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"

Iris

I'm having a good week in the sense that I'm getting some painting time. The latest project developed out of a number of things going through my mind. First of all I've been interested in exploring some less than traditional techniques, currently getting some exposure with the recent publicity for the very fine artist, Jean Haines. Amongst these techniques is the use of salt and cling film to create texture. Whilst I've been aware of these techniques for some time I've never given them the time to get added to my own repertoire.

The next thing that I was thinking of was, maybe doing a series of paintings on one subject and after the recent picture that I posted of irises I thought they would make a good subject to explore. After coming to this idea I came upon a recent post from a fabulous floral painter, Yvonne Harry. She can be found at www.watercolourflorals.blogspot.com . In her post she had made a picture of an iris and added a textured background. I loved it. Off then to Google to find images of the iris variety that she had used and the marriage of the various notions running through my thinking brought me to this, hopefully the start of an exploration using the Iris as inspiration.

Iris - Watercolour on Not paper 18" x 12"

A Splash of Colour

Like lots of other people I have been enjoying the attention given to artist Jean Haines whose recently published book, 'Atmospheric Watercolours', seems to have been particularly popular amongst hobbyists. She is very generous in sharing her techniques with fellow artists and I've no doubt that there are lots of us giving her methods a go to see if we can emulate the vibrant colourful images that she produces. So here we have an image that draws on the ideas that she expresses in her books.

I chose a subject that I'd been meaning to have a go at for some time. It is based on a sketch that I produced on a holiday in Italy. The tower over the Campo in Siena is a tempting subject.

Siena - Watercolour on Rough paper 15"x 11"

More Messing About

The holiday spirit is just about gone from the household and I thought it time that I start to get my brushes wet again. I'm still in the experimenting mode and came across an artist I'd not heard of before whilst watching art videos on TV. The artist was called Jean Haines and she has an interesting way of working with water and pigment. So I decided to have a go at her techniques. I discovered a picture of hers that is some castle on a hilltop and decided to use it as the basis of the piece although I selected some shapes from my sketch book that relate to Durham and used them as the structure of the drawing.

The basic technique is one of using lots of water, letting the pigment flow and then introducing lots of colour variation to create interest and a base for viewer interpretation. I'm not sure that the whole approach is for me but there is a lot of fun to be had from working the paint like this. I'm sure that I'll remember a lot about the way the colour flows from this little exercise.

Durham - Watercolour on Not paper 12" x 9"

I post the next picture purely as an indication of the preparatory work that goes into some of the pieces that I produce. As regular readers know my friend, Peter Ward, and I challenge each other on a monthly basis with a photograph and then we both post our interpretation on our respective blogs.

This is a preliminary watercolour sketch that I made the other day to explore some aspects of the current challenge. I was interested in ways of depicting shadow and the compositional relationship of the elements. I have others that explore value relationships. In the next week I'll review the material and make the final image.

December/ January Challenge Study - Watercolour on Not paper 12" x 9"