Dalmatian watercolour - Chloe

16" x 20" watercolour on Saunders Waterford NOT paper

Today's painting is a watercolour on my favourite paper. It's what I would describe as a good tempered paper, allowing a fair amount of scrubbing before complaining! As I've described before, the surface is neither rough nor smooth but as Goldilocks would say 'just right' - for me that is. NOT stands for not hot pressed and hot pressed means smooth. I would suggest that if you're new to watercolours and want to have your paintings framed, you should avoid using the lightest weight of paper unless your paintings are very small. I've seen countless paintings starting to wrinkle when framed because the paper wasn't substantial enough. I've described sometime ago in this blog about stretching watercolour paper and in my opinion, it's a vital step and something I do even with heavyweight papers. In this way I never have to worry about the amount of watery paint I apply to the surface and always know the paper will remain nice and taut. 

On to the painting now. Well I think you'd have to look far and wide to try and find a prettier face than this little girl. I think she's absolutely lovely... and I hope you do too!

Anne

info@azpaintings.com

Watercolour musings - talks about materials

So today is the first of my watercolour discussions. I would say straight away that I always use artist quality products - I know some other artists use cheaper materials successfully but I have tried them and couldn't get on with them at all. I use Winsor & Newton watercolour paints although I would not suggest that these are superior to other makes, but they are what I started with, liked them and have stuck with them. 

As for brushes - well I must have tried hundreds! Other than my large wash brush and my faithful old 'scrubber' all my paint brushes are sable. Well I say all, that's not entirely true - amongst them are a few brushes manufactured with various mixtures of man-made and sable hair which I have bought in optimism that maybe a new brush had been discovered which would be my perfect brush, but these have always to date, been relegated after first use to mixing paint colours or cleaning my palette. I can only paint with sable and I use a round brush. Most of my work is done with a no 3 sable as I've found with trial and error that with this size I can get a nice point or a nice splay, depending on what I'm painting, together with a reasonable amount of paint holding. Sadly brushes do lose their 'sharpness' quite rapidly and I have to supplement my brush collection frequently. I am still on the look out for the perfect brush which I doubt exists!

Now I mentioned palettes. It will probably surprise you that I still use the travelling box of paints, with the palette an integral part of the box, which I first started with so many years ago! It really is a nuisance as it's difficult to make a large amount of wash without it slopping into it's neighbour's well, but I've never even considered using another palette. In fact I do have two plastic palettes bought for me, but I have only used them for acrylic paint! 

I think paper is a very personal choice. I would suggest you visit your local art shop and buy a sheet of several different makes. You will also need to find out whether you prefer a rough, hot pressed or NOT, also called cold pressed, surface. I like NOT which is a medium surface - between rough and the smooth hot pressed. I like the Saunders Waterford brand which is 100% cotton rag and which is strong enough to take a reasonable amount of scrubbing. I always soak my paper in a bath of cold water for at least 10 minutes before stretching it. It really is important for you to try different makes as they differ enormously in the way the paint sits on them and is absorbed.

I will talk about which colours make up my palette in my next post but meanwhile, do let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Anne - info@azpaintings.com

Brushes On Watercolour - Wet On Wet

I had an interesting question the other day about watercolour paper and whether it is used wet or dry. Well, it is used both ways depending on what you are painting and the effect you want to make.

If you are going to paint a detailed painting, which needs to be accurate to scale (like mine) you will have to work on dry paper. The reason for this is that you will need to make your pencil drawing on your paper and as we all know - you can't draw with an ordinary lead pencil onto wet paper. A long time ago I did try drawing on my paper before soaking and stretching it. Unfortunately I discovered that when you do this, you also stretch your drawing and even when the paper has completely dried, the drawing is not absolutely as it was when you drew it. So for my purposes where accuracy is vital, it was useless. If however, 100% accuracy to scale is not needed, then you can certainly do this.

You may wonder why anyone would want to draw first, soak later. The reason for this, is that when you have a sheet of wet paper on your board (not completely, dripping wet but still soaked through) you can lay your paints onto the paper and get some wonderful effects. You will need to practice to see what I mean, but essentially the paint will mix in with the water held in the paper and spread out into wonderful shapes and patterns. When you then add another colour to the mix - oh lovely! Do be aware though, that where the paper is holding a lot of water, you will need to put reasonably strong colours on your brush.

If you need to let your paper dry so that you can put on an accurate drawing, you can however, wet areas of your paper with clean water (make sure it is clean!!) and then drop your colours into that area. No doubt you will find some frustrations. Quite often the paint will collect to the edges of its spread and when dry, creates and thickish hard line which most often you won't want. If you try and lift some of the paint when you see this happening, you will find to your dismay that quite often you get a 'floral' effect and most of the time you won't want this, although in a looser painting, it can be utilized to become a useful part of the design.

The picture at the top shows a small part from the background of one of my paintings (ignore the piece of dog neck) which shows granulation. Granulation occurs when some paints are mixed together - I usually make mine happen by adding ultramarine to my mix. I love the grainy effect it gives.

So to summarise - your paper can be worked dry, damp or wet. It will depend on your requirements and may well differ from painting to painting. Just keep going and don't give up if your efforts appear amateurish to begin with. Enjoy what you're doing. Don't make it an effort but look forward to it as an enjoyable discovery. Apart from learning to draw and paint, you will also begin to see differently. Yes, you will. Where once you would just look at an object, now you will start to really see it. You will notice it's shape, colour, the way the light falls on it. Yes, life will become more fun!

Talking of fun, did anyone notice the heading of this piece? If you take the initials it reads BOW-WOW - perfect for a dog obsessed person like me!