Orchid Study

Don’t think my lovely wife missed one of the flowers of one of her many Orchid plants being taken by me to use as a study for this watercolour. And no, she doesn’t read my bloggings – at least, I hope not.

Me, myself, I.

We have heavy snow here today. For some reason, I fancy doing a watercolour self portrait instead of shovelling all the snow from the door. I nick the downstairs bathroom mirror and set to work. I have never painted myself before. It’s a strange feeling/experience just studying yourself, your features, your colouring and the bone structure.Very weird.

I spend an hour or so doing this and not actually mixing any paint or lifting a brush. This hour isn’t just spent looking at myself. I look at one of Jean Haines books – incredible watercolourist and try to feed on her inspiring work. I pick the raw colours I want and think about the size of paper.

Eventually I get down to it. I like listening to Tom Waits at the moment. I recently got into him after I saw him in The Seven Psychcopaths. Man’s a legend.

70 Acres Lake in the Lee Valley Park

So no watercolour classes on a Thursday evening. Instead, I’m deliberately sitting down to self-created projects/exercises for myself. I need to keep the discipline of regular painting while the class is halted.

Over-wetting the paper has once again reared its soggy head. I will conquer this somehow.

Bittern and Water Rail

Bittern

Water Rail

Just a couple of quick studies of the Bittern and a water rail that I see every time I visit Lee Valley Park.

Watercolour sketching at Rainham

Sooner or later I had to try sketching with watercolour without the comforts of a warm, well-lit room with comfortable chairs and a sturdy table.  Therefore, I traveled to Rainham and settled myself down beside the Thames on a freezing January afternoon. The sky was grey, the river was grey and lifeless but the place still had atmosphere. Cold grey afternoons in the winter are made for watercolours. The hint of yellow ochre mixed with a hint of ultramarine and a wash of Paynes grey achieved the perfect sky tones. The skyline with its industrial cranes and factories outlines the horizon and a rusty tone for dying reeds or riverside grasses mixed with raw and burnt umber created a slightly colourful contrast albeit a little basic.

My biggest issue was my hands. after 30 minutes, they could barley hold a brush and the slight wind lifting off the Thames caused my sketchbook pages to wave about, throwing well-place paint into unwelcome areas of the sketch. These are things I’m going to have to overcome or live with. But I do think I need to invest in a small fold away stool as opportunities to sit down somewhere dry were rare.

The Thames at Rainham, Jan 2013

Skyscapes under a cloud

The first class of 2013 focused on clouds. But darker clouds hung over the class. Our class only had three students and unless any others turned up, the evening class would be cancelled.

We practised cloud formation and with a heavy use of sponge and paper towels, we could manipulate the paint in quick studies from photographs.

As with any study, selecting your colour palette and pre-mixing the pigments is vital to working fast. My usual problem of over-wetting the paper continues to cause me problems and controlling the areas the paint travelled to proved to be a tense and somewhat frantic affair.

This was indeed the first and last class as the course was closed for the term. This will mean I will have to set my own exercises until such time as the class returns with better numbers.

The clingfilm and salt experiment

The last class of the year was a bit random and experimental.

Clingfilm is the bane of my life. I can never tear it properly and my efforts to do so look like a poor score on the Generation Game (if you remember that?) And salt is something I put on food, not watercolours but I was game for it.

Clingfim is used by placing it on wet wash and manipulating the wet paint, creating a texture that’s quite organic. salt, when sprinkled on wet paint soaks up the pigment and creates a foam of white marks similar to ocean spray or a pebbled beach effect if you’re clever.

We had a choice of green beans or shells. everyone took the beans because our teacher had demonstrated using them. I went with shells and pebbles. the colours were amazing but I think I was supposed to use the clingfilm and salt on the background. I used them to 'enhance' the qualities of the shells – big mistake me thinks.

The main shell and stone to the right of it uses clingfilm mainly because  the shell was going wrong to the point of me aborting the whole study and the stone had a linear quality to it that demanded the clingfilm. The techniques saved the shell marginally and I’m happy with it. I used salt on the bottom right stone. This is really unfinished and is still too pale and needs work doing to it.

I can see real opportunities with both techniques and will be trying them out over the Christmas holiday.