Gill Cox Demonstration - "Still Life to Abstraction in Oils - how to extract the most important information of your painting"
Tuesday 13 February 2024, 2.00pm to 4.00pm in the Pavilion
Tuesday 13 February 2024, 2.00pm to 4.00pm in the Pavilion
This was a change from the previously advertised programme - Bill Mather "Portraiture".
This demonstration was very well attended for such a wet day with an audience of 38 members and guests. Gill started by priming the canvas with a watery brown acrylic solution applied generously with a sponge. Before this had fully dried, Gill lifted some paint in areas which were going to be lighter and applied more paint in areas which would be darker.
While waiting for the primer to completely dry, Gill demonstrated how to stretch a canvas over a wooden frame using clamp bars and a ratchet stretching device. She followed this with two quite complex demonstrations of mount making and frame making using the correct tools and techniques. Gill had lots of experience and made it all look very easy. She offered to help any of our members with sourcing the necessary equipment (second hand on ebay seemed to be a good and very cost-effective option), learning how to use it, and especially with some valuable hints and tips for success.
So there's a great offer to our members who are interested!
Continuing the demonstration, Gill roughed out the image with a chalk pen and stressed the importance of noticing where the light is coming from. She drew in the shadows with the brown acrylic primer. Gill uses quality oil paint mentioning Michael Harding (some proprietary colours including Yellow Lake - great for daffodils) and the American Gamblin brand. Her colour palette is limited, usually to 5 or 6, plus titanium white to reduce transparency where required. She rarely mixes more than 2-3 colours together to keep the paint bright and reduce the risk of "mud". The painting continued as shown in the gallery of photographs below.
At the stage reached in this demonstration (after approx 1.5 hours work), Gill would allow the painting to dry for at least a week before continuing. A finished work of this type and size would normally require 5 to 6 hours work, with further drying periods. Gill uses quality oil pastels (Somalia) to mark the work where necessary to enhance the highlights and deepen the darks making it "pop".
When is a picture finished? Gill says "Underwork is better than overwork - don't be tempted to just keep going".
Once the work is finished, Gill sprays it with retouching varnish, not gloss varnish. The latter would seal the work and require it to be completely dry first - difficult to judge. The retouching varnish makes the work look brighter and more punchy and helps the it to breathe and to age gracefully.
Gill's oil paintings are bold and colourful, incorporating aspects of abstraction. Her painting method is strong, impressionistic and lively. It is observational from life. Although Gill used oil paints and oil pastels in this demonstration, similar techniques would apply with acrylics - both equally messy so wear protective clothing!
Some photographs taken during the demonstration:
Thanks to Zoe Hing for these additional photographs: