My third article in the Garden Journal series in Leisure Painter this month
Glad to see my latest article in July’s issue of Leisure Painter magazine. I write about my artist’s journal where I paint, draw and write about my garden through the seasons. This month I write about the joys of Spring and how you might use collage to enhance your journal entries.
Clematis Montana
The other day I took this photo of some trailing clematis against the fence. It’s inspiring me! Reminded me of a painting I did a few years ago…
Extract from one of my favourite watercolours from a few years ago now.
There is so much happening in the garden at the moment. New flowers emerging everywhere…it’s easy just to spend hours standing and staring. But I’m working up to putting brush to paper. Perhaps I’ll start with this clematis. Stay tuned!
Continuing from yesterday’s post (see below), I did a few quick studies of the Field Maple leaves, as promised.
First I added some water with a brush to the squeezed out paint on my plate and gently mingled the three primary colours so that you can see I have some oranges, greens and blues, purples and browns. You will have made your own colour wheel!
The yellow, red and blue mingled together give us orange, green and purple and brown
I then drew the leaves with pencil…I drew round them to save time. Yes I give you permission! Then I painted the whole leaf with a watery yellow as this is the background colour in all the leaves.
While this was still wet, I picked up reds, oranges and browns with my brush and dropped in the colours, observing how they worked on the actual leaves. Then I picked up the paper and allowed the colours to spread in the wet first wash.
Her I tip up the paper to allow the colour to spread down making its own colour mixes within the leaf
With the wrong end of my brush I drew in some veins, looking carefully to see how they worked on the actual leaf. when you do this, the colour spreads into the marks you have made to create dark coloured veins.
My painted leaves
You can see how the paint has blended together to create a very realistic version of the leaves.
You could let this dry thoroughly and then go in again doing exactly the same thing with a second wash of colour to deepen the effects.
And there you have a wet in wet painting of the field maple leaves. Lovely job!
Walking back from the shops this morning through the scattered Autumn leaves in the park, it occurred to me that Autumn is the very best time to start on watercolour painting or to get back to it if you’ve not done any for a while.
Why? It’s because the colours of Autumn are beautiful! They are so vibrant and warm and lovely and watercolour is just the best medium for painting Autumn (I’m biased!)
Why is it the best? Well look at these Autumn leaves…See how the colours blend into each other from yellow to orange to red. You can paint this effect with watercolour because the pigment moves in the water (if you use plenty of water and plenty of colour).
Field Maple leaves have variegated colours in Autumn
September/October has always been a good time to start afresh on a hobby. Summer holidays are over…Christmas is ages away…the kids are back at school, be they your children or grandchildren…and it’s time to make a fresh start.
Equipment? Easy…
My advice- buy 3 tubes of watercolour, a red, a yellow and a blue. Buy one paintbrush (made of a mix of man made and natural hairs), and a 7×9 inch (or similar) watercolour sketchbook (140not) get an ordinary white plate from the kitchen for a palette and you have everything you need.
Here it all is below…plus a pencil and some Autumn leaves.
I’m going to paint a leaf now using this basic kit.
And the great thing is that I will be using the “wet in wet” method. Its huge fun…come back soon to see what I did!
In a few days time, the November issue of Leisure Painter will be in the shops. I’m excited as there’s an article of mine in it about my new passion of journalling my garden.
With the huge pile of paintings in my studio getting taller by the day, I thought it would be a good idea, for a change, to put my paintings all together in a book, a journal with sketches, watercolours and words.
And as gardening becomes more and more important to me, I’ve chosen that as my subject.
A page from the journal with some live flowers
It’s been fun so far. I’m free to paint and write about whatever I want to. It’s great!
I will have another three more articles appearing in Leisure Painter throughout the year, each one depicting a different season. Can’t wait!
…But it has been a very long Winter and even today, halfway through the month of March, it has been snowing and there’s a bitterly cold wind.
I’ve been trying to cheer myself up by seeking out signs of Spring in the garden. A beautiful pink hellebore has been bravely defying the Winter chill.
I brought a flower in and made a watercolour.
Other hellebores are now blooming, and I brought some in with anything else I could find in the garden that had flowers coming…even a sprig of Rosemary!
In my last post on this blog, I promised that I would post some tips to accompany the book. So I thought I’d start with this project. In the book you get an A4 tracing to help you along if you wish.
How do you get that misty effect in the background with the trees and branches showing up as shadowy shapes?
I’ve made a short video to demo that technique.
Of course the daffodils would be masked out with masking fluid in front of this woodland area. You could then paint this boldly without worrying about spoiling your flowers.
I painted this a few years ago after a walk along a local canal where the hedges were full of Autumn fruits and I photographed the different stages.
The results of my Autumn foraging walk along the canalMy drawing with some details masked outA first wash wet in wet was allowed to drySome leaf shapes have been cut out with darker washes.The blackberries have been washed in leaving some highlightsThe finished painting.
Some more leaf shapes have been cut out of the background wash to give depth.
The leaves have been washed with different colours wet in wet. The masking has been removed and the hawthorn berries and flowers have been painted in.
Towards the outer edges of the painting you can see areas of the first wash left un touched in order to take the eye towards the middle of the painting.
Colours used:
Winsor and Newton artists watercolours
aureolin Winsor blue (red shade) Winsor red Ultramarine blue
raw sienna Quinacridone gold cobalt blue Indian yellow
burnt sienna Quinacridone magenta Alizarin crimson Permanent rose
My palette with colours ready. I love these rich Autumn mixes!
I used 140 not watercolour paper. Saunders Waterford.
