THE

COPYRIGHT

Collins, an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

The Collins website address is:

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Collins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited.

First published in 2004 by Collins

Editor: Diana Vowles

Designer: Anita Ruddell

Photographer: Syd Neville

© Linda Birch, 2004

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Linda Birch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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The illustration on page is reproduced courtesy of the Tate, London.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN 9780007151486

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008124281

Version: 2014-11-14

DEDICATION

To my mother, Elizabeth Birch

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

A PLACE OF YOUR OWN

SELECTING THE RIGHT MEDIUM

WORKING FROM YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS

LOOKING AT SHAPE AND FORM

PAINTING STILL LIFE

PAINTING IN THE HOUSE

INDOOR LANDSCAPES

PAINTING FROM YOUR WINDOW

PAINTING FLOWERS

PAINTING YOUR GARDEN

PAINTING PEOPLE

PAINTING ANIMALS

WORKING BIG, WORKING SMALL

EXPLORING COLOUR

CREATIVE & EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

INTRODUCTION

This book came about as a result of my encountering many painters who cannot – or choose not to – paint outside ‘in the field’. There are a variety of reasons for this: some live too far from the countryside or lack transport to reach it easily; some are discouraged by unreliable weather conditions; others are not in sufficiently robust health to undertake a trip to paint outside, while many women do not feel safe alone in isolated places.

If you are one of these artists who are not able to paint outside the home you probably feel frustrated and disappointed by your apparent lack of subject matter. However, being indoors can be a real advantage. Your home really is a place where you have the privacy and time to try out new things, hone your skills and find inspiration. I know there are some who maintain that you can only produce a real painting if you work al fresco. Not true! Until the 19th century, all artists painted indoors. Even Turner regarded his outdoor work as sketches meant for his eyes only, prior to painting his more finished work. While his sketches are sometimes prized above his studio paintings, being indoors does not mean you necessarily lose freshness – it depends what and how you paint.

Indoor Flowers

36 × 26 cm (14 × 10¹/₄ in)

Being indoors provides an ideal opportunity to paint flowers and still life. It also gives you time to study form and colour at close range.

Country Path

27 × 27 cm (10¹/₂ × 10¹/₂ in)

Being inside doesn’t have to stop you painting the outside! You can work from sketches or photographs, or even use props to re-create an outdoor scene.

This is not a ‘how to do it’ book, since there are plenty of those already available if you need them. Instead, it is intended to act as a resource for ideas and inspiration if, for whatever reason, you are not able to go outdoors to paint. Although it deals predominantly with watercolour, the same ideas can be applied to whatever your medium happens to be. I hope you will find that they bring new life and energy to your painting.

A PLACE OF YOUR OWN

A Place to Work

24 × 32 cm (9¹/₂ × 12¹/₂ in)

Every artist needs a permanent place to work with a desk, a chair and a lamp. Working materials can be left out ready to use – and to act as a subject, too.

Everyone who paints needs a place of their own to do it in. It is not easy if you need to clear the dining-room table every time you want to paint and then tidy your equipment away before the next meal. You must have a place to work, to think and to make a mess! Creativity is not a neat affair that can be set up and tidied away at the end.

You don’t need a large studio for the purpose – a corner of a spare room and a large table will do, just so long as it is your place where you can be left alone to work out your creative ideas.

ORGANIZING YOUR SPACE

Consider the options your home affords you for a dedicated work space. You may be fortunate enough to be able to take over a spare bedroom and turn that into your studio. However, if you have only the corner of that spare bedroom don’t despair – there are many ways of combining living and working spaces today, and rooms are often dual-purpose.

You will need a worktable of some sort. This doesn’t have to be a fancy affair, and if you are really short on funds you could consider buying a cheap wallpaper-pasting table from your local DIY store. They are large, practical and cheap, and fold away if you need to store them. One of these sufficed very well as my own first worktable.

Try to arrange your table near a window to catch the light, although the traditional north light is not really necessary. Even if you are working from a subject that needs a constant light direction, daylight bulbs, which can be easily obtained, will do the trick. I prefer to use a spotlight desk lamp to light my still-life groups or flowers. It gives warmth and vibrancy to the colours, whereas daylight bulbs are cooler in hue.

Make sure you have a comfortable chair to sit on while you work at your table. A typist’s chair, which can be bought cheaply from suppliers of second-hand office furniture, will be useful for its adjustable height control, which is vital to avoid developing a bad back. When sitting for long periods I find a footrest useful, which in my case is simply an old box.

Having a place of your own with all that you need laid out in readiness will make it easier to take up your work when you have only a short time available.

Try to position your table near a window to get the benefit of maximum natural light.

Practical considerations

If you don’t have any spare cupboard space, a small trolley with several baskets designed to hold vegetables makes good (and cheap) mobile storage. You can place sheets of paper under a spare bed to keep them flat and out of harm’s way, and other items you need such as a water jar and inks, spare still-life material and books can be stored on an overhead shelf.

When you are working for long periods of time in one spot, you may need to provide extra warmth. If you only need to keep the specific area you are sitting in warm, consider using a safe form of heating such as an oil-filled radiator which is sealed and can be wheeled to where you want it. It is not advisable to use water in close proximity to electric fires, fan heaters and convectors.

Making space for your subject

When you want to paint a still life or botanical subject, you will need a small table as a base so that you can position it at a suitable distance away from you. If needs be, you can make it much larger by placing a broader sheet of board on top. To cut out distractions from the rest of the room, make a still life ‘box’ from a large empty carton. This will enable you to drape material behind and create light and shadow when the subject is lit by the spotlamp. Alternatively, a shelf placed just below eye level would also make a good site.

If all else fails, try putting the still life on the floor. I once painted a very successful group of tulips placed on a painted wooden floor. Looking down on the flowers meant I could see more of the flowers than the container, which worked well.

SELECTING THE RIGHT MEDIUM

Barn in Snow

38 × 56.5 cm (15 × 22¹/₄ in)

Salt and inks were added to watercolour to create frost and starkness in this winter scene.

Although this book is primarily about watercolour, there are other media that you can use with it. Gouache, an opaque form of watercolour, can be employed for its thicker, impasto quality, while inks give rich, subtle, transparent colour. Both of these can also be used on their own for picture-making. Media such as coloured pencils, pastels, charcoal, wax, salt, clingfilm and paper in the form of collage can all be added to watercolour, giving a variety of textures.

There are many other techniques you can try such as achieving texture with sponges, rough-textured hessian, watercolour sticks, oil pastels and indeed any other media or household items that catch your eye. Allow your imagination to run free, as you will learn even from experiments are not successful.

UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT MEDIA

Watercolour

The transparent, fresh quality that watercolour possesses makes it ideal for using clear, apparently simple sweeps of colour and capturing the fleeting effects of light. It relies on the use of the paper surface shining through colour washes, and to convey the lightest areas the paper is usually left untouched. Dropping one colour into another (known as painting wet-into-wet) creates melting colour effects of great beauty and subtlety.

Watercolour can be used on specific watercolour papers with three different surfaces: Hot Pressed (HP), which is smooth; Not, a medium-textured surface; and Rough, which is heavily textured. However, it is also worth trying watercolour on stretched papers such as cartridge and pastel papers.

Only two pigments, Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna, have been used to create this tower. The feeling of strong light on the building has been conveyed by leaving the paper empty.

Line and wash

Using pen and ink with watercolour will ‘lift’ your work and strengthen the colour as well as adding dark tones. To avoid an overworked look, keep the watercolour a little weaker than you would normally use it. Line can be used before painting (line and wash) or afterwards (wash and line).

Try using various types of pen to achieve different effects. For example, a felt-tip pen with a broad nib will produce strong, contrasting blocks of tone, while a fine-nibbed pen adds a more linear quality to your work. You can even use a garden twig, which yields characterful lines and marks. Make sure the ink is waterproof or it will run into the watercolour.

This study of a cat sleeping had to be made quickly, since animals will move when you least want them to. The drawing was made first and a wash of colour was added when the ink was dry.

Gouache

Gouache is an opaque form of watercolour. It is normally worked from dark to lighter tones, using white to lighten colours. In the past it was employed to heighten the light areas of watercolours painted on tinted paper, and was described as ‘body colour’. It was also often used to make small studies preliminary to a larger oil painting, since it can imitate the effects of oil paints.

The textured quality of watercolour paper is not necessary for gouache, and stretched cartridge paper or thin mounting card both make ideal surfaces for this medium. It can be combined with traditional watercolour, provided great care is taken not to destroy the integrity of the latter. Used on its own, gouache is a pleasant relief from the unforgiving nature of watercolour, in that it can be built up and altered in a way that would be impossible in a medium that relies on transparent washes.

Gouache can be applied more thickly than traditional watercolour to produce texture. Here, dense, creamy white has been used to create the surfaces of wall and steps.

Drawing inks come in a rich range of colours. Here they have been used in transparent layers to create the soft glow of a setting sun.

Inks

Inks are ideal companions for watercolour and their rich, vibrant colours make them exciting for the artist to work with. However, their benefits stretch beyond striking effects. Try using them to glaze a watercolour in order to restore colour balance; they can be mixed and applied in washes to create the subtlest of colours. Because they are waterproof when they are dry, luminous washes can be built up, with none of the muddiness that can afflict watercolour. Nevertheless, the finished result is identical to watercolour.

Most, but not all, drawing inks are waterproof, so it is worth checking the label before you buy. Acrylic inks are waterproof and are available in a sumptuous range of hues.

MIXING MEDIA

Coloured pencils

Coloured pencils and watercolour pencils are a useful addition to a watercolourist’s toolbox. They are capable of astonishingly realistic effects when used by themselves; added to a dry watercolour they can restore texture and brighten or subdue tones without destroying the character of the paint. Try using them, for example, to add tree twigs or fine grasses to a painting.

Both types come in a large range of hues. Pick your own selection of colours rather than buying a box so that you do not waste money on colours you will not use. I find the best colours for adding to a watercolour are the tertiaries – greys, buffs and olive colours. Coloured pencils employed on top of a dry watercolour can even be removed with an eraser if unsuitable. If used wet, watercolour pencils are handy for small works, though they are limited in their ability to create large washes.

Coloured pencil has been added to this watercolour when dry to create texture on the walls of the barn and add grasses in the foreground. A little Ice Blue was rubbed into the background to soften the tone on the background hills.

Pastel has been added to this flower in order to increase colour in its centre and create a more even tone in the background.

Pastel

Pastel is good for achieving intensity of colour and for adding texture, but always remember to respect the character of watercolour. Once pastel is added, transparency will be lost, so use it only in areas where it will enhance the painting. However, there will be times when a watercolour will fail, despite all your efforts. Pastel can then be used on top of the painting in order to rescue it. The result will be a pastel painting and not a watercolour, but a painting will have been saved and transformed.

Here charcoal has been applied on top of a dry watercolour. An eraser has been used to lift out the light areas.

Charcoal

Charcoal can be used over a dry watercolour, then rubbed back with an eraser and fingers to reveal an image. Its smudgy grey and black tones help create a feeling of mystery and atmosphere in a watercolour. You can even rescue a painting that has gone wrong by adding charcoal over the top and lifting it out to reveal the areas you choose.

Charcoal is easily smudged, so needs careful handling. It can be sprayed with fixative when complete. Wet watercolour and charcoal do not usually mix well unless you want to create a really sludgy effect – but try it and see. After all, there are no rules that cannot be broken in art.

Wax

Wax is very useful for adding texture or maintaining highlights in a painting. The accurate placing of the wax is important, so a birthday-cake candle makes a better choice of tool than a household candle. Once in place, the wax resists watercolour washes. Apply it before any paint if you want to leave the paper white. As most highlights are either warm or cool rather than true white, the alternative is to add the wax over a light wash of colour, provided it is dry.

Candlewax is particularly good for grainy textures such as tree bark and stones. It can also be used to create sparkle on water. If you enjoy the effect of wax resist and watercolour, consider using oil pastels with watercolour to gain colour as well as texture.

Here I dotted in some wax highlights over a light blue base, then applied mid-tone washes. I made more wax marks to create lowlights before adding the darkest tones.

USING HOUSEHOLD ITEMS

Salt

When added to a drying watercolour, salt produces surprising results. As the crystals dry they draw colour off the paper, resulting in an entirely random speckled effect. The technique most obviously lends itself to winter scenes, such as snow crystals and snowstorm effects. However, there are other places you can employ salt. Try using it to produce a mottled effect on old pieces of wood, or on leafy foregrounds in autumn landscapes. It will produce an interesting background to a still life, and dropped into an area of still water can render effects not possible with a brush. You will need to lay washes of quite deep colours to benefit from the qualities the salt will produce.

You can use table salt or coarse sea salt, which produces larger ‘starbursts’. It is wise to experiment a little first, in order to discover the best time to drop salt onto a painting. Aim to do it a short time after you lay a wash, before it has had time to dry. Don’t continue to add more paint after you have used salt. It needs to be left flat in order to dry, which can take a couple of hours or even longer depending on the temperature of the room. Once it is dry, gently brush off any excess.

Here I dropped salt onto the sky and water areas as the painting dried. I used coarse sea salt, which produces a more starry effect, for the sky, while table salt was added to the water.

Soap

Adding soap to a painting creates a very different feel to the way the brush and paint behave. You need to use liquid soap or shampoo, and substitute it for water. This makes the paint sticky and creates I defined brushmarks rather like painting in oils or acrylics. Bouncing the brush slightly in the soapy colour will produce bubbles. Use soap to achieve craggy textured effects.

Soap used instead of water is good for rendering strongly textured subjects such as this mountain. The marks you produce will create an impasto result resembling oil paint.

Here clingfilm was used to create ripples on a streambed, though the subject was decided on only after the clingfilm was removed. The stones were then picked out in watercolour.

Clingfilm

Clingfilm laid on top of a wet watercolour produces some really interesting effects. Be prepared to accept what comes – the results are not easily controlled. I find it works best with linear forms such as tree bark, stems and the movement of water. It is a useful spur to the imagination – try experimenting with it to create fantasy landscapes.

To use clingfilm you need to lay some generous, strong washes of colour; water dropped and dribbled onto the wet colour will contribute to the result. Lay the clingfilm loosely over the area and press down gently, allowing the material to crease and wrinkle naturally. Leave flat to dry before lifting off the film to reveal the texturing. Watercolour can then be added to reinforce the chosen image.

Collage

Collage is an exciting addition to a watercolour. It produces highly unusual effects, mainly textures, that cannot be achieved any other way. You can add any material to your surface, tissue paper being a favourite of mine. Make an underpainting first, then tear small pieces of tissue (the paper sizes don’t matter, as long as the edges slightly overlap the next piece when stuck down). Stick them to the painting with paper glue. The image will still be visible underneath.

Once the tissue paper has adhered to the surface, paint over it with watercolours (or inks if you prefer). The paint will run beneath the pieces of tissue paper, creating a batik-like effect. When it is dry, the collage can be sealed with a paper varnish. This will tidy any stray pieces of tissue.

With this technique, be prepared not to be in control. The paint will wander wherever it will, but relying on serendipity and being open to adventure is a good thing sometimes when you are painting.

This red pepper was created with torn tissue collage and watercolour. The tissue was stuck in small overlapping pieces onto the paint. More colour was applied on top.

TRYING DIFFERENT TOOLS

The list of tools you can use is endless. There are no right or wrong tools, just some that are better for the job in hand. Of the large number of products on the market, some are useful and others just gimmicks: do you really need to buy a cut-down painting knife for painting stonework when a cut credit card will do just as well? You can use many items found around the home that will create the effects you are seeking and also provide some surprises.

Varying your tools to achieve different effects can be very rewarding. You probably have the usual mop, round brush and small-detail brush for watercolour, but it is good to try some alternatives. I find twigs, credit cards, housepainting brushes, fabric, fingers and fingernails useful, and if you experiment with these you will discover a range of new marks to incorporate in your paintings.

Cut up old credit cards to make painting tools. Here they have been used to make banana palms and foreground grasses.

Twigs make wonderful pens, producing excellent free, characterful marks.

An old household painting brush dipped in watercolour was used to create this ruined church.

Coarse hessian dipped in watercolour made the choppy sea around the rocks.

Fingerprints make good textural marks. Here they were used to describe the baby owl’s fluffy down.

A fingernail scraped through wet watercolour paint made the trunks of these trees.

Silverpoint

Silverpoint was originally used in the 15th and 16th centuries, before the discovery of graphite. It produces very fine detail and makes an interesting change from normal pencil drawing.

It is quite easy to make your own silverpoint. You will need a piece of heavy-duty cartridge paper or watercolour paper; a tube of Chinese White watercolour or white gouache paint; and a silver coin, an item of jewellery, or a piece of silver wire.

Begin by covering the paper completely with a thin coat of white paint. When it is dry, paint again with a thick solution of white (historically, a little colour was sometimes added, which you can achieve by choosing a pigment from your watercolours).

When the second coat of paint is dry, draw into it with your piece of silver. Although the image cannot be rubbed out, moistening the area with a small damp brush will remove unwanted lines.

Silverpoint is particularly good for fine detail work, so 1 used it for this drawing of a little avocet chick to depict its fluffy down coat.

WORKING FROM YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS

Snowy Wood

22 × 29 cm (8³/₄ × 11¹/₂ in)

For this watercolour painting I used a photograph as reference. I modified the composition and added more colour than the photograph depicted.

Working from photographs is absolutely ideal for the indoor painter. Everything you might ever want to paint is available, from mice to mountains. Make use of your camera when you are out and about, picking subjects you know you will want to paint. Taking pictures of foregrounds, trees, domestic and wild animals, groups of people and skies will soon give you a bulging reference file of your favourite things.

You are not limited to your own pictures, of course – we live in a highly visual age and magazines, newspapers, television programmes, videos and the Internet all present us with dozens of images to inspire us every day.

INTERPRETING PHOTOGRAPHS

Don’t be put off by purists who decry the use of photographs as subject matter. Dégas, Cézanne and Sickert were just three of the many painters who have used photographs as reference, so there is no reason why you should not do so.

However, the purists do have a point. The use of photographs has its pitfalls and you need to be aware of them. Colour and tone can be distorted, as well as shape and size. You must also interpret a photograph as a painting rather than just making a straight copy. Remember always that you are commenting in a pictorial language on what you find beautiful, interesting, dramatic or even horrifying. In the case of shots that have been taken by professional photographers, you also need to make your own interpretation in order to avoid breaking the laws of copyright that protect their images from unauthorized reproduction.

In the photograph on the right the horse’s head appears too large for the body.

To correct the problem, I have drawn the body larger to adjust the scale.

Problems of scale

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but it certainly can. Distortion of size is a common problem. Objects that are nearer the camera can appear much too large and out of scale. Depending upon the lens that the photographer has used, distance can be lengthened or shortened. A long lens, for example, can make a mountain appear to rise directly behind a house when in fact the slopes may be a mile away, while a wide-angle lens will make your garden look twice its length.

Colour and tone

Both colour and tone may be reproduced falsely in a photograph. Many artists work from transparency film because of its greater accuracy in this respect, but it is less forgiving of inaccurate exposure than print film and is thus better avoided unless you are good with a camera. Also, the colour values do vary quite widely between one type of film and another, so if you are taking the photograph yourself, always make colour notes of what you can actually see.

This becomes particularly important in the case of shadows. The lens will see all shadows as black, while the eye is able to discern a range of colours in the dark area. The camera’s problem with reproducing extreme degrees of contrast becomes particularly apparent with a subject such as a sunset. The camera’s light meter reads the scene as one full of light with the result that the darker land below is rendered black in the photograph, though it is seen by the human eye as being softer, more subtle tones of dark grey. Try putting a piece of black paper near the horizon of the next sunset you can view from your window, and you will see what the tones should be.

The photograph of a sunset shows how the horizon is read by the camera as black.

In the painting tones have been corrected to those that the eye can see.

USING BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS

Black and white photographs offer exciting opportunities to the painter. Their tonal range appears wider than colour photographs and therefore more accurate, although the modern black and white photographic print still cannot reproduce the subtleties of tone that can be seen by the human eye.

The most easily accessible source of black and white photographs these days is your daily newspaper. Landscapes and interesting animal studies are of immediate appeal, but your painting does not have to be confined to the beautiful or cute. If you feel strongly about the devastation of war, or the plight of a famine-stricken society, for example, why not say it in a painting? Art is a language as much as is speech. The Spanish painter Goya (1746–1828) painted and etched the horrors of conflict in an effort to express the appalling savagery of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, while Picasso’s Guernica was his response to the bombing of that town during the Spanish Civil War.

I decided that this black and white photograph of impala would be a good basis for a painting.

Working in colour from black and white

Using black and white photographs for reference does not necessarily mean you have to paint in monochrome; you have exciting creative opportunities here to explore colour themes of your own choice. You will find that the tones in the photograph are easier to see without the confusion of colour distracting your eye, allowing you to establish the tonal balance in your initial composition even before you decide which colours you are going to use. The lack of colour in your reference material will also release you from any preconceived idea of which pigments you should choose and make it a smaller and easier step to depart from a strictly representational approach.

The monochromatic study of the photograph renders good tonal information.

Zimbabwe Impala

15 × 19 cm (6 × 7¹/₂ in)

Here the tonal information has been translated into colour for the finished painting.

Grisaille

A grisaille is a painting executed entirely in a range of tones from black through grey to white. The technique has a long history and was used originally by oil painters to lay in a tonal ground to a painting. John Cozens (1752–97), one of the great English watercolourists, is said to have adapted this method from oil painting and used it in his watercolours.

Grisaille’s great advantage over traditional watercolour method is that the tones are painted first. Colour is then added in washes over the dry tonal ground. Creating tone and colour together is quite a difficult task, and using the grisaille method avoids this problem and is also a fascinating way of working.

You can adapt a grisaille to a watercolour by painting a tonal ground first, using any colour besides black, as long as it is capable of a range of tones from dark to light. If you are wary of the underlying colour being disturbed as you wash more colour on top, try using waterproof ink as your base tonal colour. You can also use acrylic paint to create the base, diluting the colour with water to obtain lighter tones.

This windmill was painted using a grisaille method. I laid in a tonal ground using sepia ink diluted with water to make a range of tones from near black to white. Watercolour was then glazed over the tones to add colour. The left side of the painting below the sky has been left uncoloured to show the tones used.

WORKING FROM TELEVISION

Working from television to improve your drawing skills is enormously useful. A good way to learn to capture movement is by sketching sporting events; try drawing from the next tennis or football match that you watch. Horse racing is another area you might like to explore.

Spend time watching your subject before you draw. See if you can if pinpoint a particular movement you want to catch, then pick up a large sheet of drawing paper and start to draw – fast, as this way you won’t have time to think or become nervous. When the figure changes position, start another drawing. Work on until your sheet is filled with half-finished studies. Eventually a figure will return to the first position you drew, then another, and so on. You should then be able to complete each or most of the studies. Working like this will give you not only practice in capturing movement but also studies of figures that can be used later in a painting.

I had a lot of fun drawing a sumo wrestling match on television. The two giant figures were a fantastic mass of curves and folds as they struggled with each other.

Working from a video

Working from a video is even more useful, since you can ‘freeze’ movement in order to study and draw it. You can even draw over the forms on the screen with tracing paper. I did this once when I needed reference for a coach and horses for a book I was illustrating.

These sketches were made from a televised horse show.

There are many videos available on the subject of wildlife. Use them to further your knowledge of animal anatomy and as direct reference sources for paintings. The Internet is also a good source of reference for almost anything you need.

I adapted one of my sketches into a composition using gouache and watercolour, incorporating a background from another source.

I made several sketches from a video about bears with the idea of using them for a painting.

PROJECT

PAINT A PICTURE FROM A VIDEO

Adapt a landscape from a video. It can be any scene that appeals to you, whether mountain, desert, forest or rolling meadows.

Make a painting of people or animals from another source, choosing subjects that will not look out of place in your landscape.

Now combine elements of both paintings, setting the animals or figures within the landscape. Adaptations like this will prevent straightforward copying and help you decide what it is you wish to say in your painting when you plan its composition.

LOOKING AT SHAPE AND FORM

Middle East Street

20 × 30 cm (8 × 12 in)

The strong sunlight of this Middle Eastern scene causes dark shadows which help to link the composition together.

The three-dimensional form that makes a painting convincing is created by light and shadow, depicted as tone and colour. Simplifying objects to geometrical shapes and studying the way the light falls upon them will help you to render their structure and volume, while varying the source and strength of lighting in a painting will create very different atmospheres and moods.

Shadows are a vital part of picture-making, and they don’t have to be grey. Awareness of the colour in shadows is important, and easy once you understand some simple colour theory. Equally important is considering the shapes between the objects, which play just as large a role in the composition as the objects themselves.

UNDERSTANDING FORM

By simplifying objects to basic geometric shapes you can more easily observe the effects of light and shadow that describe the volume of their form. Almost anything can be reduced to a sphere, a cone, a cylinder or a cube. Once you look for these elemental shapes, you will be able to tackle even the most complicated forms with confidence.

Using shapes together

Once you have accustomed yourself to seeing objects as geometric shapes, you can easily add them together. Try reducing a tree to a simple sphere sitting on a tube, for example; this is the basic structure and volume of most trees, especially when they are in full leaf. Simplifying the form will help you to realize the volume a tree possesses. Within its outer spherical shape are numbers of smaller round shapes, which become the foliage masses. Shapes will obviously vary with the type of tree, but if you are aware of this basic underlying form it will help you paint trees and foliage more successfully.

A sphere: a rose

A cone: a seated dog

A cube: a house

A cylinder: a bottle

These elemental forms will help you construct more complicated drawings.

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