Poppy and Watercolour hints

This is my latest to be listed. I love poppies and this was one growing in my garden. I thought it was too pretty not to paint and so I have - in acrylics! It would be quite interesting to paint it again but in watercolour to see how the different styles look. Maybe I will at some time.

I said I would start to give some tips on watercolour painting, so I will give my first today and that is to buy quality equipment. It's no good buying children's quality paints and expecting anything other than a child's quality painting! You will need to experiment with different makes of paper to see which you like. I generally prefer Saunders Waterford 140lb NOT. NOT stands for Not Hot Pressed believe it or not! The paper comes in different weights and the surface is either rough, hot pressed or Not. Not is a nice middle of the road paper - Goldilocks would have liked it - not too rough and not too smooth but just right - well for my purposes anyway! As for brushes I have tried and tried so many different makes and still have to find the perfect brush. I have recently been using brushes from a company called Rosemary & Co and find the quality very good. I only use sable as I just can't get along with artificial blends - and I have tried because they are a lot cheaper. The artificial blends are just too floppy and lack the spring that sable has. Don't buy too many though as they are expensive - start off with just a couple. Having said that you should only use sable, you can get away with an acrylic blend with a larger brush which you will use to lay in backgrounds but only use sable for the delicate work.

In my next blog I will go into more detail about materials and also a trick to make sticking a wet bit of watercolour paper onto board easy (you need to do this to stretch it but I will explain all next time!)

Anne

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