Derwent Graphitint

Derwent Graphitint

Reading Time: 2 minutes While down in Norwich the other month, I could not of course resist the lure of Jarrolds art shop again. This is alternatively heaven, or a way to spend all the money you don’t have, if you are like me, with a mixture of high 

Trees on Foraged Grounds

Trees on Foraged Grounds

Reading Time: 2 minutes As I have mentioned, when making watercolours there’s always some left over in the mortar and I like to use this to prepare grounds for future work. These are some recent earths, on the poundland paper which I use for cheap expreimenting. These were inspired 

Plant Pigment Watercolours

Plant Pigment Watercolours

Reading Time: 2 minutes We are lucky nowadays to have a massive array of complex pigments and dyes at our disposal, both organic pigments such as Quinocridones, Pyrrols, Perylenes etc, and the increasing inoganic metal pigments still being developed – Sicopal Spinel pigments, Zirconium Vanadium pigments, the miraculous Yinmn 

Avocado Ink

Avocado Ink

Reading Time: 3 minutes Prompted by my continual playing with natural pigments in my paints, I made a batch of Avocado ink the other day. This is perhaps one of the better known vegetable dyes, creating a relatively stable and lightfast dusty pink colour. I’ve brewed up a couple 

Micro Landscapes – The Return

Micro Landscapes – The Return

Reading Time: 2 minutes While working on some of my recent watercolours I was trimming my paper to the longer format, and ended up with quite a few offcuts. I hate waste, so I thought what can I do with these…. Practice some more miniature landscapes, that’s what! Working 

Lincoln in Watercolour

Lincoln in Watercolour

Reading Time: 2 minutes Of course, I took the photos from Lincoln, to work from for some watercolours. All of these are from random phone pictures in the end. The end of the weekend we went down to look round the waterfront, as this is close to the station 

A few bitesize tutorials from t’Interwebs

A few bitesize tutorials from t’Interwebs

Reading Time: 3 minutes 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 

Over The Lake  – Letting The Paint do It’s Thing (AKA so quick it feels like cheating…)

Over The Lake – Letting The Paint do It’s Thing (AKA so quick it feels like cheating…)

Reading Time: 2 minutes I got to searching last night for a bit of guidance on painting dark value images in watercolour, and stumbled upon this website. Wandering away from my initial search there are a lot of paintings in a very impressionist style – very much against fussing, 

Shipley Glen in Watercolour

Shipley Glen in Watercolour

Reading Time: 2 minutes After the watercolour country lane tutorials I completed the other day I was inspired by the colours to work from some picture I took in Shipley Glen some years ago. I also wanted to play with the square format some more. Often the challenge in 

Three iterations

Three iterations

Reading Time: 3 minutes I have been taking some time out of manic unrestrained creativity to try and follow a few tutorials, after the success with the Winter Landscape I painted before Christmas. This has got me thinking a little about the development of my practice in watercolour which, 

Some More Landscapes

Some More Landscapes

Reading Time: < 1 minutes These are just a couple more landscapes I have been working on in the run up to Christmas. The first of these is another from Wales – Yr Hen Bont in Cwm Hafodyredwydd. I’m not quite happy with this. I loved the effect from the 

Daniel Smith Primatik Gemstone Watercolours

Daniel Smith Primatik Gemstone Watercolours

Reading Time: 3 minutes In my general obsessive search for the weird and wonderful in the world of colour and insatiable thirst for knowledge on a subject I have of course read up about many of the weird and wonderful materials that have been used to provide pigments, gemstones