Song of Summer - WIP

It's been a while, the garden has been demanding my attention, which means less time to paint, but the reward is plenty of exciting reference material for future watercolours!

I have found a bit of time though, and wonderful inspiration from a visit to an open garden 2 weeks ago.

I took photos of my progress, so this is a sort of WIP except it has already been finished!

Distilled Sunlight

Daffodils on a bright spring day - they really are like the purest sunlight!

I tried to keep colours more delicate than my usual style uses - I wanted a fresh, soft look, not too many dark areas. I think I succeeded!

Distilled Sunlight
Watercolour on Fabriano paper, 12.5 x 10 inches

Exciting news! I added this painting to my RedBubble account tonight and it has already been featured!!!!!

What is Watercolour?

Katherine Tyrell has an in-depth article about this often divisive question on her blog, Making a Mark today - it's well worth reading!

For me, watercolour is just that - watercolour paint (as labelled on the tube or pan), activated with water and painted on paper. Anything else should be labelled as watermedia. If, once dried, paint cannot be re-activated with water it isn't watercolour. I think it would be a terrible shame if the traditional media of watercolour, used by so many of our great artists in the past, was lost in a sea of watered down acrylics!

Wishing for Spring

When this challenge was posted on painting friends I had to have a go at painting it! The idea is to choose one of a selection of references and paint it in two hours or less - not easy but fun!

Narcissus
9 x 7 inches, Fabriano Artistico extra white paper

Pink and White

Another from last year, inspired again by the stunning Bodnant Gardens, near Conwy, North Wales.

I have a bit of a reputation for backgrounds, but for this I decided to leave the background as the white of the paper. I think it works really well, letting the echinacea take centre stage with no distractions!

Pink and White
14 x10, watercolours on Fabriano Artistico 140lb CP paper

Beach Pebbles

My second play with acrylic inks, this time with a wider range of colours at my disposal. There was a challenge on paintingfriends.com to draw with ink, and without lifting the pen from the paper (known as "contour drawing"). I decided to combine it with an experiment in glazing with acrylic inks.

The results aren't bad! I like the colours and the inks act almost in the same way as watercolours, with the main difference being the inability to lift colours once dry!

Beach Pebbles, Acrylic ink on watercolour paper, 9 x 7.5 inches

A New Medium

My birthday was yesterday, and my children decided, in their infinite wisdom, that it was about time I tried something new. My gift was a small set of acrylic inks in delicious colours! They hadn't found any blues, kind of important, so I was told to get myself some more and they'd pay. I found a great deal and ended up buying six more colours and also some Atelier Interactive acrylics - heck, if I have to learn a new media I might as well throw myself into it!

It's kind of scary starting out with a totally alien material - learning what it will and won't do, how it differs from watercolour, but it's scary in a good way! Watercolours will always be my passion but it'll do me good to play with the bright acrylic colours too.

A short session with my new paints/inks shows how exciting they are going to be! This was a very quick sketch with no real planning but I kinda like it!