Artist Insights: Meg Buick

Meg Buick is a painter and printmaker based in East Lothian, Scotland. Her work, often depicting hazy landscapes and obscured figures, evokes a sense of ancientness and dreamlike solitude. In this article, Meg discusses how she employs a wide range of mediums, including egg tempera, monotype, oils, and pastels, as well as describing her constant reworking of these materials to evoke the ethereal atmospheres found in her work. Drawing inspiration from art history that spans prehistoric cave paintings, the Renaissance, and modern abstraction, Meg presents us with a sense of symbolic memory, where humans and animals merge quietly into her shrouded landscapes.   Artist Insights: Meg Buick     Contents 0:00 “People often say the work feels ancient” 0:20 “It feels natural to me to keep covering it, and destroying it someway, and bringing it back” 0:51 Introduction 1:06 “I wanted to really learn a practice and learn how to make physical things” 2:00 “I always had drawing on the back burner” 2:47 “A human figure has such a psychological pull for any viewer” 4:04 “It’s more of a landscape than a portrait essentially” 4:20 “I think I’ve always been quite intuitive about materials” 4:38 “Egg Tempera forces you to …

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Wet-on-wet Techniques for Watercolour, Gouache, and Ink

In this article, I define the wet-on-wet technique for water-based media by looking at examples of it used throughout art history beyond the infamous ‘Golden Age’ of watercolour painting in 18th to 19th-century Britain. I then give demonstrations and practical advice for applying the wet-on-wet technique with watercolours, gouache, and ink with a variety of effects to your own paintings. Articles in the Painting Techniques Series define the meaning and context of art making processes and give practical tutorials on how to work with them.     Wet-on-wet Techniques for Watercolour, Gouache, and Ink Definition: The wet-on-wet technique is the application of water-based media to an already wet artwork or surface. The technique can refer to an entire sheet of paper that the artist has washed over with clean water, a specific shape that the artist has wetted with water for the paint to bleed into and fill, or a wet watercolour painting that the artist continues to add to before the first wet layer has dried. When multiple colours are added to the same wet surface, they’re able to bleed, disperse, and mingle together.   What is the Effect of Wet-on-wet with Watercolours, Ink and Gouache? The wet-on-wet technique …

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Artist Insights: Jo Rance

Contemporary artist Jo Rance discusses the vibrant, playful and pastel-rich palette she uses to depict the English countryside, and how her background in textiles lends texture to her tapestry-like paintings. Jo also provides insights into her processes, like how painting outside observationally connects her to the landscapes she loves, as well as her jig-saw like approach to composition.   Artist Insights: Jo Rance     Contents 0:00 “Anyone can paint.” 0:11 “The dialogue between land and sky” 0:36 “All I ever intend to do is to provoke joy” 0:57 Introduction 1:19 “I was always the kid who wanted to draw at the table” 1:55 “Who doesn’t want to learn how to weave?” 2:11 “I keep coming back to the word, intuitive” 2:53 “We would spend days in the dye lab, picking out our colour palettes, then hours threading these looms up” 4:06 “I have this immediacy, the more you practice with the paint that you use, the more you can use it in ways that make the paintings look like your paintings” 5:33 “I will go in with accents, pastel pinks, lilacs, I love a bright red” 6:44 “Sometimes I feel like I have rose-tinted glasses on when I am …

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Inside the Sketchbook of Katie Moody

Katie Moody is a mixed media artist based on the south coast of England. Her work takes a joyful approach to absorbing the world around her, favouring playfulness and experimentation over the pursuit of perfection. In this article, she discusses the vastly important role sketchbooks play for her as an artist, the broad range of materials she uses, and how her intuitive approach leads to finished pieces within her sketchbooks.     Inside the Sketchbook of Katie Moody I have so many sketchbooks on the go! I fill them all with a variety of subjects rather than ones with specific themes, though I do love the idea of seeing the progression more clearly that way. They are very mixed, and I reach for them based on media and size. There are some I know work better with wet mediums, with paper that holds up to the amount of layers and materials I throw at it. Others work better with thicker paint layers or dry materials.     Most have smooth hot-pressed paper, which I love for brush pens. Sometimes I just want something small that’s easy to carry when I’m drawing outside. I have many half-filled sketchbooks, but they’ll get …

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Artist Insights: Richard Ayodeji Ikhide

Richard Ayodeji Ikhide is a London-based artist, who works with large-scale watercolours and drawing. He visited Jackson’s Studio to discuss his practice, and how he seeks the intangible qualities of the human experience through movement and colour in his work.   Artist Insights: Richard Ayodeji Ikhide     Contents 0:00 “I’m trying to dispel these hierarchies within painting.” 0:10 “The marks I’m making are quite intuitive.” 1:12 Introduction 1:30 “Having lived half of my life back home in Lagos, and then living half of my life in England, you get this amalgamation of different experiences.” 3:14 “My approach to painting with watercolours is unconventional.” 4:04 “There’s a long history of sequences and sequential narrative, which has evolved into forms like film, animation, and video games.” 5:26 “For me, drawing is largely about problem solving.” 6:56 “There’s something amazing about a squirrel brush on hot press paper – the way it moves and glides across the surface is like a chef’s kiss. It’s just incredible.” 8:50 “There is no mysticism behind the way the piece takes shape.” 9:09 “That pure joy of making a line, or painting, or using colour, you get lost in the flow of the process.” 10:40 “You’re …

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