Plant Pigment Watercolours

Plant Pigment Watercolours

Reading Time: 2 minutesWe 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 

Garden Sketching

Garden Sketching

Reading Time: 2 minutesI think we’vr had a marginally better summer this year, or at least subjectively, I have managed to experience more of it from somewhere otger than sat in the office. The other evening I took the new Mungyo colours out in the front garden in 

Avocado Ink

Avocado Ink

Reading Time: 3 minutesPrompted 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 

Sumi-e Inspired

Sumi-e Inspired

Reading Time: 3 minutesI do sometimes have to admit that I am a compulsive buyer of anything arty that looks interesting, even if I have no idea what I intend to do with it. But every now and again it does mean I escape my fixation with watercolours 

Micro Landscapes – The Return

Micro Landscapes – The Return

Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile 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 minutesOf 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 minutesFacebook 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 

Pine Trees

Pine Trees

Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhile on our first (hopefully of many) walks of the year I took a photo, as I have before, of the pine trees on Parkside Road. I’m always fascinated by these trees and (I am not sure if this is cut to avoid the road) 

Doodles

Doodles

Reading Time: 2 minutesI have recently been in some rather lengthy training for work, and while I have always been a doodler in meetings, I had one of my small sketchbooks with me and throught I would do my doodles in the sketchbook. I was quite impressed with 

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 minutesI 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, 

Flowers – Wet on (very) Wet

Flowers – Wet on (very) Wet

Reading Time: 3 minutesAfter poppy that crept into my One Colour a Day book the other week I went off on a bit of a crazy exploration of wet on wet flowers over the last few days. This was very much an extensive exploration into how the paint 

Shipley Glen in Watercolour

Shipley Glen in Watercolour

Reading Time: 2 minutesAfter 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