Alex Bernham

The paintings begin with pencil sketches where I strip an animal down to its basic geometry - finding the circles in the eyes, the sharp triangles in the muscle structure. When I’m happy with the design I draw it in coloured pencil onto either a canvas board or a smooth wooden board (I prefer a rigid surface to work on because I lean on it heavily, painting like I draw). I like to work on a bright white surface, it helps in keeping primary colours luminous, and begin painting by blocking in the general colours with diluted oil paint. I then apply more accurate colours using highly saturated pigments and working in layers. I only work in oils, even in the early stages, because they dry slowly and give me time to perfect the crisp lines and smooth gradients within each geometric plane.

The drawings begin with a lot of mental blueprinting and rough sketching to figure out the anatomy and how the pieces will fit together. Once I'm happy with the composition, I do a very precise light pencil outline on heavy, smooth paper - light or mid grey for coloured pencil, white or light buff to cream for graphite. Then comes the long process of layering. Whether it's building up the deep, dark values of graphite to create the illusion of polished chrome, or layering coloured pencils to mimic the translucent glow of jewels, I work slowly, section by section, from left to right to avoid smudging. Graphite is forgiving, errors and adjustments are pretty easy to do.  Coloured pencil much less so, sometimes even impossible, so it's important to establish very accurately beforehand just where everything is going to go. There have been many abandoned pieces that testify to that!