Ronald Maddox remembers the many interests and enthusiasms of his longstanding friend and fellow artist.

In this article Raymond previewed the book ‘Mastering watercolour’ for The Artist magazine.

Raymond explores the use of a camera as a tool to assist picture making.

The author develops the theme of exploring different media.

Multiple images

In the first of four articles, the basic equipment and materials are introduced and a simple home printing technique is described.

Stencils

This article explains how to design a screenprint and prepare the stencils.

Pulling prints

Raymond explains how to prepare for and then tackle the actual printing procedure.

Exploiting the medium

The final article in this series looks at methods in more detail and discusses record keeping and exhibiting work.

Raymond Spurrier and David Gentleman shared an assignment for the Architectural Review in the 1950s, drawing and photographing aspects of provincial France, an experience which influenced the later work of both artists. This article by Raymond is based on an interview with David Gentleman after a gap of 35 years in which he talks to him about his life and work. It marked the publication of David Gentleman’s Paris, the fourth in a notable series of topographical work by the distinguished artist.

In search of the picturesque

In the first of a series of eight articles Raymond reminisces about the days of slow travel abroad when the sense of travelling hopefully awakened his visual awareness.

Seeing things in a new light

The author takes a nostalgic look back to a holiday spent in Spain, at a time when the foreign travel allowance of £25 was enough to last a month, where he really began to learn to ‘see’ as an artist.

The fleeting image

A foreign holiday is described as the ideal opportunity to start using a sketchbook regularly, a practice on which successful sketching depends.

Drawing on location

Raymond gives advice for the artist drawing on location.

Discovering townscape

The author explains how he discovers the essence of a townscape as he explores urban subjects.

Islands in the sun

Raymond enjoys the pleasures of Mediterranean islands, preferably those that are only accessible by boat, as he searches for new artistic inspiration.

The impact of America

The overwhelming and unexpected scale of the landscape provides a challenge to the artist after the ‘cosy vistas’ of Europe.

Prospects without limit

In the final article in the series the author faces the pictorial challenge of the wide open spaces of the American west as he continues his travels.

Raymond Spurrier was a great admirer of the work of Edward Bawden, CBE, RA. In the 1980s he attended and reviewed two exhibitions of his work where he also had the pleasure of interviewing him as a longstanding fan. The first, at the Imperial War Museum, marked Bawden’s 80th birthday where 68 of his paintings as an official war artist were on display, but this was only a fraction of over 300 that he produced during that commission.

Raymond reviews another exhibition of Edward Bawden’s work that showed the huge diversity of his talent, although it only covered a small part of a prolific working life. He concluded his review with a plea for a major retrospective of this leading 20th century artist and designer.

Raymond gives an account of war artists and their work from the perspective of someone who lived through the experiences of World War II.

A fresh approach

Raymond begins this series by describing the basic principle of applying paint to paper with a reminder of the qualities of watercolour as a medium for painting.

Colour with a purpose

Here Raymond examines the various characteristics of the many different pigments that are available today and encourages detailed observation of colour as a fundamental skill to enable artists to be able to produce from their own palettes the correct colours to match their own artistic aspirations.

The changing face of tradition

Raymond describes the change from monochrome topography to a more painterly approach in full colour that produced something more readily recognisable as art.

The landscape of nostalgia

This article explores the influence of nineteenth century fashions and habits on art of the period at a time when the Industrial Revolution was well under way and the landscape was beginning to change.

The pattern of change

Raymond describes the way in which the watercolour tradition moved forward into the twentieth century, an era of unprecedented change. Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden were considered by Raymond to be the two most brilliant exponents of the modern idiom who above all others were responsible for bringing new life to the old medium of watercolour and a freshness of vision to landscape painting.

A talent for survival

The concluding article in this series, which has focused on landscape painting over a period of three centuries, summarises the evolution and development of English watercolour art and stresses the importance of amateurism to its popularity.

In his first encounter with the landscape of Australia Raymond tries to come to terms with some of the new and unexpected impressions he experiences.

As he continues his exploration of Australia Raymond gradually becomes accustomed to the remote emptiness of the landscape making quick sketches of its features and more detailed drawings of buildings in its settlements both large and small. But he also spends time absorbing the experience through the eyes of a tourist as he continues his journey down under.

Venturing on dusty roads into the empty Australian outback where he finds little of artistic note, Raymond nevertheless encounters a landscape that evokes a haunting, almost surreal, sense of fascination. While visiting Ayers Rock (Uluru) and the neighbouring Olgas (Kata Tjuta) he struggles to convey onto paper the awe-inspiring scale and the religious significance of these sacred places.

After several weeks experiencing the empty outback terrain Raymond returns to a more familiar type of landscape on the Queensland coast where he begins to discover a lot more subjects for his sketchbook.

Experiencing a tropical paradise for the first time and faced with abundant artistic subject matter in Fiji, Raymond finds that because of the many well-behaved and friendly, but inquisitive school children he often has to restrict his sketching activity to periods when they are at lessons!