|
Each month laterlife.com presents a feature from either The
Artist
or its sister publication, Leisure Painter.
Art masterclass
from The Artist, the monthly magazine for amateur
and semi-professional painters, giving practical instruction in
painting and drawing in watercolour, pastels and oils, as well
as news of art events, exhibitions and competitions open to
leisure artists;
www.theartistmagazine.co.uk
This month: an 'Artists of the world' feature from
the current edition of The Artist, the magazine
for amateur and semi-professional painters.
Sample feature from this months issue:
An Anemone Romance
Botanical artist Billy Showell describes how she captures these flowers in watercolour
The anemone's pretty frilly collars and constantly altering petals make it a most delightful subject for the botanical painter.
There was a time when I found anemones too intimidating to paint, but a commission forced me to take up the challenge and now I adore painting them. The predominant reason for this is their stems; the flowers can twist and turn, creating all kinds of composition possibilities.
|
|
Anemones are also steeped in history and have been depicted in
various styles and media by many artists.
DEMONSTRATION:
|
STAGE ONE
Draw a simple outline of the flower – I use a sharp HB – and lightly indicate the overall shape. Then, starting with the most dominant petal, build out to complete the remaining silhouette |
STAGE TWO
- Lightly lift excess graphite from the study with a putty or plastic rubber, I use a soft dabbing motion to leave just a feint trace of the drawing
- Mix up a puddle of red; for this flower I used a mix of quinacridone red with a hint of permanent rose
- Glaze one petal with water and, while still wet, drop in the red, allowing it to spread towards the white part of the petal.
|
|
Then carefully sweep out the highlights with a clean but virtually
dry brush. Work up the petals alternately allowing each to dry
|
STAGE THREE
When all the first coats of the petals are dry, remove all the pencil. Glaze the centre white part of the flower with water and carefully drop in some quinacridone magenta, allowing it to spread to create a fuzzy semicircle. While this is drying sweep in some texture using the tip of a slightly damp brush. |
When completely dry paint in the centre of the flower with a weak mix
of cadmium yellow pale and French ultramarine. Finally, put a small
glaze of cobalt blue on the underneath of the curled-up petal
| STAGE FOUR
The shadow mix is a blend of French ultramarine, cadmium yellow pale and cadmium red deep: mix them until you achieve a soft neutral grey. Only put on small amounts of shadow at a time and soften the edge of the shadow with a clean damp brush; use the same soft grey to create the veining on the white part of the petals. |
|
Add some fine lines of quinacridone magenta to create the filaments.
Use the very tip of your brush to apply fine veins in quinacidone
red over the petals – study the direction of the veins and copy them
as closely as you can to create shape and realism. For the top part
of the stem use a blend of cadmium yellow pale and Winsor blue
green shade and, when dry, add a little cadmium red to the green
to create the shadow cast across the stem.
|
STAGE FIVE
Glaze over areas of the petals with the original red and pink mix to strengthen the colour where necessary. When all the petals are dry, use a mix of cadmium red deep, indigo and titanium white to dab in the heads of the stamens; allow to become completely dry
|
STAGE SIX
Observe the shape and direction of the stamens: outline or accentuate each of the stamen heads with a virtually black mix of indigo and cadmium red deep |
|
This article is extracted from the July 2008 issue of The Artist.
laterlife interest
The above article is part of the features section of laterlife.com
called
laterlife interest.
laterlife interest
contains a variety of articles of interest for visitors to
laterlife.com written by a number of experienced and new
journalists.
It includes both one off articles and also associated
regular columns of a more specialist nature such as
Healthwise,
Talkback,
Gardener's Diary,
and a beauty section called
Looking good
in later life.
There's also
'It
could be you' by Maggi Stamp laterlife's counsellor on human
relationships.
Also don't forget to take a look at our regular IT
question and answer section called
YoucandoIT
by IT trainer and author Jackie Sherman.
To view the latest articles click on
laterlife interest or to
view indexes to previous articles click on
laterlife interest index.
To search for articles about a certain topic, use the site search
feature at the top of the navigation.
|
