Leisure Painter - UK (2019-06)

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He subsequently began to produce

landscape views that quickly found

a market.

With the rise of a more settled Europe

after the Napoleonic wars wealthy

travellers found watercolour a useful

way to record the sights they saw. These

paintings would be held in folders to

be displayed to friends on their return.

The process

Watercolour is usually worked from the

lightest tones and colours through to

the darkest. That is the safest method

of working until you are more confident

with the medium. Adding water to colour

lightens it, less water will create darker

colour. Watercolour can be very

unforgiving, particularly if it has been

painted too heavily. It does not take

kindly to being removed, particularly

if the paint is a ‘dye’ colour, however

unwanted colour can usually be ‘lifted’

out with a clean damp brush. An

overworked painting can also be placed

under a running tap and gently sponged

to remove excess colour. Turner did

this to many of his paintings.

Monochrome exercise

To build confidence and to help

understand how tone works – the light

or dark of an object caused either by

its colour, or the effect of light – try this

tonal exercise (see the mushroom study,

far left):

1 Choose a simple object, such as

a piece of fruit or a vegetable. Place it

under a desk lamp on a piece of white

paper.

2 Mix a colour, such as black or brown;

I used sepia here. Make four little boxes

or circles and leave the first box empty.

Mix a pale wash of water and your

chosen colour and fill in the second box.

Add more paint to the wash, but no

more water, and fill in the third box.

Finally, mix a lot of paint into your wash

so it becomes the darkest and lay it

in the last box. This will help you

achieve your range of tones.

3 Draw your subject with a 2B pencil

on watercolour paper. Isolate the

lightest light and leave empty.

4 Now work the lightest wash over the

whole object avoiding the white area.

Allow to dry.

5 Work the next two stages in the

same way, gradually achieving the

darkest tones.

The landscape in sepia (below left)

was worked in the same way, building

from light to dark, and working from

the background of the picture through

to the foreground.

Graded washes

This is one of the major watercolour

techniques, which is particularly useful

for skies.

1 Attach watercolour paper to a board

and mix a strong wash of ultramarine

or cobalt blue on your palette.

2 Dampen the paper with a sponge

or your largest brush.

3 Load the brush with the strong wash

and pull it across the paper from right

to left to a depth of about 2in. (5cm).

4 Quickly dip the brush in water and

wipe it on the rim of the jar then pick

p the damp painted edge and pull

across the board with the dilute paint.

5 Repeat Step 4 again so each time you

are laying paler colour. Continue until

you are near white at the bottom of the

painting. Work as fast as you can

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A sky painted with a graded wash of cobalt. While damp, the cloud was lifted with dry tissue.

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Wet-in-wet sky. The paper is wetted and colour dropped in then tilted to create clouds.

A little grey was added for the cloud shadows.

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so the whole picture stays damp.

6 Wind tissue around your index

finger and press firmly on the darkest

part of the sky to lift out clouds.

7 Add a landscape profile when dry.

I used cobalt and burnt sienna

to make a soft blue-grey.

Wet-in-wet technique

With this technique paint is dropped

onto a wet surface and allowed to

spread. This is one of the loveliest

ways to work so make lots of these

skies, such as the one you see below,

to develop your confidence and skill.

1 Have ready a strong wash of blue

I used cobalt, but ultramarine can be

used or cerulean or phthalo blue.

I also mixed burnt sienna with cobalt

to make grey cloud shadow colour.

2 Attach the paper to your board

and wet the paper.

3 Drop in the blue in three areas

anywhere on the sky.

4 Tilt the board to allow the paint

to run in the damp surface.

5 Stop when the sky looks about

right (you will know!)

6 Allow to dry flat or, if adding grey,

drop this in gently at Step 4. LP

Watercolour

A landscape is added to a simple sky.

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