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....





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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

Click on this link to view my new art gallery

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.

Paper, Chains and Beads Folksy Shop - Art section

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

What does YOUR snowman get up to at night?

Are you ready for winter? My snowmen certainly are...

Jolly snowman

What does YOUR snowman get up to at night?

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've added a 'follow by email' box to my blog

Following some helpful feedback, I've added a 'follow by email' box to my blog.

Setting up this blog has been, and continues to be, a real challenge for me. Having spent 16 years programming computers, I thought I was fairly computer literate - but NO, it turns out there is a lot more to this than I thought!

And I still need to learn so much. Next I think I'll tackle how to set up a slideshow on my blog, but it will have to wait until another day...I can't take any more right now!




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 taught my first watercolour class today!

Teaching art to committed adults is very much one of my long term goals. Today it became one step closer.

I am a member of my local art group, we meet for two hours every Friday morning. The group has been meeting up for over 12 years, and most of the members have been with them for the whole time. They're a very friendly bunch, and when I joined in January I offered to share my skills with them. Mostly it's a free and easy format, come along and paint and chat. Really that should be chat and paint, as an awful lot of chatting and not so much painting gets done!

Once a term the club organises a demonstration, and this morning I took centre stage and taught the group how to use clingfilm and salt to create dramatic watercolours.

I began by demonstrating how to paint a tree trunk using clingfilm, and secondly how to create a canopy of leaves using the same technique. The group then went away to try it out, and I wandered around to make sure they were all coping. Some needed more help than I expected - everyone clearly doesn't find it as easy as I do! But after half an hour everyone had something resembling bark and leaves.

Next I demonstrated how to create these leaves using clingfilm, salt and negative painting. Everyone was most keen to try this, and again they all created something that they were either happy with, or were happy to work on further at home.

Autumn Leaves created using salt, clingfilm and negative painting techniques

The fourth demo was the sea effect that I used in this lighthouse. Although using the same technique, this is definitely trickier to achieve than the previous exercises as this requires careful placement of paint, water and salt.

Sea effect using salt, clingfilm and water. Sky using salt and water.

Finally I did a quick demonstration of how to use the clingfilm in straight lines to paint a door, using salt and water to achieve a peeling paint result. Sadly we had run out of time for them to try the door, but hopefully they will now be able to apply this technique to other objects.

The group all seemed to be happy with their morning's work - and I haven't been banned so it must have been OK! Not everyone will use the technique, but I could see the light of inspiration shining in some eyes as we left...I can't wait to see what they bring back to show next week!




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