The fragility of flowers

Vincent van Gogh made sunflowers his personal motifs, but, when he looked to experiment with colour, a full florist’s roster of irises, roses, poppies, poured out of his brush, as Michael Prodger discovers

Every painting’s varying subject matter and scale offers us distinct opportunities and challenges. Before I start any project, I like to consider what I want to convey, what opportunities and challeng

This article has been one of the most ‘mind-searching’ artistic journeys I’ve done! I felt that the idea of combining both the celebration of life and contrasting it with the eventual natural act of d

Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

SOMETIMES MAKING LIFE SIMPLER FOR YOURSELF and avoiding overthinking a process gets you further. In painting terms, using flat colours does exactly that and it may even prove to hold the key to more c

WINTER HELLEBORES, ALSO KNOWN AS CHRISTMAS ROSES, come in many different colours. We love those with cool green petals, veined and limned with pinkish red. The fern fronds and ivy complement them perf