Sorting white from white
WHICH WHITE IS WHICH Some would say that the most important colour choice artists make is the white they choose to…
Tonal Values
GETTING YOUR TONAL VALUES RIGHT “Tonal values are critical. The lights and darks contribute more to the success of a painting’s…
Monika Welch
LET US BE ARTISTS!
It was the love of art and an inherent creativity that paved the way for Monika Welch, a former musician, to become a full time artist.
“I never had any formal are training and just blundered and blustered my way through,” she quips, adding that she did not enter the world of ‘art’ until she was 35: “It was New Year’s and my friend Julie asked what shall we do this year? Seeing as we’d both dabbled in writing and music I replied: ‘let’s be artists, and that was that.”
Jo Chester
HOLD ON TIGHT
“Art enables us to find and lose ourselves at the same time” Thomas Merton.
“Ever since I can remember I have always been drawing and creating images,” Jo Chester explains when asked about her entry in the world of art, “I had a very supportive teacher at Rotorua Girl’s High who encouraged my talent and insisted that I apply to Wellington Polytechnic to study graphic design.”
This ultimately resulted in a career with art as the baseline. “I have worked as a Graphic designer, Textile designer, even designing jeans at one stage as well as drawing up fashion shots for a retail outlet.
Jan Thomson
BREAKING THE RULES
Recollecting how she first picked up a brush in her mid-forties after recovering from an encounter with the big ‘C’, Jan Thomson says “My journey into the world of painting began late. It was then that I decided that life is far too short to delay doing what you love, so I gave up my house painting job of 17 years and took up slightly smaller brushes.”
With a number of artists in the family, Jan says art was always in her blood. Why she avoided it for 47 years she didn’t say but once she started she was instantly and totally hooked. “I started with watercolours and then moved onto oils,” she reveals. “I learnt to paint by going out to Wellington’s (sometimes wild) south coast, wrestling with the elements and trying to put down on paper what was in front of me.”
Brian Looker
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REFLECTION
When Brian Looker returned to New Zealand after an absence of twenty years living in Australia, it was like coming to an unknown country. It was the catalyst he needed to become a full time artist. “It seemed a fitting time, to follow my dream and make a commitment to pursue my art on a deeper level,” he says.
“It seemed a fitting time, to follow my dream and make a commitment to pursue my art on a deeper level,” he says. “For many years my wife and I had visited artists in their studios in many countries around the world, each time thinking what a perfect lifestyle they had. Truthfully the only difference between dreaming and having is that first step of doing.”
Don Wilkie
SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS
Painter, published author, and printer - Don Wilkie does not set limits on his range of creative talents.
“Painting provides the space and relaxation in which I lose myself in creating,” he reveals, “one of my biggest joys is when the painting is completed and seeing what has been achieved from a blank canvas.”
Jane Pestell-Litten
LIQUID LIGHT
Jane Pestell-Litten is a trans-Tasman fine artist working primarily in the traditional mediums of charcoal and watercolour, or oils on linen. Jane’s work is exclusively figurative (whole and portrait). Her charcoals are large and lively and strong in line and style.
She is driven to capture the brilliance of light and paints in the style of the Photorealist movement. Her work depicts the actuality of what the eye can see, yet allows for subject ambiguity to enable individual interpretation. Her work is held in numerous local and international private and public collections.
Reading Oil Paint Labels
ARTIST QUALITY PAINTS Every pigment has a unique Colour Index Name, consisting of two letters and some numbers. It’s not a…
Watching Oil Paint Dry
UNDERSTANDING THE DRYING TIMES FOR OIL PAINT Traditional oil paints are bound with drying oils. This is what gives them their…