Demo by Colin Brown

The Guild monthly meeting in June was an open meeting featuring a demonstration in acrylics by visiting artist Colin Brown. After completing a four year course at Canterbury College Of Art, Colin embarked on a career for 24 years as an illustrator- visualizer based in the West Country. As a freelance he was able to work for diverse range of Advertising, Design and 3D companies in Bath, Bristol as well as London and Europe. He had the opportunity to work on many campaigns for many different companies Hasbro, Mattel, Cadbury’s, Saga, Corgi Toys to name just a few. He later went on to illustrate for publishing, working on teaching books, magazines and posters.

Colin is now a fine artist producing works depicting mainly one subject, that being street scenes of the world. Taking his influences from Impressionism and Fauvism he likes to evoke a sense of place and atmosphere using a loose style and dynamic mark making. He concentrates on light as being the most important thing within the painting and only adds detail when needed to knit the scene together. One of Colin’s biggest inspirations is Monet and the way he used paint and the single strokes of applied colour, Colin explained that he also likes to make every stroke count and to be seen as this can give a great sense of movement.

Colin’s subject for the evening was a view over Florence from the vantage point of the surrounding hills. For interest here is his reference photograph which he had on his phone, her prefers to work from images on a phone or computer screen as the light is better represented than on a printed out image which can appear flat and dull in comparison.

Colin explained something of his way of working as the group settled back to enjoy his demonstration. He works onto a coloured ground – usually red or orange – onto which he draws his composition using black lines and highlights. This planning stage was done prior to the demo and took about half a day. This stage is important to map out the final piece as Colin has a very clear idea in his head when he starts of what his final work will look like. Colin explained that as he works the black lines get covered, only being added again at the end, sparingly, to bring out details where needed. Another of Colin’s trademark ways of working is to paint his canvasses turned upside down, this allows him to think about colour and general shapes rather than becoming too focused on details. This helps the looseness of his style.

Colin began working by applying acrylic paint directly from the tube using a fairly small flat brush putting in single strokes of colour to begin to define the sunlit sky. He explained that no attempt is made to blend colours on the canvas, each stroke is important and the combination of dynamic marks is what he is after.

After some initial work Colin moved to a large flat brush and demonstrated how he puts several shades/colours from the tubes of acrylic onto a palette knife side by side and then transfers these colours to his brush. He then applies broad vertical and angled strokes to the canvas achieving stripes of colour.

After a while Colin took pity on us and turned the canvas right way up to continue to apply paint to define the sunlight on the left of the scene, rooves, the walls of buildings etc. All the while looking for generalised blocks of colour and shapes rather than individual buildings. Again atmosphere and light over detail.

Finally Colin began to add some highlights and lines to give the impression of edges of rooves, maybe the odd window, these details are achieved just with lines applied with a thin round brush or the edge of a plastic card using thinned down acrylic paint which Colin keeps ready in small screw topped bottles. Mostly black, white and greys were used for this stage.