Leisure Painter - UK (2019-06)

22 JUNE 2019 http://www.painters-online.co.uk

M

y aim in painting this scene

was to paint a traditional

watercolour by first layering the

larger washes then building up the tones

and detail using more well-placed washes

and utilising my brushes to the full. Only

when the painting was near completion

did I bring in the inks and gouache to

enhance the colour and highlights.

I enjoyed my first visit to the Loire last

September and was particularly excited

to visit the Château de Montrésor for the

first time. It is a medieval castle with a

Renaissance mansion built in the grounds,

located in the French village of Montrésor

in Indre-et-Loire. My artistic eyeballs were

on full alert for paintable scenes and

I was rewarded when I entered one of

the grand salons (above). The light

flooding through the window highlighted

all the rich fabrics and furniture, and

where there is light, there are nooks and

crannies. This was a ‘must-paint’ scene!

A note on colours

The Aquafine watercolours, which are

rich, free flowing and transparent, made

up the majority of this painting, however,

I added three Winsor & Newton pigments

to the process. Quinacridone gold

and permanent rose (quinacridone rose)

belong to a wonderful family of colours

that share the characteristics of

transparency, vibrancy and permanence.

They are my favourite pair and lay the

foundations for most of my paintings.

Cerulean tends to be a cool blue. It is

opaque with plenty of granulation and

I used it to balance the warmer hues

in the later stages of the painting.

The Aquafine gouache pigments,

namely cerulean and titanium white,

made another small guest appearance

to enhance the highlights. Cobalt blue

hue and cadmium red hue Aquafine inks

were also useful and brightened the

carpets and parts of the chair fabrics. LP

How to approach a complex scene and make the most of watercolour’s

transparent and vivid colours with gouache and ink, by Adrienne Parker

Watercolour magic

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

nPractise wet-in-wet, wet-on-dry

and dry-brush techniques

nMake sense of a complicated

scene

Watercolour plus

tThe reference photograph for this demonstration: a grand salon in the Château de Montrésor