onpainting

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Materials

For normal work / exhibition pieces I paint on the best quality stretched canvas I can get. The paints I use are Windsor and Newton Artisan oils - they are top quality pigment in a medium of modified salflower oil. This makes them water soluble and much more easy to manipulate - be it impasto or fine detail. Definitely better for the wellbeing of the brush!

For illustration work I paint on oil painting paper (check out the Rowney Georgian product) and use Windsor and Newton Alkyds (synthetic resin based) with Sansodor solvent. Alkyds are touch dry and reworkable in 4 to 5 hours - great when time is of the essence.

Palette

I use a minimal colour palette, and am a bit obsessive as to how they are laid out. They have to be in the order right to left and laid out as 1. Titanium White 2. Cadmium Yellow (Light) 3. Olive Green 4. French Ultramine 5. Paynes Grey 6. Raw Umber 7. Burnt Umber 8. Yellow Ochre 9. Indian Red or Alizarian Crimson (depending on subject).

Lighting

When painting at night, I use a combination of a neon strip (white light variety as used in car paint shops), white halogen bulb (DIY stores carry these) fitted into normal light fitting and a stategically placed desk lamp (flexible neck) to cancel out any anoying cross shadows.

Method

I would hesitate to commend my own working methods to anyone - other than passing on the best bit of advice I have ever been given.

The painter Adrian Stokes (whose written work I recommend unreservedly) suggested that one should always start with a monotone painting, as a guide, in various tones of raw umber and white. The idea is to study and decode the subject by identifying and applying the darkest dark (represented by raw umber) and the lightest light (represented by white) then rendering the mid tones in various mixtures of just these two colours.

This anchors your painting and, when dry, assists you in identifying and applying over it the warmest colours through to the coolest without losing the correct relationship between each. It may sound mad but try it - it works, and I always start making pictures in this way.

On 'Art'

One of my oldest friends is a carpenter and an extremely good one - he takes natural materials and makes them into objects which people value because of their inherent craftmanship, beauty and functional value. This seems an admirable thing to be able to do, and it is something I try to offer in the pictures I make. From this perspective, the debate about whether preserved partial animal corpses are 'Art' or not is one I cannot contribute to - other than to observe that 'Art', whatever it is, is something that seems to have commoditised itself.

Where the role of a painter or picture-maker fits into this I leave to others to decide - avoiding the word 'Artist', and aspiring to be as good at picture making as my carpenter friend is at what he does is good enough for me.