Yesterday, after spending half a morning with the hose, digging and weeding our side passage, I found these self set pansies half hidden by the old gate in our back garden. Could you have resisted the temptation to paint them? :-)

This was a very quick watercolour sketch, completed just before it started to rain!

Like most beginners in watercolours, I didn’t want to spend a fortune in expensive materials whose good qualities I could not use or appreciate, so I bought a cheap set of 12 colours which included two cheap sable brushes and a pad of cheap watercolour paper.

In this article, I have included two still lives. One was done using Winsor & Newton Artists’ Watercolour paints on Bockinford NOT, 300gsm. The other, with St. Petersburg White Nights watercolours on Gallery watercolour paper, whose cost amounts to almost one third of the first. Click on the thumbnails and see if you can tell the difference!

My very first efforts were not brilliant, although encouraging enough to keep on practicing and painting. Following the advice in books and magazines, I did what almost everyone does: ‘buy the best you can afford‘, and partially blamed my initial failures on my cheap materials (more…)

Yesterday we sold “Misty II”.
I feel a mixture of joy and sadness, because I am very fond of that watercolour. It was done in the wet-in-wet technique and A3 in size, the largest I had painted at the moment.

(Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture)

An almost monochromatic painting, as I used only Winsor & Newton’s Payne’s Grey with just a tiny little bit of Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber for the eyes. The blurred background contrasts with the strong oblique lines of the neck and face pushing the horse towards the viewer, as if it was emerging, galloping at full speed, from a fantasy mist.

I really hope the new owners enjoy this painting.