Mark Warner is a professional painter in oils, acrylics and pastels, on canvas, board and pastel paper. He also runs demonstrations and workshops for art groups and tutors on painting holidays.
He sketches seascapes and landscapes outdoors, capturing the weather, the sky and the light. He completes the paintings indoors from his sketches, notes and photographs.
He has recently run many Zoom demonstrations.
Mark showed us his sketchbooks in pencil, intense water soluble pencils and acrylic paint, of detailed urban townscapes and coastal scenes. He also showed us some recent part complete works: woodland pastel, portrait and seascape.

Mark chose a view in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park of rocks, heather, grass, hills and sky. He chose a blue 160gsm Fabriano Tiziano pastel paper 50cm by 65cm and Winsor & Newton acrylic paints, soft synthetic flat brushes and watercolour rigger brushes. He also had a thin Conte graphite stick to make dark edge marks on the pastel paper during painting.

He painted the sky in stages during the demonstration, starting with cerulean blue as a relatively dark base colour. He applied the thick paint with his soft flat brush to create texture and movement, avoiding flatness. After he had painted the hills, Mark used titanium white and light blue to make the horizon more shapely, cutting into the hills. After the base sky layer had dried, he added light mixes of white/burnt umber, and white/magenta to create shadows within the clouds, reflecting the heather colours in the landscape. Using a small rigger, Mark rolled very light tones of titanium white/prussian blue in rising twirls and wisps of cloud.

For the many shades in the fields, Mark chose leaf green, sap green, cerulean blue, hookers green and prussian blue to mix some dark and light greens. He applied them roughly with with his flatbrush in frequently changing mixtures.

For the heather Mark used various mixtures of magenta/cerulean blue and magenta/sap green. He said that he often uses colours used in previous areas to create unity. He also did not wash his brush when mixing similar colours on his pallet, causing colours to go together.

After the break, Mark turned to his thin watercolour rigger brushes to apply detail into the land using dragged horizontal strokes. He used a bit more water with various mixes of leaf green, hookers green, prussian blue, cerulean blue and magenta, adding white and lemon yellow. He reverted to using a flat brush to apply these colours in the closer areas.

Mark provided an image of the painting after his two hour demonstration.
A private recording of the Zoom demonstration is available for a short time to members on request.