48 Artists&Illustrators
Every year, GRAHAME BOOTH travels the world teaching art workshops. In his new
series, he shares tips and advice for adapting your approach and capturing local colourI
am in the lucky position of
travelling, tutoring and painting
around the British Isles, Europe
and beyond for about six months of
each year. One of the most interesting
aspects to this is that I get to see
subjects that are different – but
generally not completely different –
to what I see back home in Northern
Ireland and it is always a challenge to
work out how to tweak my techniques
in order to tackle them.
One fundamental lesson I learned
many years ago was that if you have
a good, varied and basic palette of
colours, these will be suitable for
anywhere in the world. The mixes may
need to be slightly different, but the
pigments remain the same.
In this series of six articles I will
be visiting locations near and far,
showing you the local landscape and
the ways to capture that sense of
locality. I’ll also look at the
practicalities of being a travelling
painter and pass on some of the
tipsthatI havefoundcanhelpto
easethejourney.
Oneofmyfirstdestinationsof
theyearis Portugal,whereI tutor
a workshopforArtintheAlgarve.
Theholidayis basedinOlhão,close
toFaro.Althougha coastaltown
andport,it lacksa beachwhichis
probablythereasonforthelackof
developmentthatis apparent
elsewhereonPortugal’ssouthcoast,
andalsowhytheoldtownstillretains
muchofthetraditionalflavourof
thecountry.
Overthepageyoucanseemy
paintingofa sceneI foundthere,
whichis closetotherailwaystation
andfeaturestwojacarandatrees.1.Olhão,
Portugal
LANDSCAPES IN DETAILIn the spring, the jacaranda has a
glowing purple mantle of flowers with
dark branches that appear almost
black against them. The flowers
bloom before the leaves appear.
When I am confronted by a subject
I’ve never seen before, I always try to
relate it to something that I have.
In the case of the jacaranda, it was a
relatively normal tree but dominated
by purple flowers rather than green
leaves. As you’ll see in the step-by-
step demo on page 49, I painted it
just as I would a tree at home, using
a variety of tones and hues of purple
interconnected with branches that
were slightly darker than usual.I always aim to capture the feel and
atmosphere of a subject, rather than
attempting a literal copy. My memory
of the day was that the purple colour
was much more dominant than the
photograph suggests, and I must
have moved to the right to paint as
well. I often do this. It is amazing just
how a few steps to the left or right
can dramatically change a scene.
Another benefit of painting en plein
air is that things will happen as you
paint. In this case, the sun came out
giving me some useful shadows and a
couple of elderly men sat on a bench
to put the world to rights – always a
welcome addition to any scene.ABOVE RIGHT
Grahame’s chosen
scene to paint in
Olhão, Portugal –
turn to page 50 to
see how he chose
to paint it