Artists & Illustrators — June 2017

HOW TO

D

rawing and painting are not separate

things. Every line makes a drawing in

a picture but so too do dashes of

colour and splodges of paint. They work in

harmony to capture the subject, or ‘draw’ out

the content. In this painting, I used very free

drawing and painting to release the subject’s

qualities of colour. Using big, flat bakers’

brushes to do the initial structure keeps the

painting open from the beginning.

There is only so much control you can get

with a big brush and this allows the painting

to develop in an open way. Here, I wanted to

allow the colour harmonies to dominate. Too

much structure inhibits the free interplay of

colour. Matisse’s drawing, in his early work, is

loose and brief, and this gives his abstract

notions of colour and light the freedom to

play – they only pay lip service to

representation. This is what I was trying

to achieve in allowing the drawing and

ACRYLIC ARTIST TERENCE CLARKE SHOWS YOU

HOW TO BE BOLD AS HE CREATES A WONDERFULLY

OPEN STILL LIFE WITH AN ABSTRACT QUALITY

FREE DRAW

FOR COLOUR

Terence’s materials

•ACRYLICS

System 3: Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow,

Yellow Ochre, Vermillion, Pthalo Green,

Quinacridone Magenta, Ultramarine, Process

Blue, Prussian Blue, Black, Titanium White

•BRUSHES

Bakers’ brushes 3cm and 6cm

Hog hair filberts, size 3 and 4

•CANVAS

Gerstaecker Studio 2 primed canvas

1

Using a wet mixture of Prussian Blue, a

broad, relaxed drawing of the interior still

life is splashed in. This is placed onto a

coloured ground made up of a thin wash of

Yellow Ochre and Vermillion. The basic light

structure is also indicated at this point.

2

Using the flat end of a cheap bakers’

brush, I sculpt the form of the

grapefruit following the broadly outlined

shapes. At this stage, parts of the original

drawing have also been worked over and

adjusted with paint.

paint-handling to be spontaneous. There is

an emphasis on the creative process

directing the painting; let the paint and colour

do the work, and something fresh will emerge.

But you have to take the risk: so let loose,

free draw for colour and see what happens.

http://www.terenceclarke.co.uk

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Artists & Illustrators 91

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