Improving an old watercolour painting

It's very easy to go back and improve on your old watercolour paintings. In this blog post I want to talk you through one that I wasn't entirely happy with.

Setting the scene

A couple of years ago I visited Nerja in Southern Spain. It's a beautiful little village with an olde-worlde feel to it, and is just an hour's drive away from Malaga.

I took this photograph of the Balcon de Europa, the heart of Nerja, with a view to painting it when I got home.



Choosing the composition and colours

We all know how the camera lies to us - the colours were much brighter in real life, and the whole scene had a blue tint to it that I really wanted to capture. It also felt very romantic to be there in the setting sun, so I tweaked the people to reflect the atmosphere.

So here was my painting, mounted (I'm sure you'll agree, they always look best with a mount):



Well I pondered, and I studied, and a year later I decided that I really wasn't happy with it. The painting lacked depth and definition.

What to do?

I began by adding some pen to give more definition. I added some outlines, being careful to have some lost and found edges. If I had simply outlined the whole thing then it would begin to look like a colouring in exercise, and the painting would lose its charm. Then I added some hatching to add depth to the darker areas.

After adding the pen, I felt that there was too much black ink and not enough colour, so I decided that I really needed to add more watercolour to enhance the depth. I also felt that the blues were not toning in very well together, so using my W&N artists watercolour paints, I added cerulean blue to all of the shadows in the building. I made sure that I had enough pigment and water on the brush to cover all the areas that I wanted to go over, to avoid hard edges. I needed to make sure that I didn't leave any puddles of paint or water, as this would surely have left those dreaded unwanted backruns and cauliflowers. Then I strengthened the blues in the shadows and foreground to add depth.

Next I added burnt sienna and crimson to the floor, and strengthened the sea, hills and sunset slightly, dampening the sunset before I added colour to keep it soft, and remembering to wait until the neighbouring pigment had dried to avoid bleeding.



At this point I was feeling relatively happy with it, so put it back into its mount.




Is it finished? I think so....





Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

Oh Yea, Oh Yea! Here comes the snow!

Oh Yea, Oh Yea!



Extra extra read all about it!

Snowman orchestra gathers in Ormskirk!








Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

My new online gallery

I'm feeling very accomplished this morning - I have spent a few hours working on my website design, getting to grips with google-sites and can finally reveal my new art gallery!

You can click on the link on my navigation bar across the top of my blog, or follow this link to have a peek

I'm still having a few problems getting some of the pictures to click through to  my shop so I have also included links underneath the images too.

The next step is to add my own shopping cart using Paypal. It looks simple enough, but all these things take time and are always far more complex than expected - the tiniest typo can cause massive headaches, so that will have to wait for another day. Hats off to all the web-developers out there! 

Please let me know what you think - all suggestions for improvements will be gratefully received.

Stephie

Edit: shortly after posting this link I lost all owner-access to my new gallery. Horrified, I spent another hour trying to get it back - the solution was simple: log out and log back in again. If only I had heeded those wise words from IT help-desks all over "Have you rebooted your machine?"





Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

I'm featured in this lovely article!

I'm absolutely thrilled to have been interviewed by Maxine of Paper, Chains and Beads - a wonderful artist who creates some fabulous ink art.

You can read the interview by following this link: paperchainsandbeads.blogspot.co.uk

Please also take time to look at Max's wonderful ink art, you can follow the link below to browse more of her work.






Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie