G'day viewers, my name's Graeme Stevenson, and I'd like to invite
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
in Australia, do what they do.
(Music Plays)
(Graeme) Hello. (David) G'day mate, how are you? (Graeme) How are you mate? (David) Good
to see you. (Graeme) Good to see you. Came I come in? (David) Yeah, yeah of course you can.
(Graeme) Well this is amazing, Dave. Well g'day viewers,
we're actually at the studio of David Calrow at the moment. And David
is an amazing talented watercolor and acrylic artist.
And he specialises in surrealism and super realism
because your work is so detailed, mate. Now this one
you're working on, it's a religious for the Blake Prize isn't it? (David) You could say religious yes,
you could say that, yes. (Graeme) And about six months work?
(David) I would say give or take a month, yeah. (Graeme) That's amazing. Really
is. But we're going to actually spend the day with David and just, obviously because these paintings
take quite a long time to do. But he's going to show us some various techniques using the
acrylics and the watercolors and how they work in combination, and uses an airbrush
to pick the color up. It's quite fascinating but you're going to get a really, really detailed
view of the amount of work that goes into David's, David's creations that
really is just quite extraordinary. But can I take a seat there?
(David) Please. Just be comfortable, mate. (Graeme) Lets watch what you do then. (David) Okay.
(Graeme) So Dave, I've seen a lot of your work,
you really put a lot of lizards in, and Australian lizards as well.
Can you tell me about that? (David) I think there's something about lizards generally speaking,
particularly Australian lizards, they're all harmless. I mean they're not going to hurt you,
maybe a huge goanna might. (Graeme) No gila monsters here. (David) No, no,
non of those nasties. But I think that just
something about them, they always seem to have a benign smile on
their face. When I look at them I think of how, what a benign
sort of existence they have you know, just hanging about in the sun,
eating insects and whatever. But there's just something about
them, and to me they're just walking mosaics (Graeme) Yeah. (David) and I think they're just
part of, just part of our folklore. (Graeme) There's a real
Australiana theme going through this piece isn't there? It's the
Michelangelo's Pieta or a formatta. (David) Well that's right.
It's, I guess what I've tried to do here
again it's the linking of images I mean I could show you photos I've
downloaded. (Graeme) Sure. (David) Excuse me, just move these paints. The
um, I mean images like that - I mean that's an unusual formation
which I've taken the idea of that, of this
fig growing on rock, and then I've sort of added that
as this beautiful snow gum. But then the
Pieta itself, to me it's an icon and
it shows the loss of a son to a mother.
We have a subject right here at home which is the aboriginal situation,
now I don't want to make political comments. I just want to make a statement
of a loss of a son, and what it means to everybody regardless of who
you are, where you're from or whatever. And I thought well the Pieta is to me
is perfect. So I've drawn the
base of a Pieta, which is actually Mary's
laps or lap and it's even though Michelangelo
exaggerated that greatly, the way
he's carved the robes and everything else into the rock , it just
to me is a beautiful piece of work. Then I've used the body of
Christ and I'm transforming that into an aboriginal
I guess warrior, if you like, but
I don't state nothing vicious about the whole thing
but he's dead, he's died, and of course his mother is
looking directly at the viewer. I wanted also to make a connection between
the Pieta - the christian icon if you like,
(Graeme) Sure. (David) and an Australian situation which to me are
identical, you know. I mean (David) Pieta means pity. (Graeme) Sure. (David) But you can
use certain images and still convey a feeling. And that
is all it is, it's not a religious thing it's merely - I'm going to call it Pieta,
in actual fact. (Graeme) What I'm quiet fascinated about is that, and I did watercolors as well for many
years, yours are just extraordinary but
the process, I know that you're using the Chroma acrylics and
obviously the watercolors to go with it as well, but what I mean
what do you, do you seal this at all? Do you seal that or just paint over the top of where that led is? And
how do you adjust your colors? (David) I don't seal it. And
particularly I use to use watercolors an awful lot, but
since I turned to acrylics particularly the
quality ones, I find that they'll, once I've got the tone here
cause tones more important than anything else. I can then do my washes and do my
glazing over the top until I get the actual tone that I want. (Graeme) Generally you know,
because I use Chroma Interactive myself in a lot of base colors, but
I just didn't realise that they were that versatile to the extent
that you could literally use them like watercolors. (David) These Atelier
particularly Interactive's, they work exactly the same
as watercolors do, pretty well. And you have a
time span which is what I need, and if I want to change something and remove something, then I can.
I've got this time frame to work in. So
using these additives (Graeme) Yeah, I can see you've got (David) and mixes
(Graeme) the unlocking formula there as well. So that just basically lifts, lifts it back
this particular piece here. What type of paper are you using, this is like watercolour of some sort?
David) Yeah, it's Canson. I find, well I've used Canson for years not just not now.
I just find the texture good and it does the job. (Graeme) It holds the color quite well doesn't it? (David) It holds
the pencil too, when I want it to. (Graeme) Yeah.
(David) and I find it easy to spread my graphite to get the tones that I want.
and sometimes I use it as an underlay aswell
(Graeme) ok cause generally I sharpen my pencils I just use a
Staedtler or something. (David) I've either got 4B or 2B
I don't use hard pencils (Graeme) Yeah. (David) because they
leave indentations on the paper and if I want to remove something of course I can't. But there is a removeable,
I use kneadable erasers (Graeme) Right. (David) which are perfect for this because it just lifts.
(Graeme) What Faber-Castell rubber is it? (David) It's Faber-Castell, just need to
to dab it and I can actually lift without rubbing too hard.
(Graeme) So you just sort of take the carbon straight of the page like that. (David) It just takes
it straight off and then if I want to lighten an area I can do that, or I can
go back over with the lead that's already in my brush (Graeme) Wow. (David) and I can bring it back up to
the depth that I want, because don't forget this is going to have color over the top of it.
Would you like me to show you how I work with airbrush to highlight areas?
(Graeme) That would be great. Absolutely, (David) Okay, fine. (Graeme) I'm sure the audience would love to see that. (David) Okay, great.
Well just give me a minute and I'll get the compressor going. (Graeme) Ok Great.
Alright viewers we are just going to duck away for a message from our sponsor and we'll be back shortly.