Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Oil painting techniques and tutorial with Paul Coney | Colour In Your Life

G'day viewers, my name's Graeme Stevenson, and I'd like to invite you to come on a

journey of creativity and learning and adventure through the series Colour In Your Life.

There's an artist in every family throughout the world.

Lots of times there's an artist deep down inside all of us as well.

So grab your kids, your brothers, your sisters, your aunties, uncles and

mums and dads and come and see how some of the best artists do what they do.

(Music Plays)

(Graeme) Okay folks, well we are back in New Zealand again. Fantastic, love this

country, love the people, and we're at an area called the Manukau

Peninsula. I got that right? (Paul) Yes, you did. (Graeme) That's fantastic.

And we're with a very talented gentleman today, Mister Paul Coney.

Paul, (Paul) How do you do? Nice to meet you. (Graeme) welcome to the show. Wonderful to be here. Now Paul's

work is really exceptional. I mean you look at Paul's work you can see that he has

spent literally hundreds of hours involved in what he does.

Your work initiated really through dealing with depression

when you were a kid. And it was the loss of your mum that this all come

about. And your absolute fascination with nature.

(Paul) Yeah, my mother died when I was about fifteen.

It was quiet a protractive illness (Graeme) Yeah. (Paul) and I found it quite traumatising.

I suppose you could say I didn't deal with it. I

coped with it, but I didn't deal with it. So basically what

did is I suppressed everything, every emotion I had

about it, and I just carried on and put one foot in front of the other

basically. When you do that I think we all know now that

it takes it's tool and these emotions don't go away, and you end up getting

very depressed, or end up with an anxiety

disorder which is exactly what happened. (Graeme) But you did use,

you used your work to a sort of a little bit like a phoenix.

(Paul) Yes, absolutely. (Graeme) You rose out of that, yeah. (Paul) I did watercolours

for probably over twenty years. I was absolutely fascinated with watercolours.

and the techniques. You have to preconceive watercolours

and the planning of them, strategies, etc, etc. But after twenty

years I guess I started to feel a little bit stale with

the medium and I wanted to change and do larger

works basically. With watercolour you're always a bit limited with

size of the paper, (Graeme) With the size. (Paul) the framing,(Graeme) Yeah. (Paul) the glazing

of the work it starts to get quite heavy for walls. (Graeme) Yeah. (Paul) Were

canvas like this they're light and they

fit a modern interior really, yep. (Graeme) Well what we're going to be doing today

is that Paul works with photographing

his wife and his grandkids. I mean lives in a beautiful area right down near the beaches.

I love your water scenes. This delightful Chantilly with the young

lady in it going down to the surf, and that's exactly what we're going to be doing today.

We're going to be going your beautiful wife (Paul) Yep. (Graeme) and your granddaughter

in a beach scene. I'm going to step out of shot and I'm going to let

Paul make a start and we'll discuss a whole bunch of things as we go through. But

really, really talented guy; you're going to be quite amazed.

(Paul) The first thing I do when I start a painting

is I try and sort out which colours I'm going to use.

I always use a limited palette as I find

this helps with matching the colours. Maybe at a later

date if you have to reapply something on top.

So the colours I'm going to use today

is Colbert Blue, and I'll put the Colbert Blue here.

I set out my palette the same way

pretty much every time. I have blues and cooler

colours this side. I have over here

which I can make a dark out of, and I have warmer colours this

side. I usually have two whites as well.

One for the cooler colours, one for the warmer

colours. Cause I find once you get if you get

a little spot of blue and white, and you use yellow

the whole thing turns green, so it's better to seperate them.

I like to set out and mix all my

colours before I start so I don't need to do that in the middle of a painting.

Okay, I'm now going to mix up some

paint. So I've got my palette knife and I'll do some darks first.

So a bit of the blue, I can see I'm going to use

this for the shadows, so I want a kind of

neutral dark that will turn into a grey.

It's hard to see what the actual colour of it while it's so dark, but

if we get a little bit of white and mix it in

you can see that's turned out a relatively neutral

grey, perhaps a bit on the blue side, but that's okay.

The cardigan's brown on Marietta.

So I'm going to make a browner version of this as well,

and again do a bit of a tonal range of it. (Graeme) Now you've got an amazing piece

that you've done called Albert Park Fountain, and it's a magnificent

piece, of one of your florals are something that you're very famous for.

And also a piece called Cardinal de Richelieu. The one thing that you

do find fascinating is water drops, and reflections in what water

actually does. And you can see in this piece the water actually over

the flowers is quite amazing. (Paul) I do love water as an added element

into my paintings. I love all the effects of water.

The reflections, the highlights you get with water, the

refractions of light you can get with water into the shadow. I

really feel it a adds another dimension to any

scene. (Graeme) It's amazing, absolutely. (Paul) Okay, now

I'm going to put the first tonal values on.

I'll grab my mahl stick which I always work with,

and I think I'll start with the

darker tones in Marietta's cardigan.

So I'm just getting about the right tonal value,

and I just start putting the darker tones

in like this in the shadow of Marietta's cardigan. Now

everything on this side of Marietta is pretty

much in shadow, so I'm putting the darker bits

on first. But shadows are quite interesting things, because

you get reflected light back into them.

You get lots of colour changes,

and basically I'm just trying to get some folds in first

quickly. (Graeme) It looks like

a pretty flexible brush you've got there as well? (Paul) Yeah, these are just soft

brushes, they're just nylon brushes. And actual

in fact shadow is usually, I find it's quite

continuous so I don't stop

where it changes like I'm doing shadow

on the hair now, but really it's not that different from

shadow on the coat where it's

dark, it's dark basically. Shadow just falls indiscriminately

on everything; it doesn't pick and choose.

(Graeme) That oils running out quite effectively. What...

are you using a medium? (Paul) Yep, I basically use

I like Liquin as a product. (Graeme) Aha.

(Paul) Liquin - it helps the paint come

off the brush quite easily. It's fast drying

and it holds the paint together I think,

so the paint doesn't flake or

whatever. But it's nice to use. (Graeme) I'm just looking at

this piece called Champagne on Ice, and there's very, very

few dark spots in there but there's so much shape and

texture. And there's virtually no dark colours except on

two edges. (Paul) I wanted that painting to have quite a sort of

potpourri feel, a very pet-ally fee.

And the softness of the roses, I wanted to bring out

the softness of the rose petals. Now here

quite often on shadows you get reflected light.

So I can see a little bit of grey happening

in terms of reflected light back onto the cardigan. So

again I'm swapping to a smaller brush and I'm going to go

to a tonal value of grey here,

and just put it in where I see that reflected light happening.

(Graeme) Now you do, do a lot of commissions as well. (Paul) Yeah.

I like doing commissions very much. (Graeme) Yeah, cause you work with the client. There's one

particular piece which I think is a really great piece.

It's called Greg's Family, and you've basically got this gentleman and his whole family

working on the car outside a shed. They all know who they are.

But what a fantastic approach for a different idea for a portrait. (Paul) Yeah, well I feel

that it encapsulated more than just a portrait.

It encapsulated Greg and the character of his

family and the character of his life. (Graeme) Yes. (Paul) He's a

dairy farmer and it just showed

like the farm sheds. Greg

was a very keen mechanic, was proud of his Douge

car too, which he'd worked on and brought up to scratch.

So that was featured in the painting as well.

Okay, so what I'll do now is just move

the easel up a little bit,

and with this easel it's just a matter of lifting it

and changing where the dales are.

It's very easy. A friend of mine made this for me, and I find

it much easy than quite a lot of other quite complicated

easels which you can buy. (Graeme) The easier the better, yeah.

(Paul) So with the flesh

tone, I'll just do a bit on the leg here,

on Marietta's leg. I've mixed up some flesh tones

and how I'll start is I'll put in

this bit of the shadow here

which is called, it's normally called the core shadow.

And it's usually a little bit

darker than the rest of the shadow, because it's not really

receiving any reflected light back into it.

It's a band that kind of goes down the join of where the shadow

meets the light. And I've got a

general rule of saying it's usually darker

where the shadow meets the light, which is the core shadow.

(Graeme) That's correct. (Paul) Yep. (Graeme) So you generally start your paintings

directly onto a white canvas? (Paul) Yeah, I normally,

I normally do. Some landscapes it's a good idea

to put down a ground colour if that colour appears, or that tone appears

quite often. But normally I

just like starting on white, yep. (Graeme) You've got another piece here called

Creme de Cream, another beautiful floral piece.

What was the motivation for when you really started to

do the florals? (Paul) I do love doing the florals. I like

the detail in them, all the different textures.

So here we've got the highlight in the middle of the

light form there. So I'll just use a little bit of

brighter, slightly brighter white there, and just do that down the middle.

And then because its flesh of course

things need to be softened a little bit again.

(Graeme) I noticed that you were drying the brush. It's important to

get the oil and paint out when you do that. (Paul) Yeah,

I wipe my brush quite often, or all that happens

is I start spreading excess paint around that I don't

really want to. Okay, so now I'm moving on

to the slightly deeper shadow of this other

leg. Putting the darker bits in

first,

and working my way down. A little bit of core shadow there

again as it goes over the ankle and

heel. And of course warming and lightening a little bit

as we move over

to the middle of the leg here. (Graeme) And you've also over the last thirty years, and you've been painting

for forty years, but you also do classes

and workshops for people as well. And you've got your studio

and your home set up for people anywhere in the world, that

can come in and spend time with you here in this beautiful area,

and learn from you, and your very talented wife Marietta,

as well, who's a brilliant artist. So if somebody wanted to come

in and possibly flying out from somewhere across the world.

What's your website address again, Paul? (Paul) It's Paul

Coney dot co dot nz. (Graeme) It's

something that you and Marietta have been putting together, and obviously having

people from all over the world come in and spend time with you while you

teach them these techniques. I think as well, it's such a beautiful area that you

live in. (Paul) Yeah, it's very picturesque here. (Graeme) Yeah.

(Paul) We're close to the beach. It's quite a dramatic landscape

really. Lots of things to paint here. Okay, so I'll

move just on to the refection of this leg as well.

With reflections, they can either be absolutely perfect reflections where

you can turn the whole painting upside down, and there wouldn't be any

difference. Here you've got the shape of the leg being distorted

quite a lot. There's all sorts of things that happen with reflections.

There's no kind of set rule I don't think.

I think that should do with the reflections at this point.

(Graeme) It looks fantastic. What we can do now, is we can move on to

the other piece that you've prepared, so we'll move onto the next one. (Paul) Yep.

Sure.

(Paul) Now I've got a slightly greyed blue

which I'm going to start with a tonal range.

And some of the sand has got just soft

almost wrinkles in it which I'm going to start put in first.

What I'm doing is called negative imaging.

You do it in watercolour too, where you can

paint dark around lighter tonal values. With this

oil because it's a covering medium, I'm actually painting lighter

tones around the darker toner value of the reflection.

And I can actually cut right into the reflection if I want to

with these lighter tones. Basically I'm just putting bands

of colour on first, and then I'll

blend some of them. (Graeme) Just looking at the piece called

Dappled Lillies, and you can see why there's

painstaking amounts of time that goes into these pieces of yours, cause they're quite

amazing. But the colour contrast and how you actually put your composition

together is quite amazing as well. (Paul) What I go for is the light

and particularly the shadow amongst foliage. You get

so many variations in the shadows, so many shapes. And to me,

shadow is what gives the sunlight life almost.

It brings the whole painting to life. Now this next piece

actually is a watercolour I think you did a while back called Michaela and

Poppies, but an absolutely beautiful piece, it really is.

(Paul) Yeah, that was when Michaela, one of my daughters was about three years old.

With the poppies I've enlarged them, so that

it gives you the sense of the poppies being right in front of your face.

And that in fact lends intimacy to whole,

to the whole scene. You can really feel you're in amongst the

poppies there. (Graeme) In 1997 you were actually the offical artist for

the defence of when Australia ll, I think it was, was actually

racing against you guys for the America's Cup. And New Zealand

won the cup of Australia, and you basically painted the yacht called Kiwi Magic.

(Paul) Yeah, I was asked to do two paintings

of KZ 7 was the yacht. We did a

limited edition run of five hundred prints each which sold very, very

well. And that was a good break for me. (Graeme) Yeah,

gone in leaps and bounds since them - no two ways about it. (Paul) Yeah, thank you, Graeme.

(Graeme) You've got to a stage with this one where we're probably going to be able to move on to

the next piece that you've got, and do a couple of

techniques in that one as well. (Paul) Okay.

(Paul) Now I want to do

a nice clear sky that's graduated from one

colour to another colour, and from a slightly lighter tone to a slightly

darker tone. So I've mixed up the two colours and two tones

and I'm going to do what's called a saw tooth drawing.

Which is probably the best way I know of

getting a very slow graduation through, and a very even

graduation. So the first thing I need to do I'll get the darker

tone, which is a blue, again a Colbert Blue

which we've been using right the way through, and I'm just going to

quickly draw in the teeth. (Graeme) Like a saw. (Paul) Yep.

(Graeme) So what other artists actually use this particular technique? (Paul) To be honest with

you I'm not sure. (Graeme) Okay. (Paul) I must have picked it up from

somewhere and it works extremely well.

The longer the teeth the slower the graduation.

(Graeme) Yeah. (Paul) The shorter the teeth, obviously it becomes more sudden.

Right, now I'll flatten

the blue basically (Graeme) Yes. (Paul) so it's a solid, they're all solid masses.

The only difficulty that you can have

with this is when I'm getting close to the hair here.

I need to do some horizontal brush work

which sometimes can go over the hair, but I mean being oil

we can easily fix that up at a later date. (Graeme) Yeah,

apart from all the florals you do, your figurative works pretty amazing as well.

And there's one here called Silk n Surf, which is sort of

where we're heading, it's a similar type of picture. But you can see that the sunlight...

This is one of your beautiful daughters. (Paul) Michaela's my eldest daughter, and

that's an antique dress I think and it has silk

and satin in it. Now I find the

sky quite often if I'm outside or driving in the car, and I look at

the sky, I quite often see at the bottom of the sky

it goes slightly yellow. I find it

really lifts the sky if you can have a lighter tone

and a warmer tone coming into the blue.

Now what I do is I'm

going to use a filbert brush. It's

a soft brush but it is quite firm as well,

so it will push the paint. And I'm going to

push it with a horizontal motion that has to be

continuous and methodical.

So I'm just pushing it going upwards

horizontally in a very even way.

(Graeme) Great technique. (Paul) Okay, now you can do the same thing down as well.

(Graeme) So these are just some of the techniques you teach at your

workshops? (Paul) Yeah, these are just a few. There are

many, many ways of kind of approaching a painting and how

to look at a scene and decide how you're going to

go about actually doing the painting. (Graeme) Yeah. (Paul) As you

can see there are still a few little

streaks there. Now I found over time the

best thing, the best way to blend and get rid of those streaks is just with your

finger. So just make sure the end of your finger is clean.

And then very lightly and probably

not horizontally now, do it kind of in a diagonal motion.

Just very lightly skim the surface of

the paint like that. (Graeme) And also one of the galleries

galleries that you deal with in

New Zealand in Aukland, is the International Art Centre that has some very

prestigious artists in there - you being one of them of course.

(Paul) I started with the international Art Centre in

I think the mid to late eighties, and I've been

selling my work there pretty much ever since for

probably over thirty years now. (Graeme) Well we've had an absolutely

fantastic day with you Paul - you're work is amazing. An incredibly talented man,

I think that the rest of the world will be amazed when they see you as well. (Paul) Thank you,

Graeme. It's been an absolute pleasure having you and Sophia here.

(Graeme) Alright, fantastic day with an amazing man,

very, very talented. Went through some processes today which was great.

To end up with amazing results like this it's just wonderful. Paul,

thank you so much. (Paul) Absolute pleasure. (Graeme) It was a great day, it really was. You website

address again is? (Paul) Paul Coney dot co dot nz.

(Graeme) So if you want to come in and have a look at what Paul's doing, and also enquire

about his workshops. It doesn't matter where you are in the world,

if you want to travel to the beautiful islands of New Zealand, it's a fantastic

area. Beautiful scenery. Paul and his darling wife have got

their home set up specifically for that, so come in and make an enquiry,

come in and see Paul. Come and see us on Facebook, YouTube.

And if you want some other information come in to colour in your life dot com dot au,

and we'll see you in there as well. But thanks again, and all the way from New Zealand -

remember: make sure you put some colour in your life. Until we see you next time guys, bye now.

Bye.