Carmarthen Sketch Club and Art Society

WE were very fortunate and pleased to welcome Robert Newell to demonstrate how he works on his drawings and paintings.

Robert is an artist living and working in Wales. He works sketching outdoors, very often in all weathers. He begins by stretching the paper, saturating and stretching and getting rid of the excess water. He then seals the edges with masking tape to avoid the paper buckling. The paper cannot be re-stretched without running the danger of it tearing under strain.

Robert described how to use a straight edge, such as a ruler, to measure vertical and horizontal alignments in the field of view. This can help to create a substitute for the gridded picture plane shown in a woodcut illustration in Durer’s treatise on geometry of 1525-1538. Viewfinders can be helpful. Using a spirit level will give true verticals. Sometimes one has to manipulate the perspectives, as all famous artists have done. Robert recommended a hard paper – he uses Bristol Board and a range of pencil grades from 7H or B. A favourite make of paper for Robert is Schoelershammer. Robert’s oil painting and oil pastels have varying midtoned grounds, usually using earth reds or umbers similar to those John Constable used.

He showed us how Paul Nash used objects as substitutes – using for example, wooden glove stretchers for trees. Robert brought us a wonderful selection of large branches and tree stumps to draw, along with skeletons of sheep and other stones and bones.

We had to choose the items we wanted to home in on and draw, grouping some of the items together. We had to try to resolve the complexity of putting things together.

More information about how Robert Newell creates his spectacular paintings is shown on his website www. robertnewellartist.co.uk. This was an inspiring session and it was a privilege for us to have such an interesting presentation.