Brush Practice

A little lay off and the need to get working again had me dig out the watercolours this afternoon. A warm up was required before turning to more serious pursuits. 

In watercolour painting some of the more difficult techniques are involved in the manipulation of the brush and controlling the flow of the paint. Adjusting edges requires a feel for what your selected pigments will stand in terms of lifting out. In the last few days I'd been browsing the latest book by Jean Haines, Atmospheric Watercolours and enjoyed much of the thinking that she puts into her vibrant wash work. This book, I understand, is a best seller and it is easy to see why. Her admirable work is garnering much interest and praise and she is becoming the equivalent of a painting pop star. The ideas that Jean advocates are well worthy of exploration, particularly for those who have difficulty loosening up their work, a category that includes me.

So with a head full of ideas garnered from the book and some pigments that are relatively new to me I set about making a little image that would let me revisit some of the techniques mentioned above. The first job was to lay down an underlying wash of some of the colours I intended using then allowing them to mix on the paper. Colours were Cad Yellow, Quinacridone Gold, Apatite Green, Genuine Amethyst and Sleeping Beauty Turquoise. The addition of some salt was made to create a little texture that could hint at unspecified foliage. I also decided that this would be a one brush approach and reached for my trusty Da Vinci Artissimo that I've mentioned in a previous post, I love it.

After they had dried I began to place the trumpet shapes of the blooms in Translucent Orange with touches of Perylene Maroon. When they dried it was a case of making negative shapes with washes of the colours used in the first pass. To finish off the exercise some fairly extensive softening of edges took place, having left edges to dry to be worked on later. An interesting warm up.

  

Spring Selection - Watercolour on Not paper 12" x 10"

New Paints in Box

I've been doing a bit of reading recently, books and blogs, and have been struck by the variety of colours and manufacturers that people use. Before now I've been fairly conservative in my selection of pigments using most of the standards that appear in most boxes, resisting the temptation to branch out. That is until the last few weeks. In a fit of artist envy I decided to have a splurge on a bunch of paints that until now had been a mystery to me. I was particularly attracted by what I was reading of Daniel Smith paints and on investigation was bewildered by the range. I've long been a Winsor and Newton man not seeing any reason to wander. So what to buy? Looking at the work of some artists that I admire I drew up a short list and sent for the selection. Exotic names like Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, Green Apatite Genuine, Amethyst Genuine, Perylene Maroon and a bunch of Quinacridones.

Having taken delivery of the new 'toys' I set about investigating what they were like. This is an interesting process as I'm coming across characteristics that are new to me. As an example of what I mean I've posted a few pictures here of some swatches made with one of the new ones, Green Apatite Genuine. I ordered this colour, having read that Yvonne Harry (watercolourflorals.blogspot.com) was using it as the basis of her greens in her wonderful flower paintings. The main characteristic of this pigment is the degree of granulation that occurs. Whilst many pigments granulate I've never come across one that does so in such spectacular fashion. It's giving me quite a bit of food for thought as to how I will use it in future. 

Green Apatite with Winsor Yellow

Green Apatite with Cadmium Yellow Light

Green Apatite with Burnt Sienna

In the photographs you can see the aggregations of small dark particles that deposit whenever this pigment is used. 

Playing about with swatches is interesting but the real fun is to be had in making images and so on to put the new paints to use. I decided to carry on with the Iris project and selected a bloom that might use some of my new acquisitions.

Iris - Watercolour on Rough paper 16" x 12"