Wokingham Art Society

Roger Dellar demo: 15 September 2009 Gouache – “The Rising Sun, Smithfield"
The last time Roger came to Wokingham, he had forgotten his brushes! So he painted with the washing-up brush from the church kitchen and produced a wonderful picture! This time, he had all his materials to hand and talked as he began to paint a scene from a photo taken inside “The Rising Sun” pub in Smithfield. Since starting to paint in oils, acrylic and gouache, Roger has been accepted as a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour (RI), the Pastel Society (PS) and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), amongst other organisations. He found that traditional watercolour was rather restrictive for his loose style. As he said this, he scumbled with a bristle brush, various earth colours, from yellow ochre to burnt umber, across a piece of watercolour paper, leaving gaps where the lightest lights would be.
	The paper had already been prepared with acrylic gesso. All Roger’s paints for this demonstration were gouache, except a watercolour ultramarine blue. Because of the chalk binder, the gouache blues looked too matt. It’s possible to mix any and all of the water-based paint media together. Roger used a very limited palette of complementary colours – yellows and browns with pale blues and small splashes of red. Where any particular colour dominated in one area, he echoed the colour around appropriate points within the picture to give it more cohesion. Gouache dries very quickly, but it can be moved around at any time with a wet brush to give half tones and soft edges. The picture itself was of a dark interior, with several people standing at the pub bar and within the area. Light was coming from a big window at the far end of the room, as well as from several ceiling lights. Roger dealt with the window light with pale blue and the ceiling lights with lemon yellow and white, both of which cast many shadows in the floor and from pillars and panels around the walls. The angles of the room’s fittings gave a great sense of space within the room and these were highlighted with the blues and yellows against the dark browns. Every colour was reflected in the floor.
Once the content of the painting had been placed, Roger swapped to a small brush to draw more detail on the figures and the bar area, just dabbing colour here and there, so that nothing was precise and so that many ‘lost & found’ areas remained. By darkening the foreground – the pub floor – the eye was taken to the light window and the figures standing in front of it. As he painted, many figures emerged from the scumbling, a ‘bruiser’ propping up the bar, a couple of talking ‘suits’ with pints, a man in the near corner sitting at a table. By just defining an ear, a complete body would come together! A few dabs here and there of white with a spot of lemon yellow produced the final highlights on the bar pumps, the glasses and the people, turning the completed painting into a wonderful, impressionistic work of art. If you weren’t there, you missed a treat! However, you can see Roger’s work at http://www.rogerdellar.com/. He also appears on the Royal Institute of Oil Painters’ website, http://www.theroi.co.uk/. Keep a lookout for a forthcoming ROI workshop at the Mall Galleries in October, where the famous Italian chef, Antonio Carlucci, will be modelling for professional and amateur artists. Roger will be amongst them.	The Rising Sun, Smithfield
Madeline Hawes

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