Watercolour

On Friday, while at home for a day off work I decided to try my hand at watercolours. In part inspired by some of the work I had seen from my classmates, and in part inspired by the excellent watercolour website "handprint" and in part because of the opportunistic find of the book "Step-By-Step Guide to Painting Realistic Watercolors" by Dawn McLeod Heim, while I was in Christchurch recently visiting Scorpio Books.

Here, finally after several purchases of "how to paint watercolour" books I had found a book which passed on techniques in a way that only a proficient teacher can pass on - how to load a brush, how to blot a brush, how moist is moist, how to soften edges and much more. In particular she teaches how to paint a wash using a "bead." I can find only one other book in my watercolour collection which teaches about the "bead" and that book pays only scant attention to it. Yet, having tried this technique of laying a wash I have found it to be a most effective way of controlling your wash, which can also be used to fill in small shapes in your picture.

Above is my first painting - Project 1 from this book. It is by no means a perfect painting, I haven't always blended the greens with good technique, and there is some rather unsteady line drawing. The yellow background is too dark and the blue/violet mixes are not what I wished. I do not find the subject matter particularly interesting, but it is my first watercolour painting, and it only took about 2 hours, and I am impressed by how much I learned from completing this project. I will repeat the painting when I have some more time in the next few weeks - perhaps this time on hot pressed paper to see what it is like. "Painting Realistic Watercolors" is a great book, easily the best book I have which teaches the very basics of watercolour and then takes you through ten projects of increasing complexity and beauty. I look forward to working my way through this book.

(210 x 300, Bockingford cold pressed 300 gsm watercolour paper, Winsor Newton Artist's Watercolour, 28.9.07)