206 - A Farm near Leadgate in Monochrome

An attempt to paint the previous setting in monochrome using only Burnt Sienna. Brian Keeler has a great saying which he repeats in all his videos, he says "tone does all the work whilst colour takes all the credit". I'm currently reading about an artist from Yorkshire called Ashley Jackson who paints wonderfully emotive watercolours particularly of the Yorkshire moors. Mr. Jackson says that one of the easiest ways to learn about tone is to paint monochromes, so I've took his advice and had a go.

200 - Terry Harrison Tutorial

Working along with one of the tutorials on Terry Harrison's video, 'Improve Your Trees in Watercolor'. What took him about 20 minutes to do has taken me half a day of pausing and rewinding and pausing.... and rewinding. My effort doesn't look half bad once photographed and reduced to the size of a large stamp but the original is a bit ropey, still it's all part of the learning process and hopefully in 6 months or a years time I will be able to look back and see a big improvement.

Of-course the downside is that I now 'must have' a set of Terry Harrison's special brushes.

199 - Sterling Edwards Tutorial

A quick watercolor exercise following along with another Sterling Edwards video.

198 - Sterling Edwards Tutorial

A watercolour painting following along with Sterling Edwards in his 'Spring Landscape' tutorial.

 Artists Network.tv 

138

A painting from a photo taken at Monkey Valley in France a couple of years ago.

128- Revisited

Finished off with some detail and a slightly better photograph.

128- Watercolour

This was probably a bit ambitious for my skill level and although it isn't altogether finished, I just needed to get it copied and posted because I've been working on it off and on for the last week and it's starting to drive me crazy!! It's actually a copy of one of John Pike's paintings from his book 'John Pike Paints Watercolours'.

The book is excellent and provides 13 demonstrations of the artist's process showing the painting as he progresses so you can follow along, which is what I have tried to do. This is demonstration no.2 and is called 'Woods- Late Winter'. I should warn the reader that whilst he shows the painting at different stages, this generally consists of only 3 or 4 illustrations although they are accompanied by a good write up describing paints used etc.

127- Watercolour

Another exercise from David Bellamy's book.

126- Watercolour

An exercise from David Bellamy's 'Complete Guide to Watercolour Painting'.

100-101 Painted Trees Exercise

I did these a few days ago and forgot about them. They were painted with some cheap brushes on cartridge paper following a tutorial on the internet. I wasn't going to post them at first because they aren't great but this blog is about charting my progress which means posting the good, the bad and the downright ugly!

88-92 Watercolour Exercises

Some exercises in colour mixing from Alwyn Crawshaw's book, 'Watercolour Painting Course'

using Crimson Alizarin, Cadmium Yellow Pale and French Ultramarine. (Basically Red, Yellow and Blue)

84,85- Water Colour Sketches

Working with water-colours is pretty much a new experience for me, especially in trying to portray landscapes and foliage. Hopefully I will improve with practice! The top picture was painted from memory whilst the above was painted from a photograph, both were sketched previously. (77 & 72)

59- Pencil & Watercolor

Just finished this image which was done for a competition based on the theme, Flying Machines at Sketchtheatre.com. The rules are that you have to use traditional media only, no digital assistance. My idea was based on and inspired by the old crazy flying inventions of the late 19th century.

43a- Watercolour

This is a scan of the original watercolour before I started to add black pen and coloured pencil and to be honest, I think I prefer this one. It was a good exercise working with 'real' media for a change and I'm hoping to do a lot more. It's weird not being able to press undo and I missed the ability to colour pick at the click of a mouse button.

43- Water Colours & Pencil Sketch