Demonstration review
Watercolourist Jake Winkle, who’s known for his bold, loose and lively style, returned to Lacock Art Group towards the end of March to demonstrate his approach to painting wild animals. Before going any further, apologies  to Jake for borrowing the title of one of his DVDs in the headline of this blog post. ‘Going Wild in Watercolour' is also the title of one of his art workshops at the White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough on 22 May. 
Jake previously demonstrated his method to LAG in about 2016, and he remembered one or two members who had evidently made a lasting impression on him! This time around Jake created two paintings during the demo; a pair of otters were the main feature, followed by a quicker painting of a cockerel.

​Equipment
To start with Jake gave a brief explanation about his preferred painting kit, as follows.

Paper
 He uses Arches watercolour paper, rough, 140lb/300g/m2 because it absorbs water quickly and evenly, allowing the paint to bed into the surface of the paper in a consistent way. He also stretches the paper to prevent it cockling when applying very wet washes. The paper then tightens up again when the paint is dry. 
Palette
Jake used a portable palette for the demonstration, although a white dinner plate does a sufficient job if you have nothing else – the base of the plate provides a big enough surface to mix paints while the rim holds blobs of paint. He said it’s important to keep the mixing space of your palette away from paint itself so that it doesn’t become contaminated.
Easel
His easel is home-made, portable and built to his specification, with all the key features positioned exactly where he needs them to be.

​Paint
As he is a colourist Jake, uses secondary colours straight out of tube rather than mixing them to achieve greater intensity of colour. Using the full range of tones and colours is key to his style. The brands he tends to use are Winsor & Newton (W&N) plus a couple of Daler Rowney colours. He uses these brands partly because they are what he started with but also because, in his view, some of the other brands aren’t as thick as W&N out of tube. This is important for his style of painting, which involves applying dark colours straight away, rather than the more traditional approach of building up depth of colour in layers. 
Brushes
Jake recommends using hair (sable) brushes because they create a clearer wash, and hold about three times the volume of water than synthetic brushes. With watercolour, he explained that for optimum results it’s essential to touch the paper with the brush as little as possible.

Practice, practice, practice
It gets complex when combining all the basic techniques of watercolours so he advises learning how to use watercolours through a lot of practice, to the point where it becomes second nature: you know how the paper reacts to and absorbs water; you can anticipate what happens when wet paint hits wet paper; how watery or thick the paint needs to be, and so on. Only when you are fully familiar with how watercolour behaves can you begin to consider your own artistic interpretation of the subject, which is what makes your art different to others. 

Painting 1: Otters

• As well as a reputation for loose painting, another feature of his work is simple backgrounds. Plus, he tends to paint lights and darks at the same time, in contrast to the traditional watercolour approach of working from light to dark. He also works very quickly, especially at demos. He spends the majority of time on the drawing.
• The reference image he used was monochromatic, so Jake had to work out how to bring the animals to life through the use of colour, and how to make the flat fur appear interesting. He chooses bright, intense colours for his animal paintings yet manages to ensure they remain lifelike. Jakes puts in colour – purples and blues - where photo is grey. When watercolour paint dries quite a lot of the paper shines through and dulls the colour. 
• He started by painting the otters’ eyes with the paint sticky in consistency, but didn’t wet the paper first. He doesn’t always start with eyes, though tends to if he’s working wet into wet so that the rest of the painting builds up around it and to ensure the eye sits correctly within the head/body. 
• Jake paints what he sees. His advice was to not paint what you know (what you think you see) which you’ll do if you over analyse the subject. It’s not important to get it exact but ensure the shapes hang together and give the overall impression of your subject.
• He paints the otter on the left first, making the hair blue, painting on dry paper, and changes the colour temperature as he paints, adding warmer colours of crimson and orange. Jake also recommended working with lots of liquid so that while the paper is damp you can go back in and work on it. He creates areas of lighter colour, which gives energy to the painting, and he aims to incorporate hard and soft edges. 
• For the white face and neck, he adds blue to white to get the right colour and puts warm colours next to cool ones to give luminosity. Warm pushes the painting forwards while cool pulls it back. He paints the whisker follicles while damp. 
• Above all, Jake always tries to make interesting marks on paper, doesn’t “paint by numbers” or just fills in shapes with paint. 
• He uses the dry brush technique for the darker hair on the otter’s neck and adds darker paint next to the chin to show its shape. 
• He makes the painting into a vignette towards base of paper, by softening out edges, or by loose, diagonal brush strokes. 

​

Second otter
The second otter, on the right of the picture, is very pale, providing contrast. Jake explains that paintings need busyness and quietness, achieved with tonal differences. Instead of grey, he puts in a combination of blue and crimson, wet into wet, to add depth. 
Spattering paint helps break up patterns and shapes, but also can help bring together the object and background. Making the whiskers overlap onto the second otter also helps to connect the pair. 
The background is a pale, delicate wash of cobalt blue, a dominant colour in the rest of the painting, helps to unify it and also helps to reveal the otters’ edges. 
Jake also discussed how he fragments, or breaks up, the image to simplify it, adding that the key to simplification is, in fact, understatement not omission. Find a way to understate the image, not omit elements because that can change the scene, making it unrecognisable.
Understatement can be delivered through reduction – reducing lots of small shapes into larger ones by connecting them together, often by tone, and by merging shapes together with soft, blurred edges.

Painting 2: cockerel
This was a very quick, gestural painting.

• Start with a pencil sketch of just a few lines. 
• Work super fast. Note the light comes from left. 
• Very wet cobalt blue even though it’s red on pic. Painting very wet allows you to drop bright colours in to give depth. 
• Bright red for the comb. 
• White gouache thick on head. 
• Alizarin crimson and violet for the top/neck. 
• Beak is yellow but he made it darker so that it stands out against the white background. 
• Dark into small eye. 
• Add shadows on the chest and front to create the silhouette of the body shape.
• Warm and cool contrast as before.
• Legs - sticky dry brush stroke. Red (warm) for near leg. Blue grey for far leg. 
• Tail feathers - have fun, go mad, use any colour you like. 
• Cast shadow on the ground adds perspective and movement. 
• Finish with some spatter to infer movement.

Wrapping up
It was a pleasure to welcome Jake back to LAG to show his approach. His demo not only proved to be inspirational for the 30 or so members and guests who attended, it also provoked some lively, good natured and amusing discussion from one of our more provocative members on the topic of sustainable art materials! Overall, this demo was tremendous fun, informal yet most informative.

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:

• Use brushes that are as big as possible.
• The energy in your body and how you make marks is key to painting well – use long sweeping strokes. Go for it. Be bold, confident and enthusiastic.
• Oil painting brushes were traditionally made of hog hair but nowadays some very good synthetic ones are available, which are perfectly serviceable.
• A silicone wedge is a useful tool to apply paint to large areas of the canvas.
• Try out different ways of making marks eg upwards brush strokes.
• Use a palette that’s as large as possible so that you have space to mix multiple colours. If you’re just starting with oils a sheet of palette paper is adequate. Cover it with cling film when finished to prevent it from drying out. For the workshop Melissa used a large glass mirror – flat and smooth – as her palette. She advises against using a palette with section dividers because it’s harder to mix and dance among the colours on these.
• Work from dark colours to light, oils can take it – the reverse of watercolours where you work from light to dark.
• A point of interest is that the name ‘canvas’ stems from bygone times when sailcloth material was used as a painting surface.

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:

• First decide what the focal point is to be. This is the main point of interest in a painting, and it’s the artist’s responsibility to direct the eye towards it. 
• Next decide where to place the focal point within the composition. Keep in mind the ‘golden mean’ (or rule of thirds) in art to inform your choice. This is a rule of thumb guide that involves dividing the canvas into thirds vertically and horizontally; the four intersection points where the lines cross are the best places for a focal point. Melissa explained that research shows that the top left intersection point is the most effective from a visual standpoint, partly because our eyes are used to reading across a page from left to right.
  
• Then decide where to put the horizon line - high or low, but not in the middle of the composition. If the sky is stormy with lots of interesting clouds put your horizon lower down the painting so that the sky is a main feature. Conversely, if the sky is the plain blue of a hot, still, summer’s day it’s not going to be visually interesting, so put your horizon line higher up the composition so that the focus is on the foreground of the scene (which is hopefully more visually interesting than the sky!).
  
• Use pathways (figuratively speaking) within the composition to lead the viewer through the scene to the focal point.

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. 

• Make scratch marks with twigs.
• Splattering is another useful technique, but be sure to mask out areas that you don’t want splatters to go. Use a toothbrush, and add Sansodor fluid (by Winsor & Newton) to loosen the paint enough to splatter. This technique is good for breaking up the surface and adding depth and works well for sand (and gravel). 
• Dribbles - add more fluid to the paint to really loosen it up and tip the board to make it run down. 
• Use the edge of a palette knife to make sharp, straight lines (such as for long grass).

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.

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.

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.

• Wet the whole sheet. Paint sky over trees unless the trees are lighter than sky.
• Use only three colours. This makes you think about tone.
• For the sky, paint a little Light Red or Permanent Rose above the tree, and French Ultramarine at top and bottom. Aim for a graduated effect, avoid stripes. 
• Tree – has a rough edge so use a dry brush to paint it, in Raw Sienna with touch of Light Red. Darken with little Ultramarine Blue (mid-tone). For tree branches – the tree’s scaffolding – use 100% Ultramarine and Light Red.
  
• Next, Paul showed us how to paint skies with fluffy clouds. Draw the cloud shape with plain water and fill it in with water. Paint Cobalt Blue from the top of the paper down to the edge of cloud. Use pale Raw Sienna in mid of cloud, and add Red to Blue to make a light grey colour for the underside of the cloud.

Paul also taught us how to simplify perspective, to help make the prospect of it less daunting. Briefly, when drawing a building think of it as dealing with a box, a shoe box for example. Decide or observe where the horizon, or eye line, is in your design, he said, explaining the principles of one and two-point perspective.

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.

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.

The practice of making a tonal underpainting in one colour
by Joy Tickell

The word ‘Grisaille’ comes from the French ‘gris’, for grey, so is literally a grey scale painting.
However, this term is used even if the underpainting is done using another colour - often burnt
umber. Painting a grisaille allows the artist to focus on the tonal values (degree of light or dark)
without the complications of colour. When working in colour it can be easy to misjudge the
actual tonal value.

An ancient art
The concept of Grisaille started hundreds of years ago when pigments were scarce. Old
masters used it as a first stage of an oil painting, which was then glazed over to achieve
luminosity in their work. Glazing is when transparent layers of paint are used over opaque
layers. Rembrandt, amongst others, was a great exponent of this method of working. The light
can then travel through the transparent layers and be reflected back from the opaque
underlayers of the grisaille giving greater depth of colour.

The underpainting was done by covering the white canvas (or other surface) with a slightly
diluted paint. The paint is then wiped away in the light areas of the image to reveal the white
surface below. A tonal underpainting is then built up by adding white and black to the paint to
build up the various tones.

One of the best examples of Grisaille in modern art is Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ painting.

One of the downsides of using a grisaille is that the final colours may be less vivid. However this
can be overcome by using a mixture of glazing techniques as well as using opaque colours to
enhance these less vivid areas.

Although this method was traditionally used in oil painting it can also be used in acrylic and
watercolour. Often a grisaille piece is left as a stand alone artwork, without the addition of
colour, and this is known as a classic grisaille.

How to approach grisaille
I have attempted to show how this method can be used to paint a box of oranges. I am not an
expert so please do take time to investigate how experts do it properly!!! I have used oils for my
example.

Step by step guide
​In diagram 1 you can see how I have made an initial sketch of the image.

​In diagram 2 I have made a basic grisaille using burnt umber with black and white to get my
tonal underpainting. I could have gone to much more trouble using more tones but as this is
only an example I didn’t spend too much time on it.

In diagram 3 I have used glazes of orange on the fruit, french ultramarine on the box and green
on the leaves. You can see already how easy it is to bring life to the underpainting.

In diagram 4 I have wiped away some of the orange glaze where I want the lightest areas of the
image to be.

In diagram 5 I have used a glaze of cadmium yellow over the highlight areas of the oranges.
I have also used a glaze of green gold on the leaves and burnt sienna on the wooden crate. I
could keep adding layers and add some opaque highlights to really give it some bling.

For my glazes I diluted my oil with a little liquin. There are glazing mediums available or you can
research how to make your own by browsing the web.
​
I hope this will inspire you to have a go at this technique. Do send your examples so that we can
post them on our website for all to see!!

Demo diary date: Thursday 30 March
At the end of March we are putting on a demo with a difference. Instead of featuring watercolours, oils or acrylics, this demo is all about making art with encaustic wax. Phil Madley, a talented, contemporary artist who works with encaustic wax to create stunning, original, unique paintings, will take the audience through his approach. Encaustic wax is an ancient method of painting, using heated wax, often painted onto firm yet absorbent surfaces, such as wood. 

Take a look at Phil's website to find out more about his art and technique. To learn more about the history of encaustic wax and using it to paint with, there's an interesting article on Jackson's Art Supplies website.

What to expect
Phil will produce several paintings in wax during the demo, and pass them round for people to look at. He works with an iron, hot stylus, hot air gun, scriber, to name a few tools. He’ll also bring paintings along to the demo to show the audience and he promises the session will be fun, informative and quite a bit different!

Phil works on a flat table, rather than an easel, which means that the audience usually gathers around the table so they can see what he’s doing. Therefore, we will use a camera and projector, which will be set up above the table, looking directly down at the work surface, to ensure everyone has a good view of what's going on.​

Timings
Arrive no later than 6.45pm for a 7pm prompt start.
​Further details are available on the events page of our website, where you can also find out about forthcoming events organised by Lacock Art Group. 

Guests welcome
This demo is open to  guests and visitors for an entry price of £5 per person, payable at the door on the night. Please come along and join us. 

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.

By Chris Crosby
Good composition in a painting is vital, and using negative space can be a way of balancing elements, helping to add interest to the whole work, as well as improving the accuracy of drawing. Negative space is the space around and between the subject of the image, whereas the subject of the artwork occupies the positive space.
Negative drawing is also useful for adding outlines and colours where you might otherwise struggle to find a way.
 I use this method in my work with coloured pencil; it is not possible to colour white over darker colours, and saves having to pre-think which areas I need to colour white first.​

Here are some examples of my work to show what I mean
​Looking at the black and white Schnauzer, you can see that I’ve made the shape of the eyebrows and beard by working back into the space with a black pencil.
With the Westie, I have gone into the edges of Alfie’s fur with the rust pencil, to outline him.  

​There are many examples of negative drawing and positive/negative space available on the internet (of course!), some of which I’ll share here:

UK artist Rebecca Mills
Negative space is used in photography and design and there are examples everywhere we can see in everyday life. Negative space is used a great deal in logo design as we see in the FedEx logo and the white arrow that is created in the negative space. Once you sharpen your eye to negative spaces you might find yourself spotting the hidden shapes in them everywhere. You can read more about this on Rebecca’s website.

UK Artist Mike Sibley
What do you see when you look at this picture below? Do you see an ancient black drinking cup? Maybe an ebony candlestick holder? These are the positive images. Or do you see two white faces both looking at each other? Think of these faces as the negative areas or what I call White Space. Imagine yourself seeing these two faces on white paper and filling in the space between them in black so the faces are revealed. This is Negative Drawing - seeing the space and not the line. Teaching yourself to see White Space is one of the best lessons you will ever learn.

​If you want more tips and to practice negative drawing take a look at “An introduction to negative drawing with Mike Sibley” published on the Art Instruction website. You can also find some articles and videos on the topic (pay to download) on Mike Sibley’s website.

​Other links to useful articles about negative drawing/space:
https://emilysnotebook.co.uk/all-posts/negative-space-drawing/
https://theartyteacher.com/what-is-negative-space-in-art/
The renowned graphic design artist, Escher, is known for using negative space in his art – read all about it here.
You can also deploy negative space to great effect in paintings, as explained in this post on Draw Paint Academy.

I hope you find this post informative - thank you for reading.