Painting with Claire Harrison

 

Claire started painting at the early age of three and as, she was also very interested in natural history, gravitated towards the natural world for her subjects. She started her career by hiring a hall for an exhibition in six months time and then worked on producing the paintings to fill it!  These early works were produced using photographs and Photoshop to obtain manipulated images as a basis for her paintings.

 Now Claire spends longer on sketching than painting . She first draws in ink with a Rotring pen and produces photocopies of the drawing and then experiments with different colours on the copies.  She does a careful colour study for each painting using colour pencils as well as paint.

Pattern ideas come from an intensive study of Islamic Art. Also ideas based on  Fibonacci numbers and fractal patterns form a starting point for much of her work. Fractals are complex patterns repeated constantly and in diminishing size eg snowflakes or the chambers in a Nautilus shell. She repeats the main image in a pattern within it eg a daisy repeated as a pattern making the spirals on the daisy's centre. If the spirals on a daisy centre or pine cone are counted in one direction a Fibonacci number is arrived at. If counted in the other direction the result is the neighbouring number in the series. Each Fibonacci number is formed by adding the two numbers before it:-

                       0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 etc 

Claire then showed us some pictures of dragonfly wings, foxgloves, snail shells, dandelion heads and violas to illustrate the above points before demonstrating her working method for her daisy painting.

Gesso is not used on a base but she uses MDF board soaked with water and painted with a thin layer of acrylic allowing the colours to mix such as red, yellow or white.

This process is continued by putting on firstly thin layers of oil paint and then finally thick layers. This produces a translucency to the final painting as the lower layers shine through. The medium she uses for the first layers is Spectagel which is fast drying. Other layers are painted using Liquin as the medium and this allows the paint to run. Impasto medium is used for the final layers. Colours are mixed on the board.

Claire traces her daisy drawing onto the canvas and paints the daisies with thin watercolour and a fine brush. The petals are then sketched in. She then goes over the whole with oil paint with linseed oil and uses linseed oil to blend in the tonal areas where the petals join the disc.  The painting takes a week to dry in hot weather but normally 2 to 3 weeks. Claire usually allows a month for drying for an exhibition painting. As it usually takes 6 months to complete one painting it means that Claire is multi-tasking with a few paintings being produced at any one time.

This was a fascinating evening and hopefully inspired everyone to try to produce a close-up painting for the competition in September.

ADVENTUROUS ARTISTS AT THE SIR HAROLD HILLIER GARDENS

Our Adventurous Artists sketching  group had an enjoyable visit to Hiller Gardens. We were lucky with the weather because the rain cleared up.  The regional exhibition of the UK Coloured Pencil Society had some accomplished artwork. We saw Wendy Jelbert and she was delighted because one of her paintings had won a prize.

 

You can see us - Jean, June, Ali, Roy and Di working hard at our sketches. We noticed how much the regular practice has increased our individual drawing skills. Joan Bass was by the pond sketching the duck house when the photos were taken; but she met up with us in the cafė afterwards. Next month we will be very busy preparing for the summer exhibition, so the sketching group will not meet again until Friday 9th September. The venue will be announced nearer the time.

Di Alexander

Di

Roy

Ali

June and Jean

Alison and painting

In the tea break 

Final painting

Alison Board Demonstrates Watercolours with a Difference

 Alison enjoys a reputation as an experimental watercolour artist. She has used many different kinds of art materials since working in an art shop. She loves combining them with watercolour in unusual ways. A list of the materials that she used in the demonstration appears at the end of this article.

Alison prefers to allow the painting to develop without controlling it too much: ‘Don’t have an end result in mind, then you will not be disappointed’. She asks two questions at the beginning: ‘What does the subject need in order to bring it to life?’ and ‘What do I fancy using today?’                                                


We were surprised to see her begin by tracing the daisy heads from her photograph using a biro - but they were very simple shapes. A Maskaway eraser removed unwanted marks left by the tracing paper.                      


Alison’s usual palette consists of three ‘cold’ colours, in this case: Daniel Smith Prussian blue, cobalt violet and green gold plus one additional colour. She avoids mixing colours or overworking a painting. “Brushing the paint into the surface of the paper results in ‘dead’ colours.” She applied splashes of prussian blue and­­ green gold wet-in-wet and allowed them to run down. She said that half the fun of painting is ‘the unexpected’.                               


Demonstrating one of her favourite techniques – incorporating quotes or printed paper – Alison pasted strips from a map of the Totton area onto the paper using Bindex adhesive below and above them. She brushed Daniel Smith’s Watercolour Ground over and around parts of the strips. This enabled her to paint over an otherwise water-repellent surface. Watercolour Ground is very useful for increasing texture, making cut edges less noticeable or covering a painted area. It enables watercolours to be used on glass, metal, plastic and other surfaces.

Green gold watercolour was used for the daisy centres, followed by a clear wax resist stick over them instead of masking fluid. Brusho powder was brushed around the daisy petals and sprayed with water. The unpainted daisy petals provided areas of strong contrast i.e. white flowers against blue background, with even darker areas beneath the flower-heads.

This was the point at which Alison stepped back and asked herself “What does it need?” She has a wide variety of media at her disposal and enjoys choosing which ones to use. Her view on the painting process is:  “You have to enjoy it, or it’s not worth it”. She used scribbling strokes to shape the flower centres and add cobalt violet shadows. The flower stems were painted with Daniel Smith Zoisite Genuine which is a light blue-green. 

Nearing the end of the painting session she put herself on “faff alert” because she prefers to have unresolved areas rather than an overworked painting. She chose to leave the flower stems not anchored at the bottom. You should aim to finish half an hour before you would normally finish. Her finished painting proved that best quality watercolour paints and paper together with mixed media can achieve beautiful results. 

Materials (Most are available from the SAA website)                                               SAA White nylon No. 6 brush : Larger nylon & sable brush : Palette knife

Saunders Waterford Paper 140lb (not stretched)

Daniel Smith Watercolour paints squeezed into pans: Prussian blue, cobalt violet, green gold, zoisite genuine which is a blue-green.

(Alison loves lamp black, amethyst and sleeping beauty turquoise and hates paynes grey: an example of a hue containing more than two pigments.)

Brusho powdered ink : Daniel Smith Watercolour Ground : Clear wax stick

Tracedown paper : Maskaway masking fluid block (or putty eraser)

Pebeo Bindex adhesive : Torn strips printed map : Spray bottle of water

 

Mike Skidmore painting Still Life

 

Mike is a professional artist who paints mainly portraits and still life subjects. As well as demonstrations Mike runs excellent workshops and on-line tutorials.  After attending art college in the 70's which sapped his confidence Mike now teaches his students to have confidence in themselves and not be too self critical - " look at the "best bits" and not the others and try to get more of them."

 

Starting with a pencil drawing of the subject on canvas Mike uses a grid system to transfer it from a photograph. The photograph is small as this helps to get the subject with the correct detail for the optimum viewing distance as the artist can only see a small amount of detail when working. The canvas is primed with a very thin layer of Paynes Grey and Titanium White. Then using Paynes Grey and Raw Umber the shapes of the gasses were painted in. Highlights were added with dilute acrylic Titanium White using a sable brush trying to get the basic shapes not an exact copy.

Mike uses a limited palette of 4 or 5 colours.  If he finds a pleasing mix of colours he stores the mix in a jar in the freezer for possible future use!

Continuing with oil paint Mike mixes a very thin glaze of Ivory Black and Raw Umber with a medium of:- 4 parts real turps : 3 parts linseed oil (boiled - raw takes too long to dry) : 3 parts Dammar varnish : 1 part Venetian turps. The final glaze is done with a blending brush. Using a cloth Mike wipes out some of the lighter areas on the glasses then softens the edges. The outlines of the glasses are then re-affirmed using a mix of Ivory Black and Raw Umber. Raw umber is used to put in the darker tones over the wet paint of the glaze using fairly thin paint.

Continuing to the highlights Mike puts in a darker base tone by  using thin Titainium White  which picks up some of the underlying colour . He then adds slightly thicker paint until the main highlight is reached which is painted with a really thick coat. This helps the highlights stand out from the darker areas.

 The cloth is painted flat first then a glaze put over the shadow areas. The highlights are put in using the sable brush and thick paint.  A mix of Raw Umber, Ivory Black and Titanium White are  used to paint the cloth between the shadows. Then using the blending brush white is worked over the shadows to soften them following the shape of the folds with the brush. Finally more highlights are added as necessary.

 

This was one of the best demonstrations we have seen. Mike is very informative and with his humorous way of teaching we learnt much during a very entertaining evening.

 

Mike



Final Painting        



Tea Break

Adventurous Artists in May

 

The sketching group met at the Testwood Lakes on Friday 13th. Most of us tackled the challenge of drawing trees and foliage and afterwards had a refreshment break in the visitor's centre.

The next meeting of the Adventurous Artists Sketching Group will be on FRIDAY  10th JUNE at ST. MICHAELS CHURCH, in the centre of LYNDHURST at 10.15 for 10.30 am. The church has a marvellous Pre-Raphaelite interior.

Parking on the outskirts at Boulton's Bench is free but the central car park has charges.  

Fiona Peart Demonstration

Water-colour Demonstration by Fiona Peart

We welcomed Fiona accompanied by her husband, the well known artist Terry Harrison, to our April Demonstration evening. 

Fiona studied painting and drawing at the Flemish Academy of Fine Art in Leuven in Belgium and went on to become well known as a painter, publishing books and demonstrating and running workshops to adults in this country and abroad. Her aim for the evening was to show the difference in technique used for painting outside and in the studio.

The subject for the first part of the evening was a street scene with horse-riders and cars but based on a photograph and painted in the studio. An outline drawing was made on Bockingford 140 lbs cotton rag paper and the highlights masked out. The colours are then worked out using a limited palette. The house colours are brown and gold darkened with blue/violet for shadows. The skin colour is orange/blue and foliage green/yellow The horses are brown/orange and the road blue with gold.

The paper is attached by the top only with masking tape then wetted and, when fully stretched, taped on the other sides. Large washes are put on over the paper covering the background houses, horses and road. The aim is to get rid of any white paper (the highlights are under the masking fluid). The paper is then dried. If painting outside everything has to be done in one layer but in the studio layers of washes are used.

Fiona then continued to paint the rest of the picture using the flat of the brush to move the paint around - if the tip is used more paint is added. She used the stippling brush for the foliage using an edge of paper to make a clean edge on the roof. Nothing should be painted too accurately and she puts colours on quickly next to each other so that they mix slightly. The shadows were painted last and the paper dried thoroughly. Finally the masking fluid was removed using a tissue or handkerchief and very bright areas toned down. As a last touch the reins were added with a pointer brush.

        Fiona's next painting was of children playing in the sea as a sketch in water-colour. First plenty of colour was mixed on the palette. Fiona uses two brushes for her outdoor sketching - one for flesh colour ( Indian Red or Burnt Sienna or pink and gold darkened with her "bluebell" colour)  and the other for clothes etc.

        She starts with the hair and uses the brushes loaded with the appropriate colour to paint the rest of the body but painting only where there are shadows. This allows the viewer to complete the picture in their mind for themselves A single stroke is used for each limb varying the pressure on the brush to alter the width. Several subjects are used to complete a picture of "one" person. The colours are allowed to mix and run to give more interest. Finally shadows are painted in using the brush held sideways. Water can be added at a later time.

        Fiona is an outstanding teacher and demonstrator. We all learnt a great deal and had a brilliantly entertaining and memorable evening so "Thank you very much" Fiona!  

 

 

Finished horserider painting

 





Tea Break

End of the Evening