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September 2020: Lockdown zoom demonstration with Hashim Akib
Thanks Chris, for the write-up. Hashim gave us demos of two very contrasting scenes, both worked from his own photos, and using a range of flat Daler-Rowney brushes [working down from 2.5" in size] and a fully loaded round palette of Amsterdam acrylics [which come in both a 'standard' and an 'expert' range]. Firstly Hashim produced his impressions of a rather chaotic shanty town scene [see below] which he interpreted loosely and vibrantly. He began with combinations of colour [deep violet, phthalo green, yellow ochre, magenta ...] loaded liberally onto his 2.5" brush, deliberately avoiding over-blending and instead allowing a certain natural streaking of the colours onto his stretch canvas. Hashim enjoys working against the clock; doing so raises the sense of immediacy [and his heart-rate!]. He used to work more realistically but became tired of the 'neatness' preferring to work somewhere between impressionism and expressionism. A measure of abstraction is also more engaging for many who wish to see work going beyond simple representation however skilfully executed. His latter style is also more popular with many galleries, where a 'jigsaw picture' treatment may be judged a little too chocolate-boxy. |
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The original photo
These slides show the interplay of adding, alternately, lighter elements, and darker touches, working with progressively finer brushes - but never small 'detail' brushes.This is a picture of a lifestyle not a work of portraiture.
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Hashim's second picture is of the bridge at Bradford-on-Avon, and is more pastoral in mood.
He sometimes uses a straight edge for creating architectural straight edges, dragging the paint away from the edge, but at the same time he prefers to avoid extended unbroken lines, such as the top of the bridge, so as to create a more 'relaxed' feel. The 'grey' bridge was created from cobalt blue, white and burnt sienna but after establishing that feature he changed to a clean brush loaded with orange and yellow ochre to create perhaps the key marks of the whole picture, the area of sunlight in the arch of the bridge.
Below the bridge area there was room to create interesting marks with phthalo blue, turquoise, brilliant blue, and phthalo green.
We all need our drawing skills, but Hashim asked us to consider 'drawing' directly with the actual brush marks of paint, thereby creating a better sense of immediacy. The above-bridge area was built up with more care to edges, shadow walls, considered brush-corner dabs for windows etc, an impressionistic townscape skillfully emerging element by element. |
If you wish to see more of Hashim and his work there is much to see on YouTube, including this 'Meet The Artist' video
