Demonstration at the North Cotswold Arts Association 13.03.2013

Title – How To Approach Painting & Improve your Success Rate

Many thanks to the North Cotswold Arts Association for your warm welcome. As promised I have outlined some of the points covered in the demonstration.

3 basic principles to use:

1. Know your materials
2. Have confidence
3. Have perseverance

1. Know your Materials – Colour Palette

2. Have Confidence

How to approach making painting

• Its OK not to be sure of the final outcome; painting is invention and discovery
• Improvise
• Make mistakes
• Ultimately there are many ways to make a painting

Starting a Painting

• Pre-mix key colours
• Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve (in simple terms)
• Have a rough compositional idea
• Make a quick sketch

Sketch tips

• Make a sketch to warm up – 5 min only!
• Have all you need to hand
• Use quickest materials i.e. pencil.
• A sketch is a good place to work out a rough composition

3. Have Perseverance

Stopping the painting

• Personal choice – gut feeling
• Experience will improve your decision
• Ask yourself has the painting achieved what you wanted it to
• Put the painting away for a while, then look at it again with fresh eyes.

Thank you for reading, please leave your comments below or email me at: contact@jonathanpitts.com

Please contact me at: contact@jonathanpitts.com if you would like information about Art Demonstrations or Workshops.

All of these works can be found in my ‘Thames Valley Paintings’ collection, prices range from £395 – £2595.

A selection of my paintings on show at Pure Art in Milford Haven, 2012.

Firstly I use manufactured paints alongside my homemade ones. The reason for this is that they both achieve different things.

• Manufactured paints generally provide smoother looking colours
• My homemade paints give a finish that is much more roughly textured

Making paints is a very time consuming process, these are the reasons why I take the time:

• Ownership over the way the paint looks and feels; I can vary the finishes as much as I want by varying the extent that I grind the pigment.
• It’s a learning curve. By learning to make paint I have learnt more about the way the binder and pigments work together. I have become absorbed in learning about the differences between pigments.
• I am able to source the exact pigments that I want to use. I like to choose the exact pigment that I paint with. This I feel gives me total control over the colours that I mix. This is of course also possible with manufactured paint ranges. However I can use the same pigment across several binders and this is often more difficult to do using only manufactured paints.
• As it is difficult to replicate the look of a manufactured paint I simply don’t try to. When I want the smoother look of a manufactured paint I use one. What makes the homemade paint unique is its apparent lack of refinement!

In short using homemade paints has had a positive influence on the way I paint. Below are some recent works that use my homemade watercolours alongside manufactured ones.

Frozen, 1/02/12

Afternoon meander, nr. Henley, 13/08/11
Mixed media on paper | 57.5 cm x 63.5 cm | £1995 | For Sale

‘Afternoon meander,’ being made on location as part of my ‘Thames path paintings’ collection.