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Great tips, advice and demonstration on drawing from our own Alan Bickley in The Artist this month!

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Fiona Phipps

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Wonderful article in The Artist from you Alan, thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning your techniques. One to keep at hand when turning to ink for your chosen medium. The range of your example sketches/painting to accompany the article are inspirational and I may just try something later....you’ve inspired me to try a tinted paper......and use white for highlights. It’s a great example also of the importance of tonal values, which is a drum you to continue to bang in my direction....lol. And rightly so. Thank you for your time and effort into helping those of us who get a bit stuck with how to proceed with unfamiliar mediums.
IMG_8857

Marjorie Firth

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Good article there Alan, well planned and " user friendly".👍🏻

Alan Bickley

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Well thank you girls, that’s very much appreciated.

Peter Davison

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Read the article with interest and enjoyed it. For longer than I care to remember I have always used a fountain pen with black ink, and was considered eccentric by my colleagues for doing so, but it enabled me to carry a small sketchbook most of the time and do quick sketches of scenes and people. I've dug some of them out and your article has motivated me to pick up my sketching habit again. 

Alan Bickley

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Great stuff Peter, I’m really pleased its inspired you to dust off the old fountain pen!

Chrissie Havers

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I read your article this morning with great interest Alan. Hugely informative. I was very interested in the little pots of colour in the magazine photo - were they your watercolours? I’ve never seen them before. They looked very covetable! Your pen and wash drawings were absolutely brilliant - extremely complicated scenes of buildings etc beautifully executed. I think you will have inspired loads of people. Loved your demonstration piece. 

Tessa Gwynne

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I’ve also just read your excellent article Alan: great to see some of your wonderful work together in the Artist.  I do like the way you’ve handled your distance work, and also curious about those little pots!

Alan Bickley

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Thanks Chrissie and Tessa, I'm pleased that you found it interesting. Naturally I was delighted when the editor asked me to write a feature on line & wash, as it's a favourite medium of mine. I also have a couple more planned for later in the year, along with three others in early 2021. Different subjects of course, but equally interesting - I hope! So, these little paint discs... Well, I bought them around 5 years ago from a small independent company making very high quality paints produced from natural authentic materials. They have quite a range on show if you go to Wallace Seymour Fine Art Products. These particular one's that you can see in the magazine illustration are 'Turner 18C Watercolours'. The palette is based on the colours that Turner himself used, and using similar materials, so that was good enough for me. I was asked to do a series of watercolours for their website a while back, basically to show off their qualities. They aren't easy to use mind, pretty hard to get any paint from them, (think blood from a stone), but with perseverance and using warm water I did master them! Well to a degree... A word of caution here: they don't guarantee that you will be able to paint like Turner - as I found out! www.wallaceseymour.co.uk/product/18c-watercolour-discs-turner-palette
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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You have done a service to the company Alan - because while I used to pick up a copy of the magazine now and then, I didn't do it every time, and of course it's been difficult lately to do it at all, because it's not stocked in my village and I'd have to go into the nearest town: which I'm not about to do if I can help it. So ..... I've bought a digital subscription to The Artist, really just to read your article.  Now there's praise - you've parted Jones from money!  Good tip about the ink/water ratio - i.e. add the ink to the water, not the other way round; and have ready-prepared pools of toned ink, for the different parts of your painting/drawing.  I think I probably knew this from my use of Chinese ink on a stone (ie, water, then ink) but it's useful to be reminded for the next time I have a crack at it.  

Alan Bickley

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Thanks Robert, there’s always something in the magazine to spark my interest. I’ve particularly enjoyed reading Graham Webber’s oil painting series over the past four  editions. Anyway, glad you enjoyed my article and thanks for taking the time to comment!

Chrissie Havers

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Thankyou for your comments on my posts Alan, and with your input I have re-discovered this listing! So thanks for the information about those little pots -I shall look the colours up , they sound very interesting to use.  Look forward to reading your future articles in the magazine. 
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