Tabla de contenidos para Volume 15 Issue 4 en Artists Back to Basics

There really is nothing quite as exciting as opening the lid of a new wooden box to reveal the resonating beautiful colours of pastels, they almost whisper “potential”. Artists love pastels because of their extraordinary colour range and for their immediacy and ease of use. Pastels are made of pure dry pigment suspended in a binder (gum arabic, tragacanth, or methyl cellulose) and moulded into sticks. The softness and dryness of pastel colours allows the artist to control the colour applied to paper using blending or scuffing techniques. Pastels have a very high degree of permanence, but it is important that they may be “fixed” with an archival fixative spray to prevent the powder rubbing off. Gian Paolo Lomazzo wrote in 1584 that Leonado Da Vinci invented the pastel drawing…

We’ll limit our brushes to two! This will encourage us to investigate the capabilities of these brushes, hopefully in a deeper way than you have before. Let’s start. Dish out a healthy slab of each of the following (in this order from left to right): Burnt Umber Dioxazine Purple Ultramarine Blue Pthalo Blue Cadmium Yellow Medium Alizaren or Cadmium Red White (LOTS) I recommend starting with a smaller canvas. Build up to a larger canvas as you develop confidence. Draw a roughly horizontal line across the middle of your canvas. Remember, this is not a painting, this is an exercise. You choose whether you want the orientation landscape or portrait. Brush Exercise One Pick up a large dollop of white using your size 12 brush, and place it on your…

Greetings! Have you ever seen someone hypnotized? They often do strange things such as acting as if their foot is glued to the floor. Have you hypnotized yourself into not being able to draw? How many times have I heard people say “I can’t even draw a straight line?” Is that the ultimate test of artistic ability? How important is drawing anyway? Using the tools of the trade Would you expect a carpenter to build a house without a hammer, or it’s technological equivalent, a nail gun? Would you trust a mechanic who comes to work without a set of spanners? How about a hairdresser with blunt scissors? Every craft has a set of “tools of the trade”. What are ours? Our tools are brushes, knives, paint, palette, rags, etc.…

Ok, in the last article we got through three of the main hand tools necessary to draw in freehand. To re-cap these are: Staedtler Mars Lumograph 2B drafting pencils, a stock of vinyl erasers cut into strips and wrapped in paper, and a surgically clean, sharp knife to not only slice up your rubbers into strips initially but to trim the end of the rubber every time a completely clean eraser is called for during the course of a drawing (a lot). Sharpening gear You’ll also need a good quality pencil sharpener for general use as well as a very sharp knife of some kind (old wooden handled kitchen knives with the blade cut off short are great as the handle feels good in your hand and the blade is…

This particular painting was commissioned for someone moving overseas. The scene depicts the view from their family home. The client wanted the dam, windmill and gum tree in the painting. The swamp hens in the foreground are frequent visitors to the house. They are local characters. Given a chance, they will make a mess on the verandah and steal the apples from under the apple tree. For the painting I used my preferred medium which is gouache and watercolour on Arches watercolour paper. STEP ONE Before I began the drawing, I washed the paper blue and let it dry completely. I accurately drew the swamp hen in first – from a series of photographs and some live sketches STEP TWO Once I was happy with the drawing of the bird,…

Contributed THE LOVE OF A GOOD BRUSH A good brush – what makes you love it? Have you ever stopped to consider how your favourite brush came to be in you hand? The making of a brush is a skilled craft, even on a mass production level. An expert brush maker rarely trims the pointed ends of the brushes, but will comb and arrange the hairs by hand and adjust them within the ferrule (the metal grip) to give just the right shape, even utilising the natural curve of some bristles so that they form a gentle inwards curve called an ‘interlocking bristle’. Everything else also comes into play – the quality of the Gum Arabic (the glue) that holds the hairs together, the brush handle (the wood type, the…

Elena Parashko Gallery was established in 2004 – initially as an online gallery at www.elenaparashko.com – and has since evolved into much more. Beginning with an online gallery was an affordable and manageable way to establish myself as an emerging artist. Having a website means that location and distance is no obstacle as people from anywhere in the world can view and purchase my artworks. My collection of paintings online also acts as a virtual portfolio for anyone who would like to review my work. This includes other galleries who are considering representing me and clients who wish to commission me to paint something special for them. The online collection is a good representation of my unique style and the type of artwork I create. Not everyone is comfortable with…

My approach to artworks is primarily influenced by both the subject matter and the medium I am using. Nothing can be truer than the saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ when it is applied to our marine environment. While we are drawn to its shores and frolic in its waves, mostly we only see the sky reflected on its surface and close our eyes tight when we go under. This blindness has engendered an appalling ignorance and lack of concern for the waters that constitute most of Planet Earth. I hope that my paintings will help others to open their eyes and look beneath the waves … and then maybe to think more about what we put in our marine environment; what we take from it and what we…

Story behind the painting One of the highlights of my annual painting workshop at Daku Resort in Fiji is to enjoy the tropical vegetation and beautiful flowers. My favourite is the hibiscus which comes in a fantastic array of colour combinations with some flowers even being the size of dinner plates. This hibiscus growing outside my hut was the perfect subject for a painting. STEP 1 I observed the hibiscus flower from all angles and decided this was the most pleasing view to paint. I captured this moment with a photograph as flowers continue to open throughout the day, wilt over time and some even close again at night. Once the actual flower had died, the photo was used as a guide to continue painting over the course of the…