Table of contents for July 2025 in Leisure Painter

I loosely placed a few buttercups with bluebells and cow parsley in a pale blue-grey glass vase, the choice of yellow and purple being a perfect combination of complementary colours. I selected flowers with varying sizes and shapes. The dominant flowers in the arrangement were the golden buttercups and the complementary bell-shaped bluebells. The white bells and the cow parsley provided texture and contrast within the arrangement. Due to its delicacy, I felt that pen and wash was the perfect medium with which to interpret the still life. Making a simple line sketch in ink is fun. It provides the contour outline of each element that can be brought to life with washes of colour. A pen-and-wash interpretation is a liberating and spontaneous method of drawing. With practice and confidence,…

I have painted with oils since my teens and, while I loved the buttery nature of oil paint, I often struggled with traditional hog-hair brushes, which tended to split when worn so that the sharp edges of the flats and filberts were compromised, or those with a fine point seemed to lose their tips quickly. Some years ago, I had the opportunity to talk directly to brush manufacturers; it was a fantastic chance to see if one of them might produce a bespoke range of brushes for me. Most manufacturers I spoke to preferred synthetic fibres, explaining that consistency in quality of natural fibres depended to a fair degree on the health of the animals involved, whereas synthetic fibres were far more reliable. I also wanted to create a veganfriendly…

We've reached the final instalment of this graphite series, and I'm excited to guide you through the last stages of our drawing project. In Part 1, we broke down the reference photo of the African painted dog, identified potential challenges, explored techniques to tackle them, and even practised completing those more challenging sections. Now, in Part 2, we'll be bringing everything together, applying the skills we've covered throughout this series to complete the drawing. I chose the African painted dog for this project because it presents a real mix of textures and challenges, which will allow you to practise everything we have learned so far. Their fur is a patchwork of textures, from soft and fluffy to coarse and wiry, which makes it a great test of layering and detail.…

Becky Thorley-Fox SWLA is a landscape and wildlife painter working en plein air, capturing the light, atmosphere and essence of her subject through direct observation. Originally from Cheshire, she is based in mid-Wales near the coast where she finds an endless source of inspiration. Becky is a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists, and her work can be seen in the society's annual exhibition The Natural Eye at the Mall Galleries in London each autumn. Becky has an online gallery sharing her latest work; beckythorley-fox.co.uk This project draws inspiration from the acclaimed countryside artist and illustrator, Charles F. Tunnicliffe OBE, RA, (1901-1979). Originally from Cheshire, Tunnicliffe moved to Anglesey in 1947 and made the island his home along the Cefni estuary where he produced a vast body of artwork.…

Tushar Sabale is an award-winning Indian-born British artist based in London, who mainly paints landscapes and cityscapes from life, en plein air, but occasionally enjoys painting objects too. He was recently awarded the Rosemary Brushes Award at the 2024 Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) annual show at the Mall Galleries, London. Tushar is an official Ambassador of the Broadway Arts Festival, a fully elected member of the Wapping Group of Artists, the Chelsea Art Society and the British Plein Air Painters – a group he co-founded, which sees artists come together once a month to paint plein air in the city of London. In 2023 Tushar was invited to participate in Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year as one of the pod artists filmed at Royal Ascot, and…

Like any skill that has been acquired, painting skills can fall into disrepair if not used frequently. This is partly the reason I recommend painting similar subjects, especially when first starting off. The repetition of skills tends to cement them into becoming second nature. In other words, the mechanics are not brought to mind while painting and certain aspects of it become almost intuitive. This is particularly true of colour mixing – when your base colours become good friends, we can dispense with those colour charts that seems to be present in almost every book on how to paint. If you are a professional or semiprofessional artist, regular output is most important. The discipline of getting paintings ready for shows and exhibitions is a part of an artist's armoury and…

Painting vs illustration Q What is the difference between painting and illustration? A Painting or fine art has a higher perceived value than illustration. An artwork is usually seen as one of a kind. It is designed by the artist to simply exist as the sole original of that piece of art. It does not need a purpose, but if it did, it would be to provide enjoyment to the artist or an audience. It could potentially be sold to the highest bidder for private display, or even kept in a gallery or art museum. An illustration is a visualisation made by an artist to explain information, or to make a point clear. Its aim is to visually represent facts and details as either a drawing, digital illustration, photograph or…

Before you start painting, ask yourself a few questions. What is the picture all about? Why did I select this scene? Which parts am I looking forward to painting, and which parts are worrying me? Now let's look at my source photograph (right). The first thing I think about is what I remember from the day I was there, and what feelings I'd like to express through my painting of the scene. I remember wishing I had more time to follow that track right across the heath; the spring sunshine was beautifully warm and the heady coconut smell of the gorse was intoxicating. Having answered the question about what I remembered of the day, I know I want to: make a feature of the flowers, small as they are; capture…

Question Q I don't want a lot of new supplies. What essential equipment do I need to get going with coloured pencils? Answer A I remember when I started drawing again in my late 40s, I looked for a lot of information about the ‘best’ this, or the ‘best’ that and it quickly became overwhelming and expensive. I can't tell you what's best, because you'll figure out what's best for you over time, but I can give you my list of seven essentials that I wish I'd known about when I started. 1 The pencil Your first set of coloured pencils doesn't need to be a full set, but it must be higher quality than children's school supplies. Higher-quality pencils have so much more pigment, which will blend and layer to…

LONDON ■ Bankside Gallery 48 Hopton Street SE1 020 7928 7521 banksidegallery.com ‘RWS Spring 2025’, featuring works in water-based media, until 26 April. ‘RE Original Prints 2025’: annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, until 8 June. ■ Burgh House New End Square NW3 020 7431 0144 burghhouse.org.uk ‘Helen Oxenbury: Illustrating the Land of Childhood’, and ‘Victorian Idylls: Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham’, until 14 December. ■ Courtauld Gallery Somerset House, Strand WC2 020 3947 7777 courtauld.ac.uk ‘Goya to Impressionism’: masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, until 26 May. ■ Dulwich Picture Gallery Gallery Road SE21 020 8693 5254 dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk ‘Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious’, until 26 May. ■ Mall Galleries The Mall SW1 020 7930 6844 mallgalleries.org.uk ‘Plantae 2025’: the 40th anniversary exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists,…

London-based narrative painter Lorena Levi was born in Istanbul, Turkey, but grew up in London from the age of three. Her passion for art developed as a child. ‘I moved from Istanbul to Tel Aviv and lived there for the first three years of my life before moving to the UK. I was born with cystic fibrosis and spent long stretches of time in hospital where my parents encouraged me to have a creative outlet so I could express my emotions as well as not sinking into boredom and depression. I fell in love with drawing and painting, wanting to do it more and more in my everyday life. I did it throughout school, and took art as one of my A-levels, inspiring me to do an art foundation course,…

I have always loved steam trains and lately I have started painting them. It's not so much the actual locomotive that inspires me to paint but all the lovely light and steam that makes for a dramatic picture. So, you won't be surprised to see that my painting for this article has a wonderful billowing cloud of smoke catching the sunlight as the main theme. For this demonstration I used a combination of Schmincke Horadam gouache and their new super-granulating watercolours. The Horadam gouache range comprises naturally opaque pigments without the addition of white, which means that when you dilute the colours with water you can achieve an almost transparent watercolour wash that is rather unique. The super-granulating range of watercolours really is something very different and exciting. Before you…

KIMBERLEY KEEGAN SHARES TIPS AND ADVICE FOR WORKING ARTISTS KIMBERLEY KEEGAN The Ask an Artist podcast has been releasing episodes for over five years, with total downloads now exceeding 450,000. The podcast aims to assist and support working artists and makers with the administrative and business side of being an artist. This year, podcast producer Kimberley Keegan has been writing this exclusive Q&A feature for The Artist magazine, sharing advice from the podcast and her own wealth of experience. Kimberley, who has a Fine Art degree and is a qualified teacher, is also the co-director of Art Profile, an agency representing over 150 UK artists who teach workshops and deliver demonstrations for art clubs, groups, and societies. You can listen to the podcast on any of the usual podcast platforms…

With its vast array of techniques, an often rebellious nature and the difficulties in rescuing an artistic aberration, watercolour painting often tends to put off the inexperienced painter, so my aim in writing Watercolour and Beyond was to illustrate how to keep things simple, introduce new ways of working, show how to rescue a watercolour that has not worked out, and bring back the joys of painting. While the book is aimed at those who have some experience in watercolour, it begins with a recap of more basic methods before diving into the more exciting stuff. Beginners often choose a subject too complicated for their level of experience. Even simple subjects can be anything but straightforward. Copying a photo or a painting by an accomplished artist can be an excellent…

In this article I will be discussing my fountain pen ink art project as I re-imagine a medium produced for a now diminishing purpose and explore possibilities to enhance its potential for uses within other creative contexts. Here is where taking risks and making mistakes are encouraged, in order to create exciting visual outcomes. Despite a decline in handwriting and fountain pen usage, a diverse range of fountain pen inks continue to be produced, from dye base, duotone, sheening, shimmer and chameleon to nano-particle pigment inks, all of which are available in huge colour ranges and supplied by a handful of international brands. My project explores their unique make-up and reactions to water and bleach. In essence, I'm creating art from destruction, but in a gentle and creative way. Single-dye…

You will need Surface • Saunders Waterford High White 140lb rough paper 11x15in. (28x38cm) Watercolour • Aureolin • Raw sienna • Burnt umber • Payne's grey • Ultramarine • Light red • Alizarin crimson (or permanent rose) • Cerulean blue Miscellaneous • Waterproof ink pen • A natural sponge Step 1 THE DRAWING Starting at the back, draw the farthest tree trunks then work forwards. Indicate the area covered by foliage. Put building details in between the trees and add male and female figures with different occupations. Remember that all heads are at approximately the same height except for the seated figures. The figures slightly farther back will have smaller heads and their bodies will be shorter. Heads are oval rather than round. Finally, add the railings around…

Let's begin this article with something overly dramatic – the effect of lightning on a watercolour painting! I have explored different ways of creating the e? ect in watercolour and have come to the conclusion that there is only one that works well every time and that's using masking fluid or, to be more specific, a masking fluid fineliner. If you don't have access to one of these, you could use a dip pen or something similar, but you need a tool that will let you apply fine lines of masking fluid so a brush probably won't cut it. The trick to making this work effectively is to ensure you have a contrast of tones so, once your application of masking fluid is dry, make sure you add stormy clouds…

Peter Graham Studied at Glasgow School of Art and is a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour. Find out more at petergraham.org The French Riviera has the finest light for painting en plein air. Artists such as Monet, Matisse, Signac and Picasso all found answers to their painterly quests there. The colours are right in front of your eyes. It was a brilliant sunny morning as I set up my easel on the port of Saint-Tropez. This is a place where you can suspend the normal worries of life and live for the moment. Painting has a wonderful effect on the emotions; it gives you a purpose yet at the same time you can relax and enjoy the journey.…

In the previous issue, I used the on-site sketch I'd made back in early January as reference to paint a watercolour study in the studio. I have many sketchbooks that I've filled over the years, creating an invaluable reference library of memories and subjects from which to paint. I will take any opportunity to paint en plein air with the ambition of finishing the painting on site, but when time is short, the sketchbook is the next best thing. Working directly from observation, I immerse myself totally in the moment and this focus adds to the memory recall later. When sketching for painting reference, providing I've captured a full range of tones and sufficient details in the focal point, I can paint from these studies at a later date, be…

In this new series of articles I will be painting six landscapes encouraging you to embrace semi-abstract mark making and supercharge your watercolours. I begin by painting a large area of dark cloud to demonstrate the power of swirling wet-in-wet watercolour techniques. By pre-wetting the painting surface and propping it up on a gentle slope, I will be showing how separate semi-diluted pigments can be dropped in to flow together. An atmospheric sky develops from the collision of transparent and opaque blues freely reacting together. Colours automatically mix as the brush acts as a pipette, barely touching the surface, occasionally encouraging a merging shape. The resulting semi-abstract watermarks help capture nature's complexity, drying in to form a night sky, before sharper, darker detail is added on top. REFERENCE PHOTO The…

David Hockney Ed Sir Norman Rosenthal If it's Tuesday, it must be another David Hockney book. That's a little unfair, but there's a wealth of books available on just about every aspect of the great man and the market is very much one of paying your money and taking your choice. The oeuvre is vast and varied, so selections are as much as we can expect; only the dedicated specialist would want a whole library. This latest book accompanies an exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris and covers the whole arc of the artist's life and work, with many major works being represented and an extensive selection from the last 25 years or so. For those interested in the recent iPad paintings, there are plenty of these included. The…