Congratulations to Luke Fj Nolan for being one of four who were noted as Highly Commended for the de Laszlo Foundation Award with, ‘Portrait of a Miao Girl’.
The de Laszlo Foundation award, sponsored by the de Laszlo Foundation, aims to encourage young artists.
Award for an artist under thirty-five years of age judged to have submitted the best portrait.
Is there a specific style or technique which you use for you work?
I always work from a visual impression. I’m always taking a distance from the sitter – 3x plus the longest length of the camera, stepping back and then, often I’m viewing them, through a small piece of mirror. The mirror flips the image and gives you a new perspective consistently to work with. I do this every time. Something I always say to students is, “If I went to a session without a mirror, I’d probably postpone it”.
This is a friend of mine, she’s at London Fine Arts as well.
The idea was to capture an impression with the sparkles of the headdress and the fluffy qualities from the dress itself.
Yes, so how did you create those speckles of shimmer/ light over the painting?
I splashed paint here and there and at the same time, really squinted at the image, figuring which ones are going to stand out from a whole crowd of sparkles.
How do you start your paintings/ what are the initial stages?
I start with the brush but I often do a slight under drawing for shape. I essentially, stroke by stroke, paint the image and work with individual mark-making as I go. I start off with stumbling and glazing and so forth – I use a large amount of techniques to get to that final process.
Is there anything which you’re working on now or got coming up which you may want to share?
I’m working on a few full figured paintings at the moment. The next stage is to work on the life size full figured portrait. And in this month I’ll be starting two projects. Along with opening up a new studio in Oval, I run classes and do drop in sessions. Trying to balance the business side of art and the creative. And the idea of the studio is to create a community of young artists which all have different ideas and learn from each other and exhibit together.
Hopefully everybody is learning from everyone.
How long did the portrait take you in total?
About 40 hours of sitting. Done over 7 sessions of maybe about 6 hours each. And I completed it with around one sitting a week until the cause of Summer. This painting was made in an older studio of mine.
And this is your first time exhibiting with us?
Yes
