I managed to draw and paint two hands during my lunch break today. I’m quite happy with them, it’s difficult to paint on such a small format. I feel that my watercolouring skills are improving, this feels very rewarding.
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Naked hands
Lunch sketch painted in my mini-watercolour Moleskin.
I try and do a sketch or a painting during my lunch break at work as often as possible. I really would like to practice my figure painting but having pictures of naked people on my computer screen is a bit of a sensitive issue to say the least. So, I have found the solution – hands! Yes, naked hands! Nude hands! It’s genius, I can practice my watercolour skin tones and hand drawing at the same time. Only I see the naked truth.
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| The Naked Hand (24x32cm, Canson 200 g/m2) |
I had big plans to do a whole bunch of watercolours on my sailing trip. In reality it was almost impossible to concentrate for any length of time in the 35-36 degrees of heat. Still, I had a wonderful holiday and my batteries are charged. The sketches are A5 in size approximately.
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| Reversed perspective. ( It felt right at the time! ) |
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Home from Corfu
Here are a few more A5 pencil sketches from my holiday sailing around Corfu. The sketch book was a present from my son. 🙂
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Sailing around Corfu
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The big French challenge
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| Paimpol, Brittany, France |
Yes, I finished it, the biggest watercolour I’ve ever painted, 56x76cm or 22×30″.
I’m proud that I stuck with it, I learned so much by the endless mistakes I made. As a complete painting I am not totally happy, it is stiff and the uncertainty in my strokes is clear to see. Too much white gouache for highlights almost ruining it in the end. But, I learned so much by not giving up.
Buy good watercolour paper, the one I used was very poor, not cotton, it was closer to toilet paper in quality. I ran out and bought Arches 300g because of the poor nature of the paper I used, so I learned. There was one million things I had never experienced; like how does one paint stones walls? It’s really hard but it will be easier next time. Flowers, I had never painted them before either, not seriously, they were also difficult to master. Ah well, on I go to the next pigmented challenge …
I have a watercolour Moleskin (A5) where I practice my watercolour nudes. I’m trying to do at least one a day. It helps me ignore the real task; finishing the large watercolour that is such a challenge and sits there beside me waiting …
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| A5 watercolour figure painting |
Currently I’m working on a large watercolour, it’s a real challenge, I’ve never worked in so much detail before and I’m pushing my technical limits to the maximum. So, it was necessary to take a little break and paint this little watercolour nude. I like the freedom of the way the colour pigment illustrates the figure.
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| Nude 20130719. Moleskin, A5, watercolour notebook. |