Will Rochfort is a UK-based oil painter with a distinctive narrative style. He constructs entire sets for his paintings, an approach that he likens to building a film set. In this instalment of our Artist Insights series, he discusses the impact that Americana and the Golden Age of Hollywood has had on his work, the attention to detail that goes into his sets and props, and shares his tips for artists at the beginning of their creative journey.
Artist Insights: Will Rochfort
Contents
0:00 Introduction
0:49 “I always say the only thing I’ve ever been good at is drawing and painting”
1:33 “If an idea sticks around, I know it’s a good one”
2:20 “It always starts with sketches”
3:27 “I build entire sets for my paintings”
4:12 “It’s like building a film set, but for one shot only”
6:00 “Even in the busiest painting, I’m drawing you to what I want you to look at”
7:00 “If I can find, buy, or rent a prop, I’ll make it out of cardboard”
7:45 “I take a deep breath, and then I start painting”
8:23 “I have four main methods to transfer the sketch onto canvas”
9:01 “Charcoal is easy to correct and change”
9:15 “A brown or red base coat gives warmth to the skin tones”
9:57 “When it comes to the painting, it’s usually fairly set in stone”
10:55 “I’m getting better at trusting the process”
11:33 “Oil paints are very forgiving”
12:12 “I use just five colours”
13:34 “I keep it simple with the mediums I use”
13:57 “I’m quite loose with the paint”
14:17 “Long flat brushes give a nice chunky brushstroke”
14:32 “I’m really excited about collaborating with Pro Arte brushes”
15:32 “I work on one section at a time”
15:46 “A painting takes anywhere between a few hours and a month”
16:20 “I’ve got better at knowing when to stop”
16:41 “My studio is my favourite place to be”
17:18 “I’m always trying to capture a narrative”
18:58 “As a storyteller, Norman Rockwell was a master”
20:05 “My love of movies is so ingrained it comes out whether I realise it or not”
20:51 “Take every opportunity that you can”
23:27 “Make it happen”
24:30 Credits
Extract
I’ve always drawn. I always say that the only thing I’ve ever been good at is drawing and painting. When I was little I would just spend days and days making models out of cardboard and cereal boxes, drawing comic books, and copying things off the TV. As I went through school and college, I kind of moved into an interest in the figure and portraiture. That in turn moved into painting and I started trying watercolours and then I moved into acrylics. When I was at university I tried oil painting and it was kind of a fork in the road. As soon as I tried it I thought, this is what I want to do. And there was no going back really.
The Magic of Hollywood
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 48 x 24 in | 121.9 x 60.9 cm
I always say I get my ideas from movies, which is definitely true. It can be a whole film, it can be just the atmosphere of a film, the look of a film, or it can be one scene or it can be a little tiny snapshot of a scene. There would just be something that grabs me and I think, “Oh that’s it, I’d love to make a painting of that.” I don’t write these things down, I don’t have a book of ideas but I’ve got so many ideas in my head of paintings that I really want to do. If an idea sticks around, I know it’s a good one. I did a painting last year of a truck and it was a film crew in the back of it and they were all screaming into the megaphone and filming. That was an idea I had for about two years and just didn’t have an opportunity to paint it. Then a gap came up and I thought, “Okay, I’m going to do it.”
Before We Lose the Light
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 60 x 30 in | 154.2 x 76.2 cm
One of my favourite films is Superman. When I was a kid I would fast forward to the bit where it got to Superman, but before that, I would always stop at the bit where it was the 1960s and it had the old cars and the old clothes and the hairstyles. Even back then I just loved how it looked and I think that’s as simple as that.
Every one of my paintings is different from the last one, but the process that I take to set it up kind of stays the same. I’ve learned over the years that the prep stage is so important. The more energy I put into that stage, the easier and the better the painting will be further down the line. So it always starts with sketches, whether it’s a commission or it’s just a painting for me, it always starts with some very quick thumbnail sketches. Just quick scribbles. I’ll slowly develop those sketches just to try and shape the idea and refine it a bit. To figure out if there’s anything I don’t need in the composition. Does it need more? Does it need less? It’s quite rare for the finished painting to differ a lot from my very initial sketch. That very first scribble will often be quite similar to the finished painting.
The First Draft
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in | 91.4 x 121.9 cm
Once I’ve got that sketch to a point where I’m happy, I begin to organise a photo shoot. That’s where I get my friends and family to pose for me. I source locations, I find props, I build sets – I’ve built entire sets for my paintings. And then I work with my friend Adam who’s a brilliant photographer to help shoot all of the scenes for my paintings. He knows the lighting that I like and he makes sure the camera is in focus, which sounds a bit silly but that’s so essential and it means that I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to worry about the technical side. I can just focus on the important bit, which is talking to people, the people who have come to pose for the painting and explain to them what the painting is of, how I want them to sit or stand, what I want them to be.
Setting up one of my paintings is a bit like building a film set, but just for one shot only. There was a painting I did that was inspired by a film where the astronauts from Apollo 11 returned from the moon. They were driven through New York City and there was a big ticker-tape parade. I hired a beautiful old 1960s Cadillac. I found someone that had a motorbike that looked similar to an NYPD 1960s motorbike. I found some people that had some horses and they dressed up in police gear for me. Three of my friends sat in the back of the Cadillac as the returning astronauts. I got my dad and loads of my friends to be the security around the car. I had American flags, we had confetti cannons that we were firing to get with the confetti falling through the air.
Ticker Tape
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 72 x 44 in | 182.9 x 111.8 cm
I had a crowd of only about ten people, so I had to repeat them. I had to get them to stand here, take a photo, move them, take another photo, move them, take another photo. So if you look through the painting you can see the same person does appear quite a few times but I’d paint a moustache on them, or I’d change their hair or something like that.
Another painting that I did was a commission to show the opening night of Peter Pan on stage in 1904. I found a theatre, I built sections of a pirate ship to go on the stage, and I built a full-size cannon out of cardboard to go on the stage. I got all my nieces and nephews to pose as the lost boys and girls. The shoot took all day but it was amazing and we had the run of all the lights and everything. By the end of it, I had hundreds and hundreds of shots that I could just put together. That was probably the biggest photo shoot that I’ve done for a painting. There’s a naturalism when it’s just my friends and family. That’s where I get the results that I’m after.
First Night
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 84 x 42 in | 213.4 x 106.7 cm
The props for my paintings are so important. It’s such a crucial element of every painting that I do. If I can’t buy it, find it, or rent it, I’ll make it out of cardboard which is one of my favourite things to do. I did a painting loosely based around Creature from the Black Lagoon and it was a painting of the actor playing the creature relaxing between shots. I made the whole thing, and the head is just a cardboard tube and ping pong balls for the eyes. I’ve made loads of these over the years.
Creature Feature
Will Rochfort
30 x 40 in | 76.2 x 101.6 cm
After the busyness of putting a photo shoot together, and the organising, and the people, and the sketches, once I’ve got all that out of the way and I’m in my studio I’ll combine all those shots into one scene and do a final sketch. From there I start painting. My first step is to transfer that sketch onto the canvas and I have four main methods that I will use. I’ll freehand it if I’m feeling brave, or I’ll use the grid method which is my favourite. I have something called the invisible grid method. It’s basically the grid method but instead of forming the grid with lines I do it with dots. Sometimes I use my projector, which I know is frowned upon by some people, but I think it’s an amazing tool.
No matter which method I’m using, I sketch using charcoal because it’s quite easy to correct and change. I do that onto a white canvas simply because it’s easier to see what you’re doing on a white canvas and then I will seal it with a very thin coat of spray. The drawing always rubs away a little bit but it doesn’t matter. It leaves enough for me to work from. When it’s sealed I paint a base colour, usually a brown colour. It gives a warmth to the colours over the top. When I’m doing one of my smaller portraits I’ll definitely go for the red because it gives a warmth to the skin tones.
The reason I love using oil paints is because of the boldness in the colours and the versatility, but mainly because of how forgiving they are. I find that I’m constantly making mistakes throughout my paintings and for that reason, I rely on the paint staying wet for as long as it can. I love that I can leave it, I can come back later that day and rework it. For all my paintings I use just five colours. I use Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Warm White, and Van Dyke Brown. They are good for capturing that kind of technicolour look that I try to achieve in my paintings. I didn’t set out to use a limited palette. I used to use loads of colours, but I just found over the years that I was slowly just using those five. I like to keep it simple if I can.
I did a painting recently where the light was catching the edge of someone’s shirt and I just used Warm White straight out the tube. It’s often the last colour that I’ll use when I’m painting to get those highlights. When the painting’s finished I’ll just go back in and just go over the whole thing and just find all the points that just need drawing out slightly.
The Travelling Salesman
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm | 19.7 x 19.7 in
The oil colours I use are Michael Harding. I was first introduced to them because I won a very small art competition and the prize was a set of Michael Harding oil paints. I tried them and I loved them. I keep it quite simple with the mediums that I use as well. I only use linseed oil, or recently I’ve been using Michael Harding’s Miracle Medium. Just a tiny, tiny dab of the medium, just the tiniest bit. I try to get the consistency of soft butter in my paint because I like it to flow nicely and I like to keep that strength and the boldness in the colour.
I tend to stick to just one shape of brush. I use long flats because I like that square shape which gives a nice chunky brush stroke, or you turn it on its edge and you get some really fine lines. I’m really excited about my collaboration with Pro Arte brushes. I’ve been using Pro Arte for about ten years, and they got in touch with me last year to talk about collaborating. I was straight in, you know, “where do I sign” kind of thing because I just love the brushes. They are launching a Will Rochfort line of brushes and it blew my mind to be honest. It was a real honour.
The length of time it takes me to do a painting depends on the painting itself. So it’s anything from a few hours to about a month. Sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly how long a painting takes because I’m working on several paintings at the same time. There’s always a stage with every painting where it doesn’t look very good and I go home all grumpy just thinking, “Why am I bothering? This is the worst painting ever.” In the past, if a painting wasn’t going very well, I would just walk away. I just have to step away because if it isn’t working, if you force it, it’s just going to make it worse. But now I’ve got better at kind of trusting the process and thinking, “Okay, I know this is just going through a stage here where it doesn’t look very good. I’ve just got to keep going, keep going, keep going.”
The Bedroom
Will Rochfort
36 x 48 in | 91.4 x 121.9 cm
When I was at Bournemouth Arts Institute doing a foundation course I stumbled into a seminar about Norman Rockwell by accident. It was like being struck by lightning. He kind of ticked all the boxes for the themes and the subjects and the style of painting that I loved. As a storyteller, I think he was a master. Just in one painting being able to tell a complete story. I’ve borrowed a lot from his approach. And when people say to me, “What’s the best way to learn painting?” I always say, “Take the artists that you love and study their methods.” Over the years I’ve kind of left some things behind and moved on with other things and taken elements of his process and elaborated on them and kind of made it into my own thing. But I think I can’t get away from it. I’m not trying to. You can definitely see the Norman Rockwell influence there.
At the Star Lit Drive in
Will Rochfort
Oil on canvas, 96 x 60 in | 243.8 x 152.4 cm
Being an artist for a living is one of the best things you can do, one of the best ways to live your life, but it’s not going to happen by itself. You have to be as proactive as possible. Get your work out there in as many ways as you can, and take every painting job that comes your way. When I started out, I painted everything. I painted hundreds and hundreds of people’s kids. I painted people’s houses, their cars, their bikes, everything. I always say take every opportunity that you can because you don’t know what it will lead to.
You want that commission, or you want to work with that gallery, you want to work with that client, or you want to win that award, whatever it is. Do whatever you need to do, put those first steps into place to achieve the thing that you want to get. It might still be years down the line, but just make it happen. Just keep it simple, make it happen.
About Will Rochfort
Over the past 10 years, Will Rochfort has developed his own individual style of narrative painting. Based in Hampshire, UK, his work is becoming highly collectable and is in a number of private collections across the world, including Hollywood film makers, musicians and high profile figures in the worlds of journalism and politics.
Further Reading
Introducing Jackson’s Artist Pigment Sets
How We Collaborate With Artists
Monotype Printmaking for Beginners
Oil Painting for Beginners: What You Need to Get Started
Shop Pro Arte on jacksonsart.com
5 Comments
Fantastic film, what an amazing talent
and so unassuming, very refreshing.
This is one of the most inspiring films I
have ever seen. I loved hearing Will’s
process and the massive amount of
thought and effort which goes into
making one piece of art.
We’re so happy you found it inspiring! Thank you Gail
What a fantastic film about a good honest
working artist. Loved his work and
methods which he talked so freely about.
Before he mentioned it I could see the
Norman Rockwell influence in his work,
but as he said, you need a good
influence, nothing wrong with that.
Loved watching this. Will’s work and his
style of painting is inspirational. The
level of effort that goes into every
painting is astounding. He achieves that
goal of every painting telling a story to
the viewer without doubt.