SUPPORTS

I enjoy painting on a variety of surfaces - wood panels, canvas, and stretched linen.

I particularly like oil primed linen for my commissioned portraits, either stretched or fixed to a wood panel. Oil primed linen usually has to be specially ordered from the US, as it is stupidly expensive and most people wouldn’t buy it, but it is the most archival surface, along with properly primed wood panels, and it is required for any important commission.

PAINTS

I use artist quality oil paints - fast dry formula Titanium White by Graham. 

Yellow Ochre pale, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Rose, Terra Rosa and Naples Yellow by Winsor & Newton. 

Cadmium Yellow Pale and Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red light, Transparent Earth Red, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cobalt Blue, Viridian Green, Sap Green, Raw Umber and Ivory Black, all by Gamblin. I occasionally use Cadmium Orange and a Purple, and very occasionally Napthol Red or Cad red deep. Each of these colours is chosen for permanence and strong pigmentation. I sometimes use Williamsburg paints as well.

BRUSHES

I now have a huge variety of brushes - all synthetics by Princeton and Hoglin. I love Princeton Imperial badger hair brushes too. I usually have a small round brush by Princeton to hand as well.

MEDIUMS

I use Gamsol, Liquin, Galkyd, and Linseed oil as mediums and for cleaning brushes and Gamvar for varnishing. 

MORE SUPPLIES

In the studio I paint on a two-masted Jack Richelson Santa Fe Easel, with a winch system to raise and lower it. On location I use a Soltek aluminum French-type easel.

For Murals, I use Golden Acrylics and all the mediums that go with them.

For oil sketches in remote locations I sometimes use Alkyd fast drying oil paints, so that my sketches dry fast for travelling, or water soluble oils to avoid the problems of carrying solvents on airplanes.

I’ve essentially used more or less the same materials my whole career, though I added light ochre, terra rosa and transparent earth red more recently, after seeing how useful they could be, and added sap green and cad yellow medium for plein air painting when I began doing more of it, as they give me a greater range of greens more easily. 

I stopped using canvas for most commissioned portraits when I began concentrating on corporate and Government portraits, as canvas is not as archivally safe. 

I started using fast dry formula white a few years ago because it speeds things up.

I like a smooth, primed wood panel for small portraits and a fine linen for larger ones, to allow for easier control of small details. I like canvas for gallery work, and wood panels for plein air sketching.

For the past 12 years I have painted 6 magazine covers a year for the BC Law Society’s magazine, The Advocate. Although these are quite small, to match the size of the previous 50-odd years of covers, they are complex little portraits and I find very smooth gessoed panels essential for rendering the kind of detail required at this scale (19”x 13”).

I have occasionally used stencils and gel transfers on acrylic grounds to incorporate text and found elements into my portraits. These added textural interest, as well as printed, readable text. I’ve also experimented with gold leaf. Most of this experimentation has been in religiously-themed work for churches and private clients.

Oil paint gives me the greatest flexibility in making a portrait, plus speed and ease of blending.

Watercolour is challenging for portrait work, as it is transparent and you can’t make mistakes, so I tend to avoid it. 

When I paint murals, I have to use acrylics, which dry faster than the oils I prefer, so I have to work very fast and use glazes to achieve blended effects that I find easier to do with oil paint. With acrylic I always feel I am working harder to overcome the paint rather than working with it. It is great for any work incorporating collage elements, as it is essentially glue.

I do consider the longevity and permanence of the materials I use as my portraits are designed to last. Those in public collections are intended to be there for as long as the institutions that have them last. The private commissions are intended to become family heirlooms so they need to be able to stand the passage of time.

Oil paints are essentially organic, containing natural oils, often poppy or linseed oils, although some pigments can contain heavy metals, so disposing of any waste has to be done responsibly. Whilst the paints themselves don’t present sustainability or ethical problems, solvents can be harmful and must be treated with respect in well ventilated spaces. Gamsol is touted as the safest odourless solvent, which is why I use it. It is possible to use poppy seed oil or linseed oil in place of it, which are less toxic, but they slow drying time. 

The alternative is to use water-soluble oils, which avoids solvent use altogether, but they take a little getting used to. In my experience, those by Cobra and Grumbacher work very well, as do Winsor & Newton’s Artisan range, though these are allegedly only student grade paints they work well. The Holbein Duo range present challenges of their own, and I don’t personally like or recommend them.