Artist Spotlight: Derek Gundy
Based in the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, artist Derek Gundy, @derekgundyartist, shares his advice for first time artist, what creativity means to him, and what his favorite colors are.
Question: What attracts you to M. Graham colors over different types of paints? Do you use all of them or are you attracted to one medium in particular?
Answer: The two I probably use the most are acrylics and watercolor. I also use gauche, and often use a little bit of gouache in my watercolors, particularly titanium white for highlights. I used to paint oils a long time ago, and I’ve done some teaching in that, but it is probably the least used medium of the four that M. Graham makes. I’m an illustrator and I have deadlines, so mostly the media I like to choose is something I can complete in a week or two.
I think the M. Graham has all the basic colors that you need. Sometimes a lot of other paint companies have 170 or 200 colors, and you don’t really need that so much. I like that they have the basics, and they make them really, really well. They’re also probably some of the best priced professional paints that I’ve ever used. So that’s a win-win situation.
Question: What are the top four colors that you always find in your palette?
Answer: Cobalt blue, ivory black, burnt sienna, and Prussian blue. Cobalt blue is always my go-to for sky blue. Ivory black is just a good dark value maker. Burnt Sienna is what I really use for the bricks in a lot of the buildings that I paint. Then Prussian blue is what I consistently use for my cool temperature shadows. And I’ve got a lot of other favorite colors that I love as well. But those four, I always have to, I can’t run out of those.
Question: Does Maine, Washington state or the Pacific Northwest in general, affect your color palette at all in your paintings?
Answer: I think it has affected my color palette, or at least how I see color and interpret color. The Pacific Northwest has so many greens, there’s cool greens, there’s warm greens, there’s light value greens, and so that is pretty complex. The other thing I’ve really noticed, and I absolutely love this, is November is probably one of the darkest rainiest months here, and I always see the color paynes gray When you thin paynes gray down, you get this nice cool gray. As I’m driving to work, the studio or to the school, I’m thinking I can paint this dark cloud situation with paynes gray. Those are a couple things that I notice about this area.
Question: What is your overall philosophy for building a perfect palette?
Answer: I don’t know, I like trying different things. My color palette does shift from time to time. For the last 10 years I’m pretty much using the same consistently in both acrylic and watercolor. With M. Graham, there’s 70 watercolors maximum in the watercolor line, but I probably use 8 to 10 most of the time. I have the rest that I can pull into my palette, but they’re not necessarily always in there loaded up, ready to go.
Question: What is one piece of advice that you can give to a first-time artist?
Answer: I teach a lot of beginners. The first thing is always just play. Let’s just have fun with it and respond to the materials and see what they do. My beginning watercolor class is all about doing a landscape from imagination. I don’t like to them to reproduce a photo because that’s setting a beginner up for failure. They’re never going to get it to look like that. Even with intense training, it’s going to look like a painting. I just want them to have a good time with it. Their first painting or two or three are not going to be what they envisioned in their mind. So just play.
Question: How did you establish yourself as a working artist? And can you give any business advice to upcoming artists?
Answer: For people that want to, I think there’s different levels of that. There are artists that might want to start selling their work as a matter of pride. This has value and that’s a great place to start. The other part of the equation is artists that want to make a living with this. At Northwest College of Art and Design, I teach a lot of young artists who want to do that. My advice for that is you’ve got to start somewhere, and I think the work’s got to be good. Learning that technical skill is important. That’s probably not going to get an artist leaping into the field, but they’ve got to train and build the skill so it’s good work and then people will want to pay money for it. I remember when I sold my first piece or two, it was just such an amazing thing and I was very young, but I think at that stage, I thought like, wow, this is so great. It took me X amount of hours to make this, and now my art career is off and running and I’m just going to make money with this now. The reality is it took many more years to kind of establish a little bit more steady income. Decades later, there are still gaps in it. My advice would be to don’t say that you’re training to become an artist, start telling people that you are an artist. You’re not practicing to do it, you’re doing it and breathing it with every breath.
Question: What does creativity mean to you?
Answer: Real simple answer. It’s everything. That may sound like a really simple answer, but my life would be nothing without it. Since I’ve been very young, I’ve always wanted to live my life as an artist. Creativity also means helping others. That’s my role as a teacher. I know a lot of wonderful artists that just create the work in their studio and they sell it through a gallery or sell it direct, and I enjoy that too, but I’d kind of be empty if I didn’t have all the different facets of interacting with others and helping others. That’s my take on creativity.
Question: Do you have any additional comments or points to make on paint or art in general?
Answer: One other thing about the watercolors in particular is having the honey in the paint. I was using an assortment of brands probably 20 years ago, and then switched over exclusively to M. Graham. Other watercolor artists know this so well, you buy a tube of paint and it hardens and crystallizes in the tube, then sooner or later you’re cutting it open to try to get some paint out of it, or the paint was just hardening in my palette and I wasn’t getting the intensity of the color back. I’d always be squeezing out a little bit more and a little bit more out of the tube. Honey allows you to get the full intensity of the color without scrubbing brush or anything like that. I really love that, and I feel like I don’t waste as much paint with M. Graham. It saves my brushes. The honey is so unique. When I first was introduced to it, and I’m always introducing it to my students, the first reaction is like, oh, it makes the paint a little stickier. But it’s the thing that keeps absorbing moisture from the atmosphere, and it actually makes it easier for you to paint and have that flow and the bleeding of colors together. So I love that.
Question: If somebody was interested in taking a workshop from you or online classes, mentorship, anything like that, or just get additional information from you, where can they find that?
Answer: Yeah, I’m pretty easy to find online: Instagram, Facebook and my website. If you want to see the newest updates, I’m on social media, Instagram and Facebook all the time. I’m the Education Manager at Black Barn Fine Arts Studio in Kingston and I teach there as well.
Website: www.derekgundyart.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/derekgundy/
