In many of my paintings, I’ll often start with just a couple of colours and perhaps one brush. Yet if you look at the materials list I ended up using, you’ll see a much larger range. And that process of how I got there can be slightly misleading. It can look as though I sat down before starting the painting, carefully selected the perfect palette, laid all the colours out and then simply followed the plan. That usually isn’t what happened. The materials list is a record of the colours I discovered I needed during the painting journey. If I repainted the same subject again from scratch, I may take a slightly different route, based on what I learnt. I might find I don’t need one of those colours at all. I might discover that a mixture I struggled with could have been achieved much more simply. I often finish a painting on the first attempt and think: Why on earth did I start with that colour? But that is part of the process. Building without predicting It reminds me of an article Derek Sivers wrote about when designing an off-grid house in New Zealand. His idea was essentially building without predicting. (You can read the article here: Building Without Predicting) Rather than designing a house around everything he imagined he and his son might possibly need, they started by living very simply in a bare cabin. Then they added things when they discovered they actually needed them. I love that idea. We took a similar approach when renovating our house and studio. We lived in it for a year before making some of the bigger decisions. That meant we could follow the seasons. We could see where the morning light came through in Winter, where we naturally sat in Summer, which rooms we actually used and where we tended to end up during the day. Instead of trying to predict how we would live in the house, we let living in the house tell us what it needed. A comment at the end of Sivers’ article particularly struck me. He described a neighbour visiting and being horrified by some of the choices they had made. A neighbor came by for the first time and really hated it, getting all upset and yelling, saying I was crazy for not having his preferred comforts. I love that this home feels wrong for others, and just right for us - Derek Sivers His conclusion was essentially that he loved the fact the house felt wrong for someone else, but exactly right for them. And I think there’s something really useful in that when developing a colour palette. Your palette doesn’t have to look right to somebody else. Developing a personal palette There’s a temptation when painting to think there must be a correct palette. You see another artist using Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red and Titanium White, so you feel as though you should have those colours too. Or you look…

‘People say that it is difficult to know oneself but it’s not easy to paint oneself either’
Excerpt from a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, September 1889

My first introduction to the Dutch painter Vincent Willem van Gogh was at school. A tortured artist who cut off his ear and painted thick, brightly coloured swirly paintings.

He felt dramatic, passionate and extreme.

12-year-olds tend to want to produce art that looks more realistic, so I think at the time, I wanted to try and paint like Cezanne. Cezanne’s still life’s hit the dizzy heights of being recognisable yet achievable, with a nice painterly style.

But thinking back, I probably felt I was being sophisticated and different; copying Van Gogh as a young painter seemed too obvious.

It wasn’t until an art trip at 16 to the National Gallery, London that I rediscovered the Sunflowers… (more…)

“A Painting is complete when it has a Shadow of a God”
Rembrandt van Rijn

Unlocking the Secrets to Creating Realistic Shadows in Sunlit Paintings

I remember being taught at art college that shadows weren’t really present in paintings until the Renaissance period.

And you’d be forgiven for thinking when you look at some beginners work, that they were from Ancient Greece – they didn’t use shadows either!

In live painting classes in the past, when I’ve mentioned the words ‘cast shadow’, students concentration wains or worse, a look of rising panic crosses their faces as if they’ve been duped into a technical drawing class.

I’m not quite sure why cast shadows seem so mysterious, elusive or confusing. Shadows help to ‘ground’ an object and learning to accurately observe them, is the most effective way of making your paintings look convincing.

And just by switching the name around it seems easier to digest.

Shadows cast.

I want to keep it simple without the complications of multiple light sources or atmospheric perspective that occurs in vast landscapes, today I am going to focus on shadows cast outside, by sunlight.

Shadows cast by a tree, by a building, shadows cast by a chair or plant pot. The shadow that is falling onto the ground, or against a wall, or onto a table. (more…)