Christmas Day Watercolours

A pause in preparing Christmas dinner

If you get some new watercolours for Christmas, it's only right, proper and polite to try them out. This was a dinky little set of lovely Sennelier colours - the "Aqua-mini" -  that came as part of a gift subscription to The Artist magazine.

 

Left to right: Reindeer figurine n the windowsil; Glass of prosecco; Cork

Garden Flowers

The sweet peas did come from my mother's garden, but they were in a vase when I painted them.
Left: watercolour; Right: watercolour with graphitint pencil in the additional image to the top left.

The poppies and lilies stayed in the garden:

Watercolour with added white Uniball and white Derwent Drawing

Watercolour with added white Uniball and white Derwent Drawing

Masking Fluid

A small study of a pretty, sunlit wave at Praa Sands
From a photoraphic reference
Watercolour (with masking fluid)

Watercolour is a transparent medium and has a very delicate effect, which is both attractive and frustrating. I have an ambivalent relationship with the medium - I want to be able to use it well, but I am very wary of tweeness.

There is probably several posts worth of thinking to come up with related to that, though.

In the meantime, meet masking fluid:

This particular bottle contains blue masking fluid. It's a rubber-based liquid that dries in contact with the air (one of the reasons that I have a dedicated, synthetic brush for it, too, although silicon colour shapers can also be used, apparently). It's used to mask bits of paper from a watercolour wash.

You can, of course, just leave the area untouched - but that isn't always easy to do if your watercolour is wet and washy, or even if you just forget in the splashiness of the moment. Masked areas have hard edges, which may or may not be required (they can be softened with water), but which can be hard to achieve without masking.

Anyway, this is my first ever bottle of masking fluid. So far, it's proving to be really rather effective. Good for foam on waves and highlights on bottles...

Prussia Cove

Another line and wash, this time from a rocky inlet in Cornwall (via a photograph).

Acrylic ink and watercolour on 300 g/m² fine grain / cold pressed (NOT) watercolour pad, 18 x 24 cm

Bridge, Bradgate Park - Line and wash

A dramatic scene from a dramatic place - Bradgate Park, Leicester. I thought I'd pick a less urban image this time around. The contrast between the bridge's dark shadows and the misty fade of the distance prompted me to use two inks; I diluted the sepia for part of the drawing.

Indian ink, acrylic ink and watercolour on 300 g/m² fine grain / cold pressed (NOT) watercolour pad, 18 x 24 cm

St. Mary's, Melton Mowbray, from Edgerton Lodge Gardens

This is a view of the town I grew up in. From a photograph taken in February 2013, on a return visit. I used a fuller palette for this sunlit winter scene.

Acrylic ink and watercolour on 300 g/m² fine grain / cold pressed (NOT) watercolour pad, 18 x 24 cm

Portsmouth Dinghies - Line and Wash

 

I'm rather enjoying placing loose washes of colour over a line drawing made in acrylic ink. The ink is waterproof, and so I can do what I like with the waterolour. I'm trying to make a point of not "colouring in" - the idea is to create an impression of colour. I'm keeping the palette limited, too.

This is a relatively new technique for me, so the sketches are experimental. Acrylic ink is not the sort of thing that fountain pens like, so I'm using a dip pen (not much of a hardship; I like dip pens, but they aren't very good for sketching on site, because of the open bottle of ink). Unfortunately, I was a little careless and dropped a blob of ink. It's mostly disguised as shadow on the dark blue boat.


Acrylic ink and watercolour on 300 g/m² fine grain / cold pressed (NOT) watercolour pad, 18 x 24 cm