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Jonathan lives in Reading, England and works with a variety of
media and subjects. He is particularly admired for his coloured pencil and
graphite drawings of endangered species. He has published books on "Drawing
with Coloured Pencil" and "Drawing and Painting Buildings". He works mostly from his own photographs, taken in zoos and wildlife parks around the UK. This evening's watercolour demo was based on a rather dark photo of a tiger in snow but Jonathan had decided to lighten it and move it to a warmer environment. |
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He likes Khadi w/c paper for sketches but the demo was on
unstretched 140lb Bockingford. He doesn't stretch w/c paper. Normally he works
very much wetter, on a horizontal surface (not appropriate for a demo like
this) and uses watercolour board to avoid wrinkling. Several preliminary sketches had been done to get the composition right. Then he had prepared a careful pencil drawing of the outline of the animal and of the line between foreground and background. This was necessary because, unlike his normal practice of painting the animal in acrylic or gouache over a completed background he was limiting himself to pure watercolour this evening. He still wanted to do the background first so he had to finish it without touching the area where the animal was to appear. |
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He likes to mark a generous border around the picture area, so that
he can test colours as he mixes them. He also recommends as limited a palette as possible. Here he used only ultramarine blue and, as his yellow, quinacridone gold. These were darkened with burnt sienna and he once used a little burnt umber where he wanted a bluer dark (oh, and some touches of white gouache at one point). All were tube colours, which give a richer result than you get from pans. Jonathan's backgrounds are quite abstract. He mixed three different greens and scrubbed in the trees with the side of a No.14 sable-mix brush. He used all three greens, adding branches with the fine point of the same brush, all wet into wet. Great care was taken around the outline of the animal. |
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A pale blue-green gave the distant trees their distance and a
watery wash of an only very slightly modified ultramarine gave a hint of
sky. Darkening his bluest green with burnt sienna gave him the colour to add more darks to the trees and behind the animal (crumpled clingfilm gives a good foliage effect and creates convincing "bird-holes"). A yellower green was dragged out from the bottom of the background to create the foreground effect. An impression of grasses can be created by flicking various greens up from a line of colour with a smaller brush and by scratching up through the (still damp) darker areas with a knife. A slightly damp brush made sure there were no harsh edges, especially around the tiger. |
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Once the background was dry, Jonathan toned down some yellow with a
little burnt sienna and moved to a smaller brush, No.10, for the animal itself.
Darker yellow glazes followed earlier lighter ones before the stripes were
started. The french ultramarine and burnt sienna mix used for the stripes needs frequent stirring to stop it separating out. By this point all abstraction had been abandoned and scrupulous attention to the photo was needed to get the shapes of the stripes right, since these define the form of the animal and the direction of the coat. Most of the brush-strokes were across the width of the stripes, to avoid the impression that they were just painted on. Finally a few touches of white gouache gave a sparkle around the eyes, ears and legs and these were reinforced by a mix of burnt umber and ultra to darken the shadows over and below the rump. |
End result of the demonstration Visit Jonathan at www.jonathannewey.com, where there is a large selection of his work or call 0118 9428647. |
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