How Easy Is Watercolour?

Most people who take up painting as a hobby remember having paint boxes as children or maybe using water-based poster colours at school and those experiences tend to leave them feeling that watercolours are easy to use. They must be if children use them to start painting! Oils and acrylics are used by "proper artists" and therefore must be much more difficult to use. And pastels (and other dry media) are rarely, if ever, considered as worth bothering with if one aspires to be a painter; an artist.

But once you have experienced those other media, you may well change your mind. Although you may still use watercolour for other reasons such as, lack of smell, rapid drying, general cleanliness or ease of cleaning, it really is easier to paint or create coloured drawings in virtually all other media.

It seems crazy that we afflict ourselves with this difficult to use and almost impossible to correct (yes, there are ways and means ...), But still we persevere.

Of course there are aspects of watercolours which are difficult if not impossible  to achieve in other media. Freshness, simplicity and sheer transparency of the media are reasons why many artists love watercolour. But consider the issues above:-

Smell; Oils are the culprit here, and I have to say that I have never considered this media because I am affected by the solvents traditionally used. But modern water-based oil paints are used by colleagues who find them perfectly adequate and are little different to the traditional paints in their behaviour and appearance. Of course, my colleagues are not "professionals" and some may argue that there is a difference which a real professional artist would notice. All I can say is that more and more water-based oil paints are used by artists in my art group.

Drying time: If this is the issue then acrylic paints are probably faster drying than watercolours, especially if you are using the latter wet-into-wet. We artists no longer have to spend weeks or even months for a painting to dry before we can feel happy about carrying it home.

Cleanliness: Now this can still be an issue for some. If you do not have a studio, or a dedicated area for painting, splashes of paint or pastel dust, etc, can mean that watercolour is less likely to create a problem at home. Plus the fact that there are no issues with additional paraphernalia.

Despite the logical approach, I have to admit that I do love a good watercolour painting and still want to re-learn how to create a "good" painting with this medium. This weeks sketch is another small, 6 X 3.5 inch painting, again I am looking for the use of washes and brushwork rather than being particular about the drawing.

I wasn't quite sure about this piece at first but it is growing on me, any thoughts?

One of the problems I am experiencing is most definitely the lack of time I have to spend painting. Doing only one such sketch each week is obviously very limiting. When I first started painting I remember spending a little time each evening, even if it was only a few minutes, practising some aspect of my new hobby. But that was when I could count on the use of a small, spare bedroom as a studio. My situation has drastically changed and now that room is more like a store room. But One of these days ... , I live in hope.

Watercolour - A Snow Scene

In my last post, I discussed why I did not think much of a recent watercolour. I was intending to repeat it (or at least complete it) with those comments in mind.

I was at my art group last night and saw a painting in a magazine which really caught my eye, thus inspired I decided to try and capture the scene in my own style. Here it is:-

The drawing is a little sloppy but I am not too bothered about that at this stage. I am simply trying to get a decent painting. So am I happy with this? Well no. I believe that one of the issues is that this is a far higher key painting than the one I used as a reference. To investigate this, as I had packed my paints and brushes away, I tried to improve it in photoshop. I played with lightness and contrast and with saturation, the result was:-

I do think that this is much better, although I had to back off a little on the contrast as the bottom right corner was beginning to get far to dark and the differences in the colours was getting lost.

It is surprising how such a minor change can make such a difference to the end product. Of course, I know the importance of tone in a painting but like all amateur artists (well many at any rate) I often forget their importance as I try to get down the colours I want.

With pastels, I would just go over with another shade or tint of pastel, however it is not so easy with watercolour. But these practice sketches are bringing home how important the basics really are. I hope the lessons are sinking in. The next few weeks will tell, I would love to hear what you think about my musings or even about the art itself.

Some You Win, Some others ...

You lose, LOL.

Now after last weeks, what is wrong with this and why?

I think I could have painted this better in pastel, Or more likely, I was painting this as if I was using pastels. I should have left white space for the middle ground trees and foliage for example.

Also there is no real contrasts in tone, yes there is some but I have mixed up recession thru tonal contrast (the hills) with aerial perspective and colour recession. There are no shadows to speak of and the result is flat and uninteresting.

Lastly, I used a small brush for the last painting, I was using a pocket w/c set. I had to use the brush quickly and scrub/move the paint around. Here, I had decided to use tube colours and a larger brush. Maybe too large for the areas of the painting where some texture would have helped  create a feeling of detail.

I am going to try this same subject again and try to improve it based on the above comments. But I will also try to improve this painting by completing it with pastels. See if I can do something with it as a mixed media work.

Watch this space ...

A Return To Watercolour Painting

You know how it is, as an artist you want to be able to use all those wonderful media that are available and thrust at you from all directions. However, when you try a different medium, you have to learn how to use it. Of course, all it takes is practice. But to use more than one medium succesfully is difficult.

Moving from one to another often feels difficult. Just as you start to feel happy using say, pastels, you feel compelled to try another. You take out your watercolours, which you may not have used for a few weeks and horrors ... it feels like starting out all over again.

Even swapping more frequently, it feels like one step forward and two steps back. At least that is how I find it.

Now it has been a couple of years, possibly, since I did any real watercolour painting; I did try a little pen and wash but it was a very short experiment. I have been pastelling and even then painting mostly abstract and semi-abstract works. Coming back to watercolours and using a brush rather than my fingers (well thats how I feel with tiny pieces of chalk in my hand) and I am finding it difficult to make the paint do what I want it to.

I hated my first effort so much I actually threw it away - tore it up and put it in the rubbish bin. That is what I felt about it, and I have made a point of keeping almost everything I have done over the years I have been painting. The second was a little better, BUT not much, and I include it here as a point of reference, just to show that I am improving.

Those buildings look awful, and that tree - horrid!!! On the whole though in the background there is something about the brushwork which I felt was moving in the right direction. The next painting is starting to look a little better.

I even felt good after this attempt, and whats more several members of the art group were quite appreciative of it. Just waiting for next week now. Can I keep the improvement on course?

Watercolour Demonstration night

Knowle Art Group had a wonderful demo from watercolourist Graham Blaine, a member of the Royal Birmingham  Society of Arts, last night. One of the series of professional demos which we have thru the year.

I haven't done any for quite a while, except for a little playing around, but after this I may well put the pastels away for a while and knuckle down to start using watercolours which is the media which turned me on to painting in the first place. Take a look at a couple of my old paintings:-

"Where's Daddy?"

"The Old Lane"

You can see more of my watercolours on Flickr.

But back to Graham Blain a wonderful artist and a very entertaining evening, even if Graham himself was not altogether happy with the results. It seemed to have conveyed some very useful ideas to all 20 of us who were captivated. See some of Graham's work at one of these sites:-

Birmingham Watercolour Society

Royal Birmingham Society of Arts

Solihull Artists Forum

Painting a pastel landscape from a watercolour

I have been a little lazy recently in terms of my painting, and looking over some old watercolours decided to try one or two of them in pastel. Should be easy! However watercolour has features very different from pastel in many respects and the feeling of a watercolour could be difficult to achieve.

So I set myself this little challenge. Take a watercolour and repeat it in pastel to create a painting with the same feel.

This was the first painting I would try:-

This had always been a favourite of mine and I felt that for the puposes of this challenge it would be ideal. The earth colours gave it a very definite autumnal feel. Also, the light background spoke of mists and early morning.

The image I actually used as a reference for the pastel was actually cropped, I don't kbnow why, to remove some of the area from each side. But never mind, here is the pastel:-

Not quite as much detail, especially in the foreground, but nevertheless I am quite pleased with the outcome of this experiment. I am of a mind to do it again using the full sized original and concentrate more on the foreground but I will try one or two others before I do that.

I feel that the feeling of the original watercolour has been captured, success!

Autumn - acrylic, miniature paintings

Oh boy, I really am having fun with these aceo / atc sized paintings. It has been so long since I used a brush - except to brush away the pastel dust - and I am feeling a little awkward but I will persevere. I have used a relatively large brush for the paintings in the last couple of posts, hence the lack of details. I have tried using an 00 size brush fo a couple of details in these paintings but have been having problems with the viscosity of the paint - I need more practise.

Anyway take a look and see what you think. I have now done seven of these and am considering trying to sell them on Ebay or Etsy. I have received some complimentary comments on Flickr and Facebook. No one seems to read this blog though, note the lack of comments. That's not quite true I know that I do get readers from the stats supplied by Blogger perhaps these are people who come here from those two sites (Flickr / FB) and feel that one comment is enough, LOL.

Here they are:-

Red Sky At Night

The Way Home

As you can see the detail work, especially, leaves a lot to be desired. I will be practising with that brush which may even be a 000. It does not seem to have much in the way of hairs in it, and my old eyes have difficulty with using it. The images are just about life size, on my screen anyway.

If you would like to see some of my watercolour ACEO / ATC's from a while ago then take a minute to watch this video, well it is actually 7 mins but you dont have to stay until the end. The sountrack is also by me. Composed and created on the PC.