Tabla de contenidos para Paint & Draw Collection en Paint & Draw Collection

Creating a piece of art is a rewarding, challenging and very personal endeavour, – the Paint & Draw Collection Volume 3 is here to take you through that journey from start to finish. Art is subjective, and many artists tend stick to one medium. Whether you are interested in oil painting, watercolours, pencil sketching or pastel work, there’s something for you. From quick tips to in-depth tutorials that will guide you from initial sketch to finished piece, learn how to develop your skills and produce your best work yet. You’ll be able to experiment with an unfamiliar medium thanks to the step-by-step workshops that cover everything from essential pencil shading techniques to getting the most out of plein air painting. Over the course of the book you’ll gain inspiration from…

Skies are one of the most beautiful things you can witness in nature, and are often a great source of inspiration. However, artists often struggle to tackle them with oils. A common mistake is to treat the sky as the last step of the painting, as an afterthought, which makes it look like it doesn’t belong with the rest of the landscape. It should be painted in connection with rest of the painting in order to achieve a convincing and homogeneous result in terms of colours, brushwork, tones and composition. So try to have a think at the beginning of the painting how you want to depict the sky, how much importance and space you want to give it, and the mood that you are aiming to convey. Another tendency…

In this tutorial on pastels, I want to share the different ways to create surfaces using pastel primers. Using primers means you can have a more textured surface to work on than paper, which holds more layers of pastel. Primers also allow you to vary that texture. For me, the most exciting thing about them is the way that I can create an underpainting to work over, which gets my paintings off to a lively start, and takes away that ‘fear of the blank canvas’. By underpainting first, you combine painting and drawing skills even more than before, and inject a mixed media feel into your work. This can lead to unexpected developments and unplanned outcomes, keeping the experience fresh and exciting. So read on to breathe life into your…

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The origin of miniature painting stretches far back to the medieval age. Historical miniature artists painted exquisite portraits in watercolour on vellum and ivory. They used fine detail and techniques such as stippling and hatching to create layers of colour. Many miniature artists today are still painting in the traditional way, but now miniatures can be of any subject and in a variety of mediums – oil, watercolours and acrylics, to name but a few. Vellum is still chosen as a painting surface, but now more artists are choosing to use newer products such as ivorine, polymin, smooth card or paper, or board. The size the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers accepts for its annual exhibition is no bigger than 6x4.5in. In portraits, the head should be…

I love to sketch outside in pen and watercolour, travelling as light as possible. I aim to capture the character of the scene in front of me rather than worrying too much about accuracy and detail. This helps me work quickly using a simple, easily repeatable process that delivers the spontaneity I like. But working indoors with more time and equipment available (as well as a self-imposed expectation to produce better results), it’s easy for our paintings to become overthought and overworked. To avoid this, I bring my outdoor process inside, and try to draw and paint as if I were on location. Using the same minimum equipment and simple techniques promotes confidence and freedom and, therefore, enjoyment too. So although I’m painting indoors from a photo for this workshop,…

If you’ve ever been on a boat or ship at sea, you might recall the smell of the sea air, the salty spray on your lips and the physical effort required to compensate for the rolling and pitching motion. For this workshop, I decided to recreate these sensations in the studio using a combination of sketches and photo references, but mostly drawing upon my own vivid memories of what it feels like to be at sea. For me, capturing feeling and energy is more important than ‘photographic’ visual accuracy. I’m interested in recreating the emotions that the original experience unleashed. I never sit down to paint, this enables me to use my whole upper body to inject more energy. I also step back frequently to get a more objective view.…

GET THE SKETCH www.filesilo.co.uk/1686-2 Ever since moving to Berlin, I’ve wanted to paint the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. After being bombed in WWII, it remained untouched as a testimony to the barbarism and sacrifice of war. It has always managed to catch my eye and soul. When painting from life, it is important to find a comfortable spot from which to paint. In the case of this church that proved to be a difficult task, because it is in a part of the city popular with tourists, and at the time of painting, it was the freezing Berlin winter. I actually prefer to paint it in winter, because the weather and light conditions are more dramatic and gloomy. However, it does pose challenges, namely the changing weather and light conditions,…

SOMETIMES YOU NEED to shake things up with your drawing, and let go of the impulse to do too much with your work. One of my favourite ways to do this is by creating transfer drawings, also known as trace monotypes. With this printmaking technique, you can transform an ordinary sketch into something almost nostalgic, with a gritty texture and bold contrast. The monotype process creates one print, with the potential for a second variation of that print, but no more. So, in many respects it is similar to a singular drawing. With a piece of paper placed against an inked plate, you can create a drawing, and through pencil pressure, ink is transferred as a print. I prefer to draw directly on the paper without a sketch, letting the…

In this portrait in oils tutorial, I want to open the door for you to start mindfully introducing arbitrary colours and exciting gestures with a variety of tools. A basic understanding of the colour wheel and complementary colours would be useful, so you may need to do a quick bit of research! I love creating challenging colour combinations, varied surface qualities and large tonal shifts. The more freewheeling and distant from the original source (whilst not losing the connection), the more enjoyable I find it. Before I begin almost every painting, I plan the colour scheme for all major elements in my head or on paper. Then I adapt it as the painting moves on. It’s worth noting that some pigments react with one another by going almost black so…

Here, we’ll look at shape and how a seemingly complex subject can be simplified to create a foundation for your drawing, as well as introducing the idea of negative and positive spaces. The exercise outlined in the following steps is one that you can try at home, drawing from your own hand. It could just as easily be applied to a chair, a plant or anything that presents trapped shapes and negative spaces. It will help you to exercise one of the most helpful skills you can develop when making observational drawings – objectivity. Your preconceptions of what you think a hand, chair or plant can look like stop you looking clearly at the subject in front of you. By simplifying what you see into abstract shapes, you can learn…

As a full-time artist, one of the things I often think about is standing out from the crowd. I realise that the interpretation of a subject is just as important as the subject itself. You can convey so much by adding that little extra to your painting, which keeps the painting process exciting for me and hopefully interesting for the viewer too. I love painting wildlife and I’m excited by how I can interpret this popular subject rather than going for a more traditional approach, which might be a photographic interpretation. For example, the wildness of an animal can be interpreted through expressive brush strokes or the hint of strong shapes. Patterns and colour may be all you need to suggest a fleeting glimpse of an animal in the wild.…

GET THE SKETCH www.filesilo.co.uk/1686-2 Beside my studio desk I have a collection of ammonite fossils, whose various textures, in addition to their spiraling form, are always an appealing distraction. I decided to paint them in the style of traditional botanical art, which takes a scientific, very detailed and faithful approach, while also maintaining a simple compositional aesthetic. To select which fossils I wanted to paint, I went through my collection, touching each fossil and making my selection based on contrast of texture. I also looked at colour and chose the fossils with the most visual interest. I settled on three subjects arranged in a roughly triangular formation. The first is a Perisphinctes ammonite and has an ivory coloured shell with sharply delineated ridges, and a fine webwork of cracks along…

Painting in oils means I can capture bright colours by gradually building the painting up in multiple layers. This technique is perfect for painting sunny roses. I was inspired to create this image after seeing a gorgeous wren sitting in my garden, its song lighting up the early morning. My roses weren’t in bloom yet, but this magic moment inspired me to design a painting depicting them. I always start the painting process by sketching ideas. I place various elements together to create my personal unique designs. I doodle compositions and choice of colour (see the photos of my sketchbook, above right). When I’ve found a basic composition that I like, it is only then that I start looking for reference materials. Not the other way around. This way the…