Demonstration and talk by Gill Nicholas

#gillnicholas #salfordartclub #salfordmuseumandartgallery 

Gill uses a bowl as a palette so that it is easier to transport and save the paints. She uses just 6 colours, with two extra for special colours, as she is able to mix all the combinations need from these. Todays talk was about producing paintings using glazes.

​She talked about using both Galleria gloss  and Liquitex mediums and at times Matt medium for the glazes.
To demonstrate the effects she achieves she started by putting some white paint on paper then adding gloss medium . Gill mixed raw umber and medium to get a glaze and compares this with acrylic mixed with water to show the different effects.

For the demonstration she  painted  two versions of sunflowers . On the first one she covers the canvas with a slightly watered down blue background using ultramarine and white paints mixed together. Then used Burnt Sienna and white for a creamy background before using Raw Umber and Yellow Ochre and Ultramarine for the  flowers. Then left  this one to dry.
​Whilst the first one is drying  she started a second canvas this time with a dark base from Raw Umber. Then leaves this  to dry.

 Whist waiting for these to dry she talked about colour shift what happens when you put one paint on top of another. 
 When putting one colour on top of a previous colour the first colour will effect the result, but by adding glazing  medium first the colours stay true.

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She then returned to first canvas  adding a thin white glaze which knocked back colours before next layer is applied.
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Next she worked on the second painting, just using white. Not, yet, worried about shapes of sunflowers, then drawing the leaves in pale blue before adding colour for the vase.
Continuing she added yellow mixed with medium and paints on top of white paint and this showed the difference from just white mixed with Yellow. Then by putting Yellow on  top of the blue for the stalks it turned them green. Burnt Sienna is painted on the center of the flowers. She mentioned that as the painting had  a lot of warm colours she now now added some cold colours  using Ultramarine. For the next step she added warm shadows before  a thick glaze went over the whole painting of raw umber and a little burnt sienna.

Whilst this dried she returned to the lighter canvas and painted raw sienna over some of the flowers, talking about use of complimentary colours used in paintings.
Gill likes to work from life not photographs as that can take away part of the decision making process.
Then she worked on the vase and background, Glazing over some of the flowers that she wanted to stand back, Before  adding a layer of clear medium. 

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Finally returning  to work on the dark canvas adding colours, each time using slightly smaller brushes. When finished  a glaze coat is added to get even gloss finish.
Gill doesn’t use black in any of her paintings.
Finally before her session ended  more details were added on painting putting some darks in the background.

An informative and enjoyable afternoon and it would be interesting to do a workshop using these techniques.
On a side note the set, using two cameras and a television screen, is something the club must look into for the future.

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