting perspective but also from a warmth standpoint - it was a very cold evening and the hall's heating wasn't working. Joy was wearing traditional dress, brightly coloured, but designed for warmer weather. Our thanks go to Joy for modelling, for being so obliging, and braving the cold. Here are a selection of the artwork produced on what was a very enjoyable night. So, with a few days' left in 2023 and as 2024 approaches, all that remains to say is happy New Year.
Christmas Frolics, fun and games Sticking to tradition, the last meeting of the year is an evening of entertainment, with the highlight being the judging of our annual Winter Art Competition. The evening kicked off with the competition, which involves members painting their own version of a well known painting chosen by the LAG Committee. This year the painting selected was 'Train Landscape' by Eric Ravilious (suggested by Chris Crosby), an apt choice consisting of views out of a train carriage showing rolling hills and a Wiltshire white horse. You can see all the entries on the Winter 2023 Art Competition gallery page - the 15 entries are very varied and we all enjoyed seeing what others had produced. Voting was very difficult! Mike Wilson's version was voted the clear winner. His take on the original painting included a touch of humour and was very well executed - congratulations to Mike. Read more about this on the Winter 2023 Art Competition page. Painting by touch (or guesswork) For some light relief after the voting for our winter art competition concluded, we played a game! Whereas previously we've held a quiz, home-made pictionary, and a beetle drive, this year the game involved picking up a paintbrush. Sounds easy for a bunch of artists? Not so much, especially when wearing a blindfold! The task We divided into two teams, let's call them Team A and Team B. On the stage in the hall were two makeshift easels with a sheet of paper taped to each one. A few feet away from each easel were two tables; on top of each one were paints, paintbrushes, and a small box containing cards. On each card was written the name of a body part - head, eyes, mouth, hair, arm, legs, torso! Yikes! The task for each team was to paint a picture of actor, Daniel Craig. Daniel, in the unlikely event that you ever hear about our game, we can only apologise for our renditions! Each team member took a turn to step up to the table, take a card from the small box containing the name of a body part, and paint it on the sheet of paper. Blindfolded. As you'd expect, this turned out to be hilarious. And the end results look absolutely nothing like Daniel Craig at all. Look at the pictures below and judge for yourself. Our thanks to Joy Tickell and Kay Smith for organising this, and for guiding us up to the boards to do our worst. We had a lot of fun! Christmas meal for members As part of our year end activities we got together for a Christmas meal at La Flambe, in Sutton Benger, and all agreed it was a great evening - consisting of excellent food, excellent company, and a lot of laughs. A big thank you to Tracy Warne from us all for organising the event so well. And finally, we wish you all a peaceful Christmas and happy New Year.
LAG meetings resume for members on Thursday 4 January, 2024. And announcing the visitors’ vote winner Our last exhibition of 2023, held over the weekend of 18-19 November, saw a steady flow of visitors, even though Lacock seemed quieter than usual for the time of year. Members of LAG contributed artwork in oils, acrylics, and watercolours, in different styles and a range of subjects, which visitors said they appreciated. Sales of original artwork, prints and greeting cards totalled a pleasing amount of almost £1,100, thanks to visitors who kindly bought 12 paintings, two prints and 105 cards. The total sales value was a couple of hundred pounds less than the amount raised from the 2022 November exhibition when almost twice as many paintings were sold, whereas card sales levels were similar. Thanks to all our members for working together to help set up the exhibition and taking it all down on the Sunday afternoon, ensuring a smooth and speedy operation at the start and finish. The visitors’ winner Visitors again took part in our exhibition in their own way, by voting for their favourite painting on display. This time 57 of our paintings were voted for, and a total of 81 votes were cast. A different take on the famous painting ‘The Scream’ by Edmund Munch emerged as the visitors’ clear winner. Scream 2, painted by Ken Baldy (who always brings some humour into his art) in his inimitable style, received a total of eight votes putting it in first place. It’s fair to say that Scream 2 caused much amusement among many of the visitors over the weekend! Four other paintings received three votes each, and nine paintings received two votes each, while 43 paintings each received one vote. Congratulations to Ken whose prize was a bottle of wine. Finally, in 2024 we’ll be holding exhibitions in May, August, and November and will publish the dates on our events page during December. We’d like to thank everyone who took the trouble to come to our exhibitions this year and we hope to see many of you again next year.
Bringing feelings and emotions into painting Stoney Parsons is a contemporary, semi-abstract landscape artist who, by her own admission, tends to live a little dangerously when she paints. Although she starts with a subject idea in mind she never quite knows what will come out on canvas because she often paints scenes from memory, as this helps to keep her painting loose and free. Crucially, she paints what she sees, feels and her reaction to it, which makes the outcome unpredictable. Having been a professional stained glass artist for 35 years her love of decorative art remains dear to her so she always looks to put some of her design effects from stained glass into her paintings. This demo to members and guests of Lacock Art Group in October gave a unique, delightful insight into Stoney’s approach and process to achieve abstraction. This centres on trying to bring her thoughts (conscious and unconscious), feelings and a spiritual sense of the subject into her work, evoking a feeling of space in the landscape she’s portraying. For the demo she painted in acrylics and used a few of her own photos for reference, as a security blanket, she says. Stoney says she also paints a lot in watercolour and in oils, which she thinks are wonderful to work with. Semi-abstract painting is about reduction, finding ways to paint landscape that’s simple but also complex at the same time, Stoney explains. You can find out much more about her work on her website. Stoney was happy to answer questions from the audience. “What’s the inspiration for this painting?” asks one of our members. “I don’t know yet, is the honest answer,” she says. Equipment improvisation Stoney uses a professional series of acrylic paints, often using a limited palette. She tends to use a lot of white, plus Nickel Azo Yellow, Carbon Black, Burnt Umber, and Viridian. Blues include Manganese Blue Hue, Phthalocyanine Blue, and Prussian Blue Hue. For a palette she uses a metal dinner tray lined with grease proof paper. Amongst her regular kit is a roll of blue paper towel, the Scott brand, which is more expensive than others but more robust and behaves more like a rag than paper. It takes paint off but doesn’t leave a texture on the painting. She is a fan of rubber paint brushes and often works with them. The art materials website, Artesaver, sells a range of these. Stoney also uses a silicone pastry brush. In fact, she has an eclectic assortment of art equipment including many DIY decorating tools as well as cutlery, for example a dinner fork and a wallpaper smoother (at least, I think that's what it was)! “The B&Q painter!” she joked. She also tends to use long brushes, an influence from oil painting. More usual tools include a credit card, a spray water bottle, and a hair dryer. Techniques demonstrated Surface-wise, for the demo Stoney used a plywood board sealed with a gloss medium and painted all over with Jesso and white acrylic paint. She starts by painting clouds and the sky, mixing one of the blue paints with white. With watercolours if you want white in your painting you don’t put paint on the area to be white and you get into the habit of doing that, she says, so she tends to use this approach even when using acrylics. ,Next, she moves onto paint the hills and ground in the middle distance of the scene, in a pale green colours, in sweeping brush strokes. She takes another question from the audience: “What stops you from doing the same stroke each time?” “You have to add differences, different strokes, in different directions, to keep it fresh and interesting,” she explains, as she moves on to paint the foreground that includes an expanse of water. As she works at times, in places on the painting, she takes the entire paper roll and rolls it over the wet paint, to remove paint slightly or to smudge it. Evoking calm, living dangerously Stoney asks the audience what her painting evokes for them. For a couple of us it reminds us of special places where we’ve walked, or been on holiday, and overall we collectively agree that her painting imbues a sense of calm in us. We realise this isn’t surprising when she tells us how she has painted for hospital patients in the past so had to create art with a peaceful, harmonious feeling to it, responding to the patients’ brief and what they needed - calm, air, and a sense of space. Back to the painting. Stoney works on the foreground by adding bold dark green paint, and sprays it with water making it drip down the board. Impressively, they look like pine trees. Stepping back to look at the painting she decides the bright green trees are too bold and sets about resolving this. You can sand down the surface to soften and mute the colours, or you can blend them. Blending colours with acrylics is harder than blending oil paints because they dry faster, sometimes before achieving a very gradual gradation. She decides she needs to get depth into the painting, and uses tape to do this. Using a set square to position it she sticks a line of tape down the middle of the group of trees, then applies white paint along the edge of the tape before peeling it off. She rubs off some of the paint from the trees to the right of the tape with paper towel. This gives a blurry effect. This, says Stoney, is a scary moment because you don’t know what the result will be. But you have to get out of your comfort zone, she adds, you have to live dangerously, and live life to the full. Otherwise you get stuck doing the same thing over and over again and don’t grow. A maxim for life in general! She uses the tape technique once more on the left hand section of the painting, producing the effect of a shaft of light stretching from sky to ground. It works! The tricky thing is to make it look loose and random, abstract but to do it with control. She says she’s naturally a very tight painter so constantly works to be looser, which is not easy. It’s important to paint sustainably, by which she means find out what you like to do and do that, so that you continue to enjoy your art and don’t get fed up. Stoney says she didn’t know what she was going to paint at the demo, it just took shape and came out as the evening progressed. As you can see from the photos, the end result is a beautiful landscape painting. Our thanks to Stoney for delivering a fascinating, thought-provoking demonstration that was also a great deal of fun.
As well as giving painting demonstrations to groups like ours, Stoney also holds classes titled “Towards Abstraction”, which are aimed at those who want to bring a more contemporary feel to their art. The next one is on 22 January, 2024, at her studio in Wiltshire, which you can book via her website. Thanks also go to everyone who attended and to Lynn Pick, one of our members, who was our photographer for the night. Techniques for painting landscapes Our second, and final, day-long weekend workshop for Lacock Art Group members this year was given by professional artist, Paul Weaver, with a focus on teaching how to paint landscapes in watercolour. He delivered an incredibly informative session that everyone enjoyed and each of us went away having learnt something new. Paul is a well-known artist whose primary inspirations are light and atmospheric effects and landscapes are among his favourite subjects. He runs art workshops at various locations including at the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough, which are always popular. A visit to Paul's website to find out more about his work is highly recommended. Workshop participants came with differing degrees of affection for and experience in watercolour; for some it’s their medium of choice, while several others usually work in acrylics, oils or pastels and hadn’t used watercolours for a long time. Nevertheless, everyone approached the workshop with an enthusiastic spirit and willingness to have a good go. Paul’s first tip was to encourage us to adopt a ‘laboratory’ approach to watercolour painting. Try things out and experiment; don’t be frightened of putting paint on paper. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter, the important thing is that you learn by doing it. This resonated with several of us, including the author of this article who usually spends far too much time dithering before actually daring to apply paint! Start with a tonal value sketch Paul explains that capturing light in a painting is the key to success, and to do this you need to assess the tonal contrast (or tonal values) of the scene. As well as using a reference photo he suggests taking notes about the light at the scene you’re painting, because a photo doesn’t convey colours correctly, especially when taken in bright sunlight. He usually does a tonal sketch first, to make friends with the scene and tap into it. A tonal sketch can be abstract and doesn’t need to be perfect, he says; it’s an indication of the dark and light areas, and shadows. Scruffy is fine! First developing a tonal sketch is an approach often recommended by other artists and can help you decide whether or not a scene is going to work as a painting. For the tonal sketch he roughly draws the outlines, distance, middle distance and foreground, to decide the design, then puts in tone and shadows. With complex paintings Paul says he spends more time on the design and drawing than on painting. Warming up As a warm up exercise he showed us how to produce a one colour painting, which we then had a go at - a winter tree and field scene with shadows. Using a single colour, in this case burnt sienna, helps to focus on tone and contrast, instead of colour, which often preoccupies artists. His advice is to connect with the subject first, before you paint. Do this by thinking about tone and the subject’s edges. This also informs the best type of paper to use: if the subject edges are sharp or jagged use dry paper, and if foggy and soft use wet paper. Avoid damp paper, which can cause cauliflowers! We used rough watercolour paper at the workshop. The fundamental concept of watercolours is of diluting the paint to make it lighter or darker, he says. Learn to paint by playing around to make the paint behave so that you know what it’s going to do – this removes the fear factor! Brush tips included using the point of the brush for straight lines, and the flat side for broken areas, called scufffing. The dry brush technique actually requires the brush to be quite wet with paint. Tone - work from background to foreground, and from light to dark. The sky is the lightest. He first wetted the whole sheet before painting the sky and distant part of the fields using a large round brush, size 20. It’s important to paint everything on the wash not in sections in one go, working quickly, so the paint blends together, coalescing softly rather than in stripy chunks. Next he shows how to approach the middle-distance trees, using the side of the brush to achieve the effect of branches. To get light into the painting and the idea of sun coming through trees he lifts out paint in long, sweeping lines giving the impression of shafts of sunlight. Key ingredients for a landscape painting Next we learnt about the essential ingredients, or components, needed to form a landscape painting, such as techniques to approach skies, clouds, trees, water and so forth. To demonstrate, Paul paints a sky, with a large tree, river, reflections, and foreground.
Bringing it all together Having produced our tonal pencil sketches, a one colour painting to warm up and learnt a number of techniques for painting various elements in a landscape, it was time to bring it all together in a resolved painting. We chose what we wanted to paint from a selection of photo print outs, some involved buildings set in a landscape, others of hills, fields, trees, and rivers. Several reference photos were of different snow scenes so we asked Paul to show us how to paint snow. He demonstrated how to bring the elements together in a complete painting. Adding extra challenge for him, his reference photo was of a summer landscape scene, which called for expert improvisation to turn it into a winter snow scene! Snow is quite reflective of sky so take this into account when painting. As before, he starts with the sky, first wetting the paper. With a large brush, using strokes that slant downwards from the top right corner, he applies Raw Sienna to represent winter sunshine. Working quickly, he adds Alizarin Crimson, and then French Ultramarine. Alizarin stops the blue going green when it hits the yellow paint, he explains. For the large trees in the distance he works from the outer edges of the branches towards the inner branches, using the side of a dry brush. He mixes a grey made from Light Red, French Ultramarine and Raw Sienna for the trees and horizon line, strengthening it for definition on the building that helps to bring it forwards. To create the snow shadows he mixes French Ultramarine with Alizarin Crimson to make purple, painting loosely and freely. He uses Viridian Green for the fir tree, he again uses a dry brush on its side and broken paint to let some sky peep through the branches. Mixing Viridian with Burnt Umber creates a dark green. He wets some of the branch edges to soften the appearance and blend it into the background. The trunk of the fir tree he paints in a dark brown colour; a mix of French Ultramarine and Burnt Umber. He emphasises the importance of connecting the tree trunk with the shadow at the base of the tree, while paint is still wet, so that the trunk melts into the shadow and becomes one with the snow. For the path edges he uses Burnt Umber with any blue and paints on top of the shadow area. The end result was a great painting! It was our turn next to produce a complete painting, using the various techniques we had learnt earlier in the workshop, and with Paul there to give a guiding hand to each of us. To see how we got on, please take a look at the Paul Weaver workshop gallery page where you’ll find a range of photos from the day.
With special thanks to Karen Road and Jane Tucker for photography. Contemporary, semi-abstract landscape painter
Demo date: Thursday 19 October, 2023 Time: 7pm prompt. Please arrive 10-15 minutes early so that the demo can start on time. Venue: Lacock Village Hall, Lacock, Wiltshire SN15 2LF Stoney will be demonstrating her approach to painting landscapes in acrylics, and may include mixed media. She has been a professional stained glass artist which has influenced her work in the areas of colour, design and light. An example of Stoney's work is shown here and you can find out more about her style on her website. We welcome the attendance of guests; a £5 entry fee is payable on the door. There is no charge to LAG members. Featuring the reduction technique Somerset-based artist, Lisa Takahashi, is probably best known for her bold, geometric linocut prints of cyclists, although she also works in watercolour and oils. In the past she has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and in 2018 reached the semi-finals of the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year. Lisa is an artist in demand so Lacock Art Group members felt very lucky to watch a demonstration by her at one of our Thursday evening meetings in September. Lisa reintroduced many of us to the techniques involved in this special art form, which is something most of us hadn’t tried since our school days! Lisa has been making linocut prints for about 10 years, developing her own blocky, simplified style. Initially the subject of racing cyclists fascinated and preoccupied her – proving to be very popular with the public – but after virtually exhausting all aspects of the topic she has since diversified. Favourite subjects at the moment are the sea and boats. Invented in 1845, lino (linoleum) is made of solidified linseed oil and sawdust applied to a canvas backing, making it a natural material. Its inherent durability meant it was very versatile for use in high traffic areas, and was often utilised on the floors of naval battleships. Artists of the time quickly recognised that it would make an excellent medium to cut into. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Techniques and tools There are four main techniques for making linocut prints in more than one colour and for our demo Lisa decided to show us the ‘reduction’ method that she said Picasso invented by Picasso when he was in his 80s –impressive in itself. He’s known to have often used this process for making bullfighting posters. The reduction, or reductive, technique uses one lino tile into which each layer of colour is carved. The tile is printed in a colour after layer is cut, building up the colours in subsequent layers to create depth, definition and contrast. At each layer more lino is removed from the tile’s surface, hence its name, making it quite a challenge and focus is key. The more you cut away the more difficult the process becomes. You need to pay attention and, in common with creating other forms of art, it is very therapeutic. This also means you can’t go back and reprint another time because the block is destroyed, but one edition can run to about 100 prints before the lino tile quality degrades and starts to crack. Multi-block linocut is an alternate method, in which more than one lino tile is used to make a print. Often, each colour is printed onto a separate lino tile to build layers. Although this method means you can return to print again nevertheless it can be hard to align the different layers accurately. Lisa tends to use a few specialist tools for her craft - lino angled tools, which are very sharp - working with four shapes of tool. You don’t need different depth of cuts as in wood carving so most people can manage with only a few tools. Lisa used standard lino with a depth of 3.2mm. It’s possible to use the kind of lino sold by carpet/flooring shops (called Marmoleum) but the surface can be quite waxy so the paint is harder to print. She uses a trusty old toothbrush to scrape away ‘crumbs’ of lino from crevices after cutting it. For smaller prints she uses special Japanese paper called HoSho, which is thin but strong. Lisa prefers to use oil paints for her linocut prints, adding a medium (Druck-Medium) to make it sticky and transfer paint to paper effectively, mixing them on a piece of Perspex palette. Painting approach By pure coincidence, or serendipity, Lisa chose a photo of a house in Lacock as the subject of her demo print. She usually starts by outlining the shape of the image on the lino tile with an Indian ink pen. The image on the lino tile is the mirror of the picture being recreated. Once the drawing is complete she begins cutting into the outline with the tool, being careful to keep her hands behind the blade to avoid cutting yourself – safety is paramount. A golden safety rule is to rotate the block not the tool. Lisa typically works from light to dark colours, in a similar way to watercolours. She decided to make the street scene for the demo in shades of blue using a mix of Prussian blue and white for the sky. She added Paynes grey to the blue to make a darker blue where necessary. Using a registration corner made from mount board she lines up the first print for printing, then presses the paper with a round bamboo Japanese tool called a baren to transfer paint to paper. When sufficient layers are printed, clean the block and cut more lino away to make the next layer. Use a tiny amount of Gamsol, similar to white spirit, to remove paint residues from the block. ‘Chatter’ marks are random lines that appear when ink is accidentally picked up on the wrong (carved away) parts of lino and leaves unplanned, random and unexpected marks. Sometimes this creates added charm, other times it gets in the way. At our demo Lisa for the last layer of colour Lisa cut away details such as little drop shadows, reinforcing lines where they were needed, window frames on the houses, bricks and so on. The resulting print was brilliant, as you can see in the photos. Our thanks to Lisa for giving such an interesting, warm and informative demo. It was well-attended by members and guests, who all enjoyed it enormously and Lisa may well have inspired a few of us to try linocut printing again. Thanks to Lynn Pick for being our 'official' photographer for the demo.
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