Veronica Colvin

Contemporary Realist Painter

Hands, hands, hands!

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I have a fascination with hands. Over the years I’ve painted different types and styles of hands. My latest work is a small study of Tempe Manning’s hand from her 1939 Archibald Finalist self portrait (see main image below).

Every single time I walk into the Art Gallery of NSW, I head straight to this painting and study it for ages. I absolutely love her colour work, her confidence using chromatic paint, the warm cool shifts and brush work.

Below are some of the hands I’ve painted over the years. I will never tire of painting them.

Pushing My Boundaries

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I decided to dedicate these last couple of months to sketching in public and museums, and exploring new art materials (or old materials that I own and haven’t touched in years).

It was good to step away from portrait / oil painting for a period of time. Getting out of my comfort zone, exploring new mediums and pushing my boundaries has forced me to think differently about my artwork and how I want to progress.

It has also been great to keep a “colour” sketchbook during these last couple of months. A journal that I do not share, and hence, allowing myself a space to explore concepts, colour and mark making and to make mistakes. Some of the pages are rubbish – and it’s fabulous!

Years ago I used to paint in gouache. It’s an opaque medium, and one has to be very careful with how much water is used in order to control the hue and value shift it does when dry. Challenging and a little bit stressful at times, but it felt good to push myself to try something new(ish).

The gouache still life paintings below are from one-day monthly sketch sessions done at my studio. I do these sessions with another artist, and between catching-up and laughing, we do manage to get some painting done!

Shane – Oil Sketch from Life

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I just finished teaching Portrait Drawing and Portrait Painting at Sydney Art School on Mondays this term. In between teaching and critiquing student’s work, I managed to paint a very quick oil sketch of the model for the term – Shane.

I demo as we work through the term. I would have liked to have finished it, but I’m there to teach, not paint!

I’m back teaching Term 1, 2024. Classes start Monday, 29 January. If you are interested in joining my class, you can enrol here.

The school is still running the promo from this term – but it will most likely go down soon. So if you are interested, best to quickly enrol for next year so as not to miss out on the savings.

Portrait Life Drawing

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During the last couple of months, I’ve had a number of models pose for me at my studio and I’ve created a range of tonal / value portrait sketches from the sessions. Each portrait sketch is a result of a one day model sitting – drawn from life.

Most of these sketches were created with raw umber or chrome black, rubbed into a polyester canvas. It works and looks similar to charcoal sketches. I quite enjoy working this way when time is limited, as I’m able to get a lot done in a one day session – specially when the drawing and value / tonal range is more important to get correct, rather than a quick splash of paint and colour.

I also use raw umber or chrome black paint to sketch the original drawing – as it easily rubs off with a kneaded eraser. Once I’m happy with the drawing, I then proceed to tonally construct the portrait with the oil paint.

You can see larger versions of these drawing in my Digital / Traditional Drawings Gallery.

Left to right:

  • Carl – Chrome Black oil sketch
  • Olivia – Raw Umber oil sketch
  • Shane – Charcoal sketch
  • Benedicta – Raw Umber oil sketch

Shane – Charcoal Tonal Study

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Shane is a local life model in Sydney. He’s also an artist and filmmaker. I recently had him in the studio posing for myself and another painter. On the day I did a small colour study of him. As I took a reference shot of his pose, and really liked his spectacles and how they reflected the light, I decided to do a quick charcoal tonal study. Below is the result.

The paper I used is Canson “C” a grain – which has a slightly grained texture that allows one to quickly achieve subtle effects of depth as well as shading between shadow and light. I do like the texture the paper provides, though in photography it does come across as slightly more grainy than it is.