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Watering with colour

The last three days have been spent joyously working on the watercolour painting commission. Its a large painting being 26 x 18 inches so all the painting is done area by area. Watercolours  are usually painted like that, rather than all in one go, and since I am copying the clients photo, the picture has to look like the photograph and is quite tight in its painting style. So I started at the top and worked my way down the picture, great expanse of cloudy sky, many rural buildings surrounded by gardens and greenery, gently moving water, nearby land full of wild flowers. The talent in painting it is that although its painted in stages it has to look like it isn’t. So even though I have covered all the paper by this third day in colour, its spending the next few hours going over it, merging parts, reducing some parts and emphasising others so that it works as a whole. Thats the joy of working with watercolours, and why I much prefer Bockingford paper, because it allows me to move the paint to a degree. I don’t mean totally, only to a small degree. I don’t like working on other watercolour papers that act like blotting paper with the paint and soak it up and don’t allow movement. It makes my pictures flow together better and is the way I love to work.

And I’m taking lots of photos of each stage, so it will make a good demo picture to show you how its been created from blank paper to a full blown watercolour.