Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Fred Williams by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.
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| Iron Ore Hill Mount Turner |
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| Hillside |
There are some hills just outside Bacchus Marsh as I drive to Melbourne from Ballan that look like the quintessential Fred Williams landscape. High horizon, sparse squiggly-dot trees, textured, muted tones. I love driving past it. It's like seeing the essence of what he achieved in his painting reflected back on a grand scale in life. A giant living version of how he saw the views.
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| Iron Ore Landscape |
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| Red Landscape |
‘In Australia there is no focal point. Obviously it was too good a thing for me to pass up.’ Rather than adopting conventional perspective, space is flattened and tilted towards the viewer, implying the microcosm within the macrocosm and an aerial viewpoint. From his retrospective at the NGA.
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| Upwey Landscape |
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| Burning Tree Stump |
His interest in finding an aesthetic 'language' with which to express the very un-European Australian landscape. This was grounded in establishing a pictorial equivalent to the overwhelmingly vast, primarily flat landscape, in which the traditional European relationship of foreground to background breaks down, necessitating a complete re-imagining of compositional space. In this, Williams looked to the approach taken by Australian Aboriginal artists.
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| You Yangs Landscape |
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| Dry Creek Bed Werribee Gorge I |
He managed to achieve the completely new way of representing the landscape (no small accomplishment) that he aimed for and his paintings are instantly recognisable from across a room because of it.
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| Circle Landscape Upwey |
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| Claypans |
The influence of Aboriginal art is always apparent in the dots and pattern, the earthy muted tones, the aerial like view.
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| Silver And Grey |
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| Yellow Landscape |
His artwork has a texture and life that is breathtaking in real life. These small reproductions do his paintings no justice whatsoever. Even his abstracted versions of landscapes capture a distinct feeling of what it's like to stand in a vast Australian landscape and feel the spaciousness.
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| Hardy River Mount Turner Syncline |
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| Upwey Landscape II |
More links to Fred Williams
Fred Williams official website: http://www.fredwilliams.me.com.au/index.html
About the Creative Cauldron series of posts
The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.
Still on go-slow and recovery after the intensity of the art fair of last weekend. The veggie patch is looking mighty fine with the extra tinkering and pottering it's been receiving in my extra downtime. Loads of rain and sunshine has helped everything grow.
At least we are getting more than just grass.
It was an exhausting and successful weekend of art fair goodness, from which it has taken me three full days to recover. Bugger being an introvert - I can meet and greet and chat all day with people as well as anyone else, but when it's all over a recharge is not enough - I need a brand new battery!
Despite the tiringness, it was wonderful to meet so many people, to see people's reactions to the artwork and the cookbook concept (overwhelmingly postive) and to meet a bunch of likeminded local creatives.
Below are my photos from the event, previously published on FB.
Another roundup, including loads more photos of the event (and not written by me!) over at the Ballarat Independent: http://theballaratindependent.com.au/news/article/nanna-technology-and-artisan-craft-a-fine-mix
"Ballarat's talented artists and artisans were once again a feature over the weekend at the second Ballarat Artisan Festival. A wonderfully diverse array of work was on show with contemporary and traditional artworks, shoemaking, glass works, sculpture, cartooning, textiles and several other crafts... "
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| All set up and in the swing of the fair. |
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| A little bit of live painting is more interesting for everyone. |
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| Early in the setup before the framed paintings started walking off the walls. |
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| The crafty goodness of Grace By the Lake. |
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| Jenny and Caron, of Grace By the Lake - very friendly faces. |
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| Linda of South Street Art Studio with her meditation inspired works. |
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| Linda runs both art and meditation classes at South Street Art Studio. She's a very supportive personality. |
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| Christine Hickson, whom I was introduced to by several sets of people. Obviously we were meant to meet! |
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| The exquisite watercolours of Christine Hickson. She needs an Etsy store as her work is gorgeous & people were loving it. |
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| Pauline O'Shannessy-dowling with her intricate and wonderful works. |
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| One of these large intruiging abstractish pieces is a prizewinner. |
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| Set up of my stall in progress for the Ballarat Artisan Fair |
Today has been consumed with the set up of my stall at the Ballarat Artisan Fair. This is the first time I've prepared for an art fair. It's taken several weeks to get everything together, from varnishing all the (70+) paintings, to sourcing gift bags (that never arrived!) to printing promotional material. Below is a list of everything I've been able to think of to take along or have prepared. I'll append it afterwards as there are bound to be new insights gained from participating in the event.
Table
- Trestle table or two
- Many markets require a white table cover, so get a white sheet or two, or something nicer such as velvet (not velveteen as it looks cheap) or satin or canvas
- Large butterfly clips for clipping tablecloth to table, and gaffa tape the same colour as the table cover for hiding the clips
- Clamps for backup clipping tablecloth to table
- A bucket or box as a bin for under your table is rather handy
Promotional material
- Business name banner with rope & eyelets and gaffa tape for hanging options
- Business cards
- Email list signup sheet on clipboard (essential!!)
- Pens for signup sheet, attached by string
- Postcards of artwork
- Photo books of artwork - show off more than you can bring on the day as interested people may ask for a commission based on what they see you are capable of
- Photo board of artwork - lots of artwork to choose from on the day but too many paintings to display at once? Show photo samples of your full range. Individual artworks can be shown on request.
- Artist statement for display, possibly laminated
- Price tags, ready and blank (who knows what will happen on the day and how many you will need)
- Nice paper to print out price tags and artist statement and any other small signage
Displaying artwork
- Figure out the stall design and layout first
- Builders level for getting frames hung straight (so good)
- Wire/hooks/picture hooks (a roll of fencing wire, some pliers and tin snips are super handy to make hooks of any size or strength)
- Framing wire (make sure it's rated to cope with more than double the weight your work weighs)
- Fishing wire to make a washing line artwork display (useful for giftcards and other small lightweight works)
- Sinkers to weight down display wire to make it stay taught
- Small bulldog clips x 24 for hanging unframed artwork washing line style (these are super handy)
- Cotton gloves for handling artwork
- Frames, ready to hang
- Pliers - fat and thin
- Hammer
- Wirecutters (tinsnips are far more effective than the scissor part of pliers)
- Screwdrivers - an assortment
- Masking tape
- Scissors
- Gaffa tape / cloth tape in colours to match your display elements
- Blu-tack
- Double sided tape
- Backboard/screen on which to hang artwork
- Window cleaner and paper towels for cleaning the glass & frames - essential
Storing artwork
- Portable box storage system
- Glassine paper for unframed artwork
Looking after me
- Portable music
- Lunch - no heating required, not messy
- Snacks - nuts, fruit, quick, not messy
- Water - have two litres
- Coffee, tea, hot drink in thermos or hot water plus bags/containers, milk
- Camping chair or something to sit on, plus a cover to make this presentable
Selling artwork
- Change from bank for cash sales
- Cash storage - bumbag or tin or wallet
- Credit card payment facilities - if not provided, take a laptop with easy access to the Paypal site, laptop power supply, powerboard and extension cord
- Certificates of authenticity - ready to print (take printer, extension cord and spare ink) or already printed out in doubles and take carbon paper
- Clip board with attached pen for filling out the COA's - very handy
- Packaging for sold artwork - precut cardboard sleeves / boxes or gift bags and bubble wrap
- Phone, charged up
- Red dot stickers
- Paintings, varnished and framed
- Pencils
- Pens
- Notepads
- Packing tape
- Regular stickytape / sellotape
If you're an artist and have useful notes to add from your experiences of art fairs, please enlighten the rest of us in the comments.
More art technique articles
This article is one in an ongoing series of technical articles for artists, all archived together and accessible from here. The topics range from details on materials, to the business of art, to specific art techniques. Please make use of this resource.
And remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at my life as an artist on Facebook.
***
Food painting artwork
is 30 x 30cm acrylic with oil transfer drawing on Saunders Waterford 100% cotton archival paper. Exploring the decorative, flourish filled style of Alfonse Mucha, the much loved and celebrated artist of the Art Nouveau era. Many of his pictures make a show of long swirling hair, and repeated circular patterns. I could 'see' that the wispy tendrils of the sweetcorn husk and the circular corn kernals would fit right in to a wistful Mucha-like design.Did you know you can download images of the paintings for your own personal (not commercial) use? Computer wallpaper, Facebook profile picture, yes you can. Find your favourite painting on Flickr, go to actions, view all sizes, download the size you want to your device, set it as your wallpaper or profile. And tell your friends where it came from :)
Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. This particular piece is currently drying and will be available shortly. To find out exactly when that is, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
***
The meatless meals recipe
I have a bit more than tinkered with the family recipe I had for corn patties. Now there is much more corn flavour and the tinge of glue has been banished. These are light and fluffy and simple to make. I find they are awesome as a satisfying and light summer meal with roast tomatoes, lettuce and onion jam (recipe coming soon) or salsa (recipe coming soon), or as part of a veggie breakfast fryup. They can be used as a vege burger too. Yes, they are versatile.1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarb soda (this makes the patties rise. Leave it out if you want corn doorstops. Add extra in if you like the taste of bleurgh.)
2 eggs, beaten
2 1/2 cups corn kernals (about 3 large cobs of corn)
2 spring onions, chopped
optional 1/2 medium red capsicum diced into pieces 1cm or smaller so they cook through
butter for frying
Mix flour, salt and bicarb.
Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
Add the corn, spring onion (and capsicum).
Mix thoroughly. It will be quite thick and there will seem to be very little to hold it all together. That's ok.
Fry in butter like pancakes on a medium to high heat. I find 2 dessertspoons makes a good sized pattie. This amount of mix makes 8-10 patties of this size. Try to only turn these once. Like pancakes, watch for the bubbles appearing on the surface before attempting to flip them as this turn can be a bit delicate. Be patient.
Gobble down on 8-10 patties. I find 2 or 3 patties per person (depending on their starvation level) works well when served with salad and condiments as suggested above. So that means this serves 3-4 people.
+++
More vegetarian cookbook goodies
Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.
Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.
+++
***
Food painting artwork
30 x 30cm oil on linen. Ready to have some fun? Relive some happy childhood memories? Dump your diary in the bin, clear the kitchen table, sit down with a bunch of friends and have an innocent child-at-heart partytime.Remember - play with your food!
Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
***
The meatless meals recipe
This quote from a recipe tester says it all, "makes commercial gingerbread look like sweet sludge".
This gingerbread has a real and robust flavour that you can actually taste. It's just as easy to make as any other gingerbread. The secret ingredient is glace ginger.
1/2 cup golden syrup or similar
1/4 cup raw sugar
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped glace ginger (the secret ingredient)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
pinch ofsalt
2 cups plain flour
several tablespoons water as needed
Heat the golden syrup almost to the boil, then add sugar, butter and milk. Mix well until sugar is dissolved and butter melted then remove from the heat source.
Mix the dry ingredients together, including the glace ginger.
Slowly add dry to wet ingredients, mixing carefully to avoid lumps. A few tablespoons of water may be needed to make a dough that will hold together and can be handled easily.
Roll out to 3/4 cm thick. Cut out fun shapes. Decorate with currants, sultanas and candied citrus peel if you want.
Bake for 5-7 mins in 180C/350F oven.
Eat straight away or cool on a wire rack if you can resist.
Makes about a dozen 10cm tall gingerbread people.
+++
More vegetarian cookbook goodies
Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.
Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.
+++
Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here - this is a personal response to the work of Wassily Kandinsky by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.
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| Gravitation 1935 |
Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter who is generally credited with creating the first purely abstract art (in Western art) in 1910.
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| Succession 1935 |
His geometric abstractions were inspired by music, colour symbolism and psychology, and a deep need to express his inner emotional/spiritual world (nowdays known as abstract expressionism).
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| Composition VIII 1923 |
From Artchive, "His "inner necessity" to express his emotional perceptions led to the development of an abstract style of painting that was based on the non-representational properties of color and form. Kandinsky's compositions were the culmination of his efforts to create a "pure painting" that would provide the same emotional power as a musical composition."
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| Compostion VII 1913 |
I have no interest in Kandinsky's work before he moved to abstracts. And there are some varieties of his abstracts that I really don't like, as in this Composition VII shown above, even though it is considered to be one of his masterpieces. So, so hideously busy, ugh. It still has his trademark visual balance though.
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| Gentle Ascent 1934 |
The works I prefer explore carefully balanced lines and shapes and colour, with plenty of space to breathe around them, a plain or sparse background.
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| Blau 1922 |
They are busy but uncluttered. They look both simple and complex. There are many small marks within big spaces.
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| Tempered Elan 1944 |
There is a flow of line and colour.
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| Several Circles 1926 |
There is a sense of innocence or childlikeness. A feeling of musicality. A playfullness. I think this quality is important to me. It's also what I enjoy in the work of cartoonists.
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| Upward 1929 |
They are precise, yet flow and balance, just so. He seems to have quite a command over his lines. They walk the tightrope of precision and freedom.
I remember seeing his work when I was in primary school. It had a huge impact on me. You could say it spoke to me. In adult language, it was the compositional balance that really hit me. I am still enthralled by his ability in this area. His art is just shapes and marks in colour and they are always so lopsided, quirky and visually perfectly balanced.
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| Bright Picture 1913 |
More links to Wassily Kandinsky
http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky
About the Creative Cauldron series of posts
The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.
***
Food painting artwork
30 x 30cm oil on board. England is known for it's dreary grey days. The greyest and foggiest of these days are called pea soupers, when the fog is so settled and thick that you can barely see a few feet in front of you. This painting is an interpretation of a 'pea souper', with a nod to the lovely misty and ethereal tree paintings of Melbourne's Kathryn Ryan.Original artwork for Autumn and Winter paintings can be purchased in the Official Art Store. To be kept updated on the availablity of Spring and Summer paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
***
The meatless meals recipe
This recipe is an inspired conglomeration of several pea soups I have known and enjoyed. The first was a family recipe for your bog standard Pea and Ham soup. Very flavouful, somewhat missed once I stopped eating meat. The second was another family recipe for a Pea and Mint soup which was interesting for it's enormous use of mint, but not outstanding in itself. And finally there was the Ainsley Harriet cup-o-soup version of Shropshire Minted Pea Soup from when I was working in London. Drinkable in a cup-o-soup kind of a way, it caught my attention with it's unusual spice and tang. Unfortunately this was due to the inclusion of the world famous Worstershire Sauce which contains anchovies and I stopped drinking this once I realised. But then it was game on to create my own Pea soup which was flavourful like the Pea and Ham, super minty like the Pea and Mint, and tangy and spicy minus the anchovies like the Shropshire soup. Success below!1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
a few cracks of pepper and salt
500g dried green split peas
7 cups weak stock
2-3 small bay leaves
up to 1 teaspoon hot paprika
1/4 - 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cups roughly chopped fresh mint (this is about 36g of leaves or 4 cups unchopped) - err on the generous side
Saute the onion in butter until soft with a little pepper and salt.
Add stock, split peas, bay leaves, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, and two big pinches of hot paprika.
Simmer gently with the lid on until the peas are completely broken down. This means at least for one hour, and preferably, for two hours.
Taste test. Check for heat/spiciness and cautiously add more hot paprika to suit. It's heat will vary depending on it's age (less heat with age). Also check for tartness/tang. Depending on the balsamic vinegar and your tastes, you may want to add more to suit.
Finally, stir in all the roughly chopped mint.
Makes 4 rather hearty bowls.
+++
More vegetarian cookbook goodies
Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.
Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.
+++
***
Food painting artwork
30 x 30cm oil and graphite on linen. I have a soft spot for Victorian era or olde worlde looking botannical illustrations. Now this painting is not strictly in that vintage style as I've aimed to loosen it up a bit with watercolour inspired brushwork. The result is rightly a bit more modern, while harking back to an older era where cucumbers were routinely eaten as a sole sandwich filling, and held in much higher regard than they seem to be today.
Did you know that all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store? If you want to get your mitts on the original, it is drying and awaiting it's professional photoshoot before being allowed in the shop.
To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
***
The meatless meals recipe
It can be somewhat odd making soups in high summer, but sometimes that's exactly what you want to eat. Some people enjoy cold soups at this time of year. I don't enjoy cold soup at any time of year. I did, however, try this soup both cold and warm and I can say that it works either way. So if chilled soup is your thing then you can make this and put it in the fridge. If warm (not hot) soup is your preference, this is delightful. It also uses a good quantity of cucumber which I have discovered grows as prolifically as zucchini. Just so you know, not deseeding or peeling the cucumbers turns this into an entirely different and rather ordinary dish. I am generally not in favour of peeling and deseeding vegetables or of creating extra work in the kitchen. In this recipe it is essential. Peel, deseed then weigh your cucumber. It is absolutely worth it.
1 Tbl olive oil
700g cucumber that has already been peeled and deseeded (about 1.4kg whole cucumber), sliced or grated
4 spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 cups stock
2 teaspoons fresh chopped dill
2 avocados
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
black pepper to taste
Soften the spring onion in oil.
Add grated/sliced cucumber, lemon juice, stock and dill.
Heat until the cucumber is warmed through and softened. It doesn't need to be 'cooked'.
Add avocado and white wine vinegar and puree until velvety smooth.
Serve and garnish with more dill.
Add salt and pepper to taste. A generous amount of pepper works well.
Serves 4.
+++
More vegetarian cookbook goodies
Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.
Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.
+++
***
Food painting artwork
30 x 30cm oil on linen. Making use of the square brush technique I talked about in my previous post, a summery rendition of this jewel studded dish all plated up and ready to gormandise. The real meal is pretty much as colourful as the painting is.
Did you know that all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store? If you want to get your mitts on the original, it is drying and awaiting it's professional photoshoot before being allowed in the shop.
To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
To be kept updated on available paintings, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.
***
The meatless meals recipe
I enjoy the freshness of salads but often find them not filling enough. And so I have a tendency to tinker with them until they become full main meals. This is one of those tinkerings. One hot London evening (an oxymoron most of the time), I felt inspired to feast on the well known Italian tricolore or caprese salad of fresh tomato slices, fresh basil leaves and fresh mozzarella slices. Lacking those ingredients, and being hungry enough for a full meal, this is basically what I came up with. It's been refined over the years into a jewel studded crown of a summer meal.
Big thanks to Mari and Catriona in helping me give this recipe an appropriate name!
200-250g haloumi or paneer cheese, in slices about 1/2cm thick (both of these cheeses can be fried without melting out of shape)
around 310g zucchini, in slices about 1/2cm thick (using a long diagonal works well)
around 240g eggplant, in slices about 1/2cm thick
1 clove garlic
around 260g fresh tomato in slices about 1/2cm thick (about 3 medium tomatoes)
plenty of butter for frying
125g / 3/4 cup couscous
zest of 1/2 lemon
chopped parsley, about 25g
1 cup / 250ml boiling water
slosh of olive oil
optional 'clean out the fridge' veg, diced really fine - 1/2 cup
juice of 1/2 lemon
If you are using haloumi for this dish do not salt anything as it is frying. I repeat -DO NOT ADD SALT- Haloumi is very salty itself and any extra salt will make your tongue weep. Paneer, on the other hand, is usually not salty at all, so taste it first and go for your life.
Fry the zucchini slices in butter.
Fry the eggplant slices in butter. Mince the garlic and add to the frying eggplant. Once you have a bit of browning on the eggplant add some water to the pan. This speeds up the cooking time significantly and ensures the cooked eggplant is lovely and soft.
Fry the haloumi slices. It doesn't need much, just enough to be golden brown on the outside and heated through.
Meanwhile, put the couscous, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, optional minced veg and boiling water in a container with a lid, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Your couscous is now cooked!
To serve, I like to make a ring (the crown!) around the outside of the plate with the zucchini, eggplant, haloumi and fresh tomato slices all alternating. Then I fill the middle with the couscous mix.
A squeeze of lemon juice all over finishes this off.
This makes a meal for two. Unless you are using a BBQ to fry the ingredients it's not really practical from a cooking space point of view to make this for more than two people.
Big thanks to Mari and Catriona in helping me give this recipe an appropriate name!
200-250g haloumi or paneer cheese, in slices about 1/2cm thick (both of these cheeses can be fried without melting out of shape)
around 310g zucchini, in slices about 1/2cm thick (using a long diagonal works well)
around 240g eggplant, in slices about 1/2cm thick
1 clove garlic
around 260g fresh tomato in slices about 1/2cm thick (about 3 medium tomatoes)
plenty of butter for frying
125g / 3/4 cup couscous
zest of 1/2 lemon
chopped parsley, about 25g
1 cup / 250ml boiling water
slosh of olive oil
optional 'clean out the fridge' veg, diced really fine - 1/2 cup
juice of 1/2 lemon
If you are using haloumi for this dish do not salt anything as it is frying. I repeat -DO NOT ADD SALT- Haloumi is very salty itself and any extra salt will make your tongue weep. Paneer, on the other hand, is usually not salty at all, so taste it first and go for your life.
Fry the zucchini slices in butter.
Fry the eggplant slices in butter. Mince the garlic and add to the frying eggplant. Once you have a bit of browning on the eggplant add some water to the pan. This speeds up the cooking time significantly and ensures the cooked eggplant is lovely and soft.
Fry the haloumi slices. It doesn't need much, just enough to be golden brown on the outside and heated through.
Meanwhile, put the couscous, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil, optional minced veg and boiling water in a container with a lid, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Your couscous is now cooked!
To serve, I like to make a ring (the crown!) around the outside of the plate with the zucchini, eggplant, haloumi and fresh tomato slices all alternating. Then I fill the middle with the couscous mix.
A squeeze of lemon juice all over finishes this off.
This makes a meal for two. Unless you are using a BBQ to fry the ingredients it's not really practical from a cooking space point of view to make this for more than two people.
+++
More vegetarian cookbook goodies
Need help with cooking conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.
Where are the rest of the vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents. +++
 |
| Pickled Eggplant - Fiona Morgan. An example of square brush in my work. |
 |
| Detail of Bastien Lepage's Sarah Bernhardt showing the loose brushwork that has influenced so many modern painters today. |
The impressionists really smashed the idea of hiding every brushstroke, but the idea had been gaining ground for quite some time. The artists Velaquez, Bastien Lepage and even as far back as Rembrandt had been toying with letting the painterlyness of paint do the talking.
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| Angela Morgan (no, not a relative!) makes a real feature of square brush technique in her work. |
Square brush or square touch technique is a version of the broken brushstroke technique the Impressionists were famous for, and it is common today.
 |
| Detail of a Joe Sorren painting showing off the square brush backgrounds I love in his work. |
Usually using brights, flats or filberts, the flat of the paintbrush is used to lay down squarish strokes of paint directly, unblended, in a jigsaw pattern.
 |
| Aldro T Hibbard, and many of the Rockport school of painting are characterised by a square brush technique. |
It gives a chunky feeling which is great for modelling structure. Different planes of an object can be deliniated easily with different temperature strokes and different values.
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| Arthur Streeton showcasing the atmospheric quality of square brush. |
It easily gives soft edges useful for atmosphere and light.
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| Daily painter Layne Cook with a dramatic square touch example showing the removal of detail. |
The size of the squares eliminates distracting detail and therefore has a unifying effect on the painting as a whole. Anything smaller than one square stroke has to be really important to be included. This eliminates visual clutter, focussing the viewer on the most important aspects of the painting.
It gives a pixellating vibrancy to the surface of the painting. Each stroke can be a slightly different colour and angle which makes the painting appear to sing with more colour and detail than is actually there. The eye detects colour changes and hints of detail. Square touch is a way of fooling the brain into adding what it thinks should be there. Thank you impressionistic heritage.
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| Dean Cornwell with an excellent example of fooling the eye into seeing more detail than is actually there. Look at the greys - the timbers and the ground. |
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| Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish portrait painter, managed to subtley use square touch throughout his career of figurative painting, despite being ahead of his time and the difficulty of this technique in portraiture. It's much more suited to still life and landscape. |
http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-on-brushstroke.html
There are loads of artists who make great use of this painterly technique. Know of an artist whose work is loaded with square brush? Tell us! Leave a comment.
This article is one in an ongoing series of technical articles for artists, all archived together and accessible from here. The topics range from details on materials, to the business of art, to specific art techniques. Please make use of this resource.
There are loads of artists who make great use of this painterly technique. Know of an artist whose work is loaded with square brush? Tell us! Leave a comment.
More art technique articles
This article is one in an ongoing series of technical articles for artists, all archived together and accessible from here. The topics range from details on materials, to the business of art, to specific art techniques. Please make use of this resource.
And remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at my life as an artist on Facebook.
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