Fresh Paint
ABOVE RIGHT
Laura Quinn Harris,
Behind the Velvet,
oil on board,
48x43cmLaura Quinn Harris
A love of crafting small, intricate animal portraits is what
first turned trained mathematician Laura Quinn Harris to
art. Her passion for detailed drawing led her to study
Scientific and Natural History Illustration at Blackpool
and The Fylde College.
“Working in a controlled precise manner isn’t for
everyone, but it’s how I like to work,” she says. “The course
suited me perfectly, combining my love for the natural
world with my love of detail.”
Laura’s big break came when entering the National
Exhibition of Wildlife Art in 2009. She was surprised to
not only be selected, but also sell her work at the show.
The experience gave her a taste for wildlife painting, so she
began creating more, launching a career in pet portraiture.
She later decided to try her hand at human portraits and
found the change enjoyable. In 2016 and 2017, she was
selected for our own Artists & Illustrators Artists of the Year
awards, winning the Art Academy Award in her first year.
The inspiration for her latest self-portrait Behind the
Velvet was rather close to home – her living room curtainsto be precise. She had been experimenting with
incorporating patterns into her recent work and felt the
velvet fabric would make a great backdrop for the painting.
Laura turned the piece into a complete study in velvet by
depicting herself in a velvet dress.
She began the picture by cutting some 6mm MDF to size
and priming it with four or five coats of Winsor & Newton
white acrylic gesso, sanding the surface between each
layer. She then gridded up her composition onto the board
in pencil before painting in oils mixed with a little Liquin
impasto gel. “This helps retain brushstrokes, and adds
some body and gloss, as well as speeding up the drying
process,” she explains.
Using mainly small round brushes, Laura used lots of
small strokes to build up the paint over several layers and
achieve the velvet texture and the translucency of the skin.
The painting proved to be quite a challenge and took an
estimated 200 hours to complete, but her efforts paid off
as it was selected for the recent Royal Society of British
Artists’ Portrait Prize.
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