Mark Payne studied technical and scientific illustration for four years. Having graduated, Mark became a member of the Society of Illustrators, Artists and Designers followed by 33 years as a full-time artist and illustrator, producing work for numerous national and international publishers, advertising agencies and galleries.

Mark’s current collection of rare book and magazine art generally begins with a monochrome under-painting, usually in shades of grey or ochre, on a white surface. Once fully dry, it is painted over with successive layers of transparent colour known as glazes. Each new glaze changes the optical qualities of the layers beneath, resulting in a richness and purity of colour that is otherwise very hard to achieve.

The technique is time-consuming as it’s essential that each glaze is allowed to dry thoroughly before the next is applied. Between glazes, the painting is lightly sanded, giving the finished painting a beautifully smooth, glossy surface. This method of applying colour has some important advantages over the traditional method of mixing colours with an opaque base.
Mark says that, while wanting to honour and pay tribute to the original jacket designers and their unquestionable talents, his paintings are portraits of some very old, well-loved books, the way they are now. Novels, poetry, history and a range of subjects all attract his interest.

The paintings themselves are much larger than life with every tear, crease and blemish, carefully and accurately recorded. Mark Payne aims not just to reproduce the original cover artwork like a poster but to paint the whole book as a real, three-dimensional object with all its imperfections – the evidence of life – so that when mounted and sensitively lit, the illusion is created of a real, giant 3D book. It really is a living thing.

I work with oils and the method I use is very simple and by no means original. It is a variation of the early painting technique known as ‘Grisaille’, a practice used many of the old masters.

Generally, it starts with a monochrome under-painting, usually in shades of grey or ochre, on a white surface. Once fully dry, it is painted over with successive layers of transparent colour known as ‘glazes’. Each new glaze changes the optical qualities of the layers beneath, resulting in a richness and purity of colour that is otherwise very hard to achieve.

The technique is time-consuming as it’s essential that each glaze is allowed to dry thoroughly before the next is applied. Between glazes, the painting is lightly sanded, giving the finished painting a beautifully smooth, glossy surface. This method of applying colour has some important advantages over the traditional method of mixing colours with an opaque base.

It is generally accepted that the most beautiful qualities of a colour are in its transparent state, applied over a white background. This is because transparent colour is seen by the viewer as if back-lit, with light reflecting back through the paint from the white surface behind it. This is in contrast with opaque paint, which simply reflects light off the uppermost surface. Using opaque paint results in a surface that you look onto, whereas the use of transparent glazes results in a richly glowing, glass-like surface that you look into. I have adapted this venerable technique to suit the modern subjects of my paintings.