Maldon Art Club (MAC)
John Harrison Watercolour Demonstration – 3/3/15
John is a local artist and known to a number of members through his Birch tea rooms and gallery. It was always a pleasure to visit the tea rooms for a coffee and cake, with the icing on the cake to be able to watch John undertake his incredibly detailed art work at the same time. Unfortunately John no longer runs the tea rooms, concentrating on his art. Other members were aware of John’s work through his association with Hyde Hall.
John is a self-taught artist of 16 years standing and a former carpet fitter, (the latter to which he attributes “his bad back and dodgy knees”)! He also undertakes all his own picture framing generally using multiple mounts, provides adult art tuition and children’s art lessons. He specialises in seascapes, landscapes and floral pictures, a number of which he brought to the demonstration.
John works with Fabriano 300lb hot pressed paper which is expensive but perfectly suits his requirements for the finely detailed works. He said the paper is so heavy it can even be lightly sanded down to eliminate a mistake! The exceptionally detailed paintings can take in the region of 600 or 700 hours to execute – excluding the research time he undertakes about the chosen subject!! John regularly “hides” things in paintings, people (him), or items (a Victorian railway carriage in one, Victorian lamps or boats in others).
John chatted about his work and demonstrated how to execute a small watercolour in 3 minutes using 7 colours, during which time he offered a number of art tips. John said that he generally uses a photograph as a basis for his paintings and for simplicity in scaling up he uses 1 cm in the photo represented as 1 inch in the painting. When painting John tapes the paper to mdf board using picture framing tape and not masking tape. He believes that it is easier to remove framing tape and it does less damage to the paper. Cerulean blue is his go to colour for painting sky and “bleed proof white” his method of painting weatherboards or other highlights. For fine detail, John uses a cheap (£6) but effective set of brushes from the Range and indicated that if brushes have become bent it is possible to straighten them in boiling water.
The members then tackled the 3 minute(ish) sunset watercolour and produced some really good results as can be seen in the photos below. They started by covering the paper in white with horizontal brushstroke, followed by yellow then orange both brushed on at different angles with a strip of yellow ochre to the lower right. Red and mauve were added and finally black dabbed on to represent trees. Interestingly, a cannibalised fan brush was used (quite dry) and not cleaned in the process.
A really good night was had by MAC members and John proved to be a popular demonstrator with his style and wit. Members were impressed by his tremendous attention to detail, (especially the writer, whose artistic attention span can be counted in a handful of hours!!)
Len Joyce
Vice Chairman MAC
Please see the following page for photos