Crawshaw - Watercolours

Alwyn Crawshaw in his studio.

S uccessful painter, author and teacher Alwyn Crawshaw was born at Mirfield Yorkshire and studied at Hastings School of Art. He now lives in Dawlish, Devon with his wife June, where they have their own gallery.

Alwyn is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of the British Watercolour Society and the Society of Equestrian Artists. He is also President of the National Acrylic Painters Association and is listed in the current edition of Whos Who in Art. As well as painting in watercolour, Alwyn also works in oil, acrylic and occasionally pastel. He chooses to paint landscapes, seascapes, buildings and anything else that inspires him. Heavy working horses and elm trees are frequently featured in his paintings and may be considered the artists trademark.

This book is one of eight titles written by Alwyn Crawshaw for the HarperCollins Learn to Paint series. Alwyns other books for HarperCollins include: The Artist at Work (an autobiography of his painting career), Sketching with Alwyn Crawshaw, The Half-Hour Painter, Alwyn Crawshaws Watercolour Painting Course, Alwyn Crawshaws Oil Painting Course and Alwyn Crawshaws Acrylic Painting Course.

To date Alwyn has made five television series: A Brush with Art, Crawshaw Paints on Holiday, Crawshaw Paints Oils, Crawshaws Watercolour Studio and Crawshaw Paints Acrylics, and for each of these he has written a book of the same title to accompany the series.

Alwyn has been a guest on local and national radio programmes and has appeared on various television programmes. In addition, his television programmes have been shown in the USA. He has made several successful videos on painting and in 1991 was listed as one of the top ten artist video teachers in America. Alwyn is also a regular contributor to the Leisure Painter magazine. Alwyn organises his own successful and very popular painting courses and holidays. He has also co-founded the Society of Amateur Artists, of which he is President.

Fine art prints of Alwyns well-known paintings are in demand worldwide. His paintings are sold in British and overseas galleries and can be found in private collections throughout the world. Painted mainly from nature and still life, Alwyns work has been favourably reviewed by the critics. The Telegraph Weekend Magazine reported him to be a landscape painter of considerable expertise and the Artists and Illustrators magazine described him as outspoken about the importance of maintaining traditional values in the teaching of art.

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P ainting is one of mans earliest and most basic forms of expression. Stone Age man drew on his cave walls. Usually, these drawings were of wild animals and hunting scenes. It is difficult to say whether these were created by the artist to be instructional a means of showing children what a certain animal looked like, for instance or as a form of cave decoration, or whether they were just a relaxing pastime to release creative feelings.

Whatever the reason, these early artists must have been a creative and dedicated people; there was no local art shop to provide them with their materials and no electric light to help on dark days. All this started over twenty-five thousand years ago and painting is still with us today.

Naturally, over this long period, painting has become very sophisticated. Artists materials have also undergone vast changes and the tremendous range now available, plus the variety of methods that are with us today, can make painting very frightening for the beginner: people can be put off by not knowing where or how to start.

HAVE YOU TRIED?

One of the most frequent statements made to me is: I wish I could paint. My reply is always, Have you tried? and invariably the answer comes back: No, I havent. I wouldnt know how to start. How can anyone say they cant paint when they have never tried! Have you ever asked anyone if they can drive a car? If the answer is no, it will usually be followed by: I havent tried yet but I am going to have lessons. There seems to be a veil of mystery around painting but not around driving a car! So let me clear up some of the mysteries surrounding painting, from a beginners point of view.

If you like painting outside, Alwyn will help you experiment with watercolour styles and techniques.

First of all, you may feel daunted by the sheer volume of work that has been created over the past thousands of years, the hundreds of styles and techniques used, from painting on ceilings to painting miniatures. There is Prehistoric painting, Greek painting, Egyptian painting, Byzantine painting, Chinese painting, Gothic art, Florentine painting, Impressionism, Surrealism, Abstract art, Cubism, and so on.

Of course, all these styles can make the mind boggle and to unravel all of them and understand the differences could take a lifetime. So what are we to do and where do we start?

The simplest answer is to forget all you have picked up in the past and start from the smallest beginnings like Stone Age man.

FEELING CREATIVE

Today, most people who want to paint have one thing in common a creative instinct. Unfortunately, many people dont realise this until later on in life, when something stirs within them or circumstances set them on the road to painting.

For some people painting becomes a fascinating hobby. For others, it becomes their only way of expressing their innermost thoughts and leads to a means of communicating with other people. For anyone who happens to be house-bound, painting can have a real therapeutic function.

Through painting, people meet and make friends either by joining art societies (most towns have one) or by progressing and selling their works at local art shows, in local shops and so on.

I think, above all, painting can be a creative way of getting involved, forgetting your immediate troubles, great or small, and finishing up with a work of art that you can share with others and enjoy for the rest of your life.

FIRST STEPS

By now, as a reader of this book, you have taken your first big step. If you are a beginner, this means that you are curious about painting and want to find out all about it. You have also selected a medium with which to start: watercolour. If you already paint and are reading this book in order to learn about the medium of watercolour, then probably you are looking for exciting new ways to express your creative skills.