Larisa was chosen by Artists & Illustrators magazine as the Artwork of the Month. Each month they ask Portfolio Plus members to enter artworks on a specific theme. This month, Larisa won the Wildlife category for her vibrant ‘Frog’ oil painting. We ask Larisa five …
Lawrence Nash wins the Pegasus Art Prize at the Bath Open What inspired your winning painting? Tell us about the process and materials too please! The piece of work is from a small series based on a question about regeneration.The question I asked is: Can …
As we launch a new workshop inspired by the Colour Field paintings of Mark Rothko, learn a little about the artist in this blog. The sensitive canvases of Rothko continue to enchant us, their mystery and complexity giving him one of the most enduring reputations of the 20th century.
Thank you to artist David DJ Johnson who reviewed the NEW range of Miracle Mediums recently launched by Michael Harding – now available at Pegasus Art. Take the rare opportunity to meet Michael Harding at our Art Talk on 25th July!
Painting Outdoors, or Plein Air as it’s known, is making a comeback. We’ve noticed plein air communities and competitions springing up everywhere of late….and we couldn’t be happier!
So when the organisers of the inaugural Painswick Plein Air at the Rococo Gardens in the pretty, nearby village of Painswick – we jumped at the chance!
This year we are proud to sponsor The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition with a £500 Young Artist Pegasus Prize for entries submitted by artists under the age of thirty. For more information click here.
To accompany our sponsorship, The Sunday Times have kindly published a potted history of watercolour on their blog….
Watercolour is by far our best-selling product at Pegasus Art.
What is it about this medium and
why do people love it so much? In my search to answer this question, I ask a
few of our worthy watercolourist customers for their view. The response is
immediate and conclusive; it’s the transparency and beautiful pigments that
really get people hooked. The fact that minimal equipment is required is
another key factor.
Learning watercolour is a long apprenticeship
Watercolour is often the entry point for people who are new to painting, and yet it is one of the most demanding mediums to master, neatly illustrated by artist Claudia Araceli. “My students tell me that they chose watercolour because they see it as the least complicated and messy – add water and paper and you’re done. The reality is, it’s the most challenging of all the mediums. Learning watercolour is a long apprenticeship, it can be frustrating, but once hooked you will love it forever. Personally, I feel watercolour is at its best when you allow it some freedom to do what it wants to do naturally. By contrast it’s at it’s very worst when forced to behave. I have found that harnessing watercolour is a matter of learning and understanding how to walk a fine line between both.”
Watercolour painting is as old as the hills….
Watercolour painting is as old as the hills, dating back to ancient times and present in cultures from every corner of the globe. In the West, European artists illuminated manuscripts and maps, then studies of nature, botanical illustration and Renaissance portrait miniatures before fine art exploded onto the amateur hobbyist scene and spawned the ‘Golden Age of watercolour’ from the mid eighteenth to mid nineteenth century.
Up to that point, painting had only been considered a career for trained professionals, but by the mid eighteenth-century artists were regularly painting outdoors. Watercolours provided the ideal medium, able to capture the changing seasons, light and weather and only requiring limited, easily portable equipment. Among the aristocratic classes, watercolour painting was considered an important adornment of a ‘proper’ education and in more practical arenas it was used as a descriptive tool. Engineers, military men and architects used it to render depictions of their lofty ambitions.
Artist Sarah Wimperis agrees, “Watercolour is very portable, minimal equipment needed, but most of all, it is the surprise accidents and depth of colour achieved by layering washes that makes it such a delight to use.”
En plein air carrying cases, or
pochades, are described as early as 1731 as ‘constructed of mahogany, and
fitted with brass hardware and embossed-leather linings, providing porcelain
mixing pans, wash bowls, storage tins for chalks or charcoal, trays for brushes
and porte-crayons, scrapers, blocks of ink and colours.” This description
doesn’t sound all that portable, and a less expensive alternative was required
to meet the demands of the increasing number of amateur painters.
Winsor & Newton
William Reeves, an 18th
century colourman, was awarded the Silver Palette of the Society of Arts for
his invention of the ‘paint cake’ in 1781. These small, hard cakes of soluble
watercolour were revolutionary. By the 1830’s artists could buy watercolours in
porcelain pans, before further advancements in 1842 produced the first
watercolours in collapsible metal tubes, thanks to Winsor & Newton. Their
machine ground pigments produced consistently high quality pigments which set an
international standard and they were granted a Royal Warrant in 1841. Before
long, artists could liberally wash their paper with vivid colours never used
before in this way – early critics were proved very wrong indeed!
William Winsor and Henry Newton
were already working alongside some of London’s well known colour-men who
procured rare pigments from across the globe and congregated in the artists
quarter around Rathbone Place, central London. Indeed Constable, a neighbour,
was one of their early customers. Not all colour-men were as scrupulous as
Winsor & Newton however and would sell unstable mixes that would discolour
or react unfavourably with other pigments.
New compounds that were suddenly affordable, such as cerulean, chrome
orange and cadmium yellow minimised time spent grinding and mixing with a pestle
and mortar in the studio! The pocket sized ‘Shilling Colour Box’ – a
lightweight japanned tin with pan colours and mixing palettes became a
Victorian best seller, selling more than eleven million units between 1853 and
1870. The dye was cast and watercolour has remained fashionable ever since.
An original Victorian ‘Shilling Box’ of watercolours
“Watercolour is a tricky balance between planning and going with the flow, literally. It can surprise and thrill you as it moves and dries across the surface. That is why I love it.” Catherine MacDiarmid, Sky Portrait of the Year finalist 2019 and watercolour portrait artist.
Modern day watercolours
These days, you can expect to buy high quality watercolours in pans, tubes and sets from any decent art shop. One of our most highly respected suppliers is German manufacturer, Schmincke Finest Artist Paints, who have been producing highly pigmented watercolours in Dusseldorf since 1881. Capitalising on the Golden Age of Watercolour, Hermann Schmincke and Josef Horadam, two colourmen-chemists, took eleven years to research, develop and improve their watercolour range to rival that of their English counterparts. In 1892 they received a Prussian patent for their Horadam Patent-Aquarellfarben. Their Horadam Aquarell range is their flagship product, selling to fifty- three countries worldwide, with pans outselling tubes. Pans are poured, then dried in a specially designed ‘sauna for paints’ at thirty seven degrees celsius, and then filled again another three times. This slow and complex process takes four months ensuring that all the water has evaporated, leaving the purest colour possible.
Schmincke watercolours
In 2017, prompted by a change in
the raw material market and the new potential of the latest pigments, Schmincke
increased their range to one hundred and forty colours, with thirty two as
one-pigment colours. The use of highly lightfast pigments, such as quinacridone
and perylene offers new possibilities for the artist, with colours being
constantly optimised and a few omitted due to the lack of raw materials. You will notice product names changing too;
‘deep red’ is now ‘perylene maroon’ and ‘charcoal grey’ is renamed
‘anthracite’, ‘transparent’ replaces ‘translucent’ and so product ranges
evolve. Watercolours that contained pigment granulations were once considered
low grade…until a more recent desire for natural effects. Now they’ve introduced
wonderfully granulating colours such as French Ultramarine, Potters Pink and
Green Umber whilst other evocative new colour names include ‘Brilliant Opera
Rose,’ ‘Mars Black’ and ‘Geranium Red’.
Schmincke answer my question
with a modern take on the medium, “We believe the popularity of our
watercolours has endured because artists like to combine traditional techniques
with new mediums, allowing for various experiments and mixed media techniques.
In addition, Urban Sketching has become very popular around the world and
sketchers prefer to use a combination of pens and watercolours with a wide
range of applications and colour variety. The worldwide lettering and
journaling trend favours watercolour.” And so watercolour moves with the times
and the new generation of artists on a modern-day Grand Tour.
Mention must be made for non-toxic
paint manufacture which is not only good practice but demanded in increasing
numbers by discerning customers. Owing to the many scientific developments in
the industry, artists colours are now available in environmentally friendly,
synthetic alternatives.
Daniel Smith watercolours
One such manufacturer is Daniel Smith, who has been producing highly pigmented, granulated paints from his Seattle store since 1993. The brand is built on the premise of pure, non-toxic materials and even today, they employ a modern-day colour-man who travels the globe in search of the finest pigments and minerals available. They produce an astonishing two hundred and fifty watercolours, many of which are unique to Daniel Smith and include lightfast and durable quinacridone pigments. These pigments, originally developed for the automotive industry are loved for their brilliance and transparency.
To use semi-precious minerals in their PrimaTek range is inspired ~ the first colour was made from Lapis Lazuli Genuine in 1998 and was so popular they added Amethyst Genuine, Piemontite Genuine and Serpentine Genuine. The uniqueness of their product lies in the miniscule granules of pigment which move and separate randomly and work a special kind of magic on the paper. The fun doesn’t end there ~ other ranges include luminescent watercolours which shine and shimmer ‘like hummingbird feathers’ and a range of cadmium hues to emulate the richness and density of the original cadmiums.
Barry Herniman
Artist Barry Herniman has used watercolours throughout his career and tries to explain why, “Watercolour has always been my first love. I am captivated by its tremendous fluidity, transparency and vibrancy. I have never tired of watching pure pigments mixing and mingling on the paper producing those wonderful “happy accidents” that glow on the paper. It is also my preferred medium when sketching en plein air because of its versatility and ease of transportation. Equipment can be kept to the bare minimum but the results can be quite striking. Watercolour has rather bad press for being a difficult medium to handle and is somewhat unforgiving in its practice. To quote Philip Jamison, a terrific American watercolourist, “watercolour can be worked over but must not be overworked” and I think that just about says it all.”
The Royal Watercolour Society has carried the same strapline for more than two hundred years; “Celebrating the finest artists working in watercolour since 1804. The aim of the Society is to promote, by example and education, the understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of this exciting media.” Watercolour shows no signs of fading into obscurity.
The deadline to enter The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2019 is 17th June and you can do so online here. Entry fee is £15 per work.
This year, First Prize is £8000 sponsored by London Wall Partners, Second Prize is £3000, Third Prize £1000. The Pegasus Young Artist Prize is £500 sponsored by Pegasus Art.
