A few bitesize tutorials from t’Interwebs

Facebook knows…

Unsuprisingly I have had about a million and a half adverts for dubious watercolour tutorial sites crop up on my facebook recently (if you want an interesting article by the way, have a look at this) and have mostly ignored these as attempts to get my money.

But I regsitered the other day for some free tutorials from https://watercolormastery.com/ – which has been quite a useful experience.

I thought I would post some of there here.

The first of these was a simple seascape. This was basically Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, and Burnt Sienna with a touch of Winsor yellow. I though it looked a little plain and added the tiny boat later. I think this is a great example of how simple an effective painting can be.

The next tutorial was a sparrow. At this point I will openly get it out of the way that this looks more like a thrush, but the overall technique was the same. Some of the aim of this was looking at “lost lines” – where the subject and background blur – I’ve not really managed this, and I think overall my tendancy to worry about white space has failed me here – I’ve lost some of the luminosity. But I do love birds, and I think I am going to explore the ideas this gave me some more.

The next tutorial was this Goldfish, which I played about with my various oranges, including the lovely Daniel Smith Quinocridone Orange (note to self, stock up, as the pigment is limited). I’ve really not manage the subtlety on this, and it looks a little Pokemon-like to me, but exploring the colours has been useful. I am not sure I would have gone with the dark background painted last, to be fair.

Though a bit of a departure from my normal subjects, I thought this VW would be useful for some ideas I have for loose form Ink and wash ideas I want to play with for urban scenes. I think I rushed this a little.

The final tutorials were flowers. The first two I have posted here departed very much from the tutorials, but as part of my ongoing exploration they have been quite useful. The larger Daisy I am very pelased with and this is in a more traditional botanical style.

Finally, I tried a further bird, this robin.

All in all, breaking out of the normal things I paint has been quite a positive process.