I saw a great stock photo on LinkedIn the other day. There was a sky…
Christ’s College Hall From Second Court
The artwork’s slowed down this week as I’ve not quite been tickety. But I was feeling well enough to do something quick today, so I went for a line and wash painting. I was also in the mood for something like this after watching a Liz Chaderton demonstration on YouTube. Liz has a book out on line and wash paintings that’s not yet on my wishlist but is on my bubbling under list, ready for promotion in the summer when my main list is hopefully trashed for my birthday.
In the demo, Liz puts the watercolour down first, then the penwork but I did this the other way round. My pen drawing was much more detailed than I would normally do in any drawing or painting but that’s the way to go in this style of painting. Make the penwork really detailed and then the watercolour really loose. With the penwork, you’ll see I also tried to black out some small shadowy areas.
This painting isn’t in any particular colour key – I just threw in whatever colour I liked the look of at the time, and there were lots of them. First I painted the sky. I started with Mayan blue and added in rose dore, Indian yellow and maybe a bit of French ultramarine. It’s really loose but I could have gone looser, leaving more white spaces and some brushmarks. Maybe next time.
And then I moved onto the buildings. For the first wash, I started with lots of transparent yellow and added in rose dore, quinacridone magenta, Mayan blue, French ultramarine, cerulean blue, hematite violet genuine and green apatite genuine. I tried to use the rose dore more for the red brickwork and dark colours for the windows, but otherwise just added colour where it felt right. Again, I think I could have been looser, leaving more white space.
And finally I added a second coat of watercolour: just a French ultramarine glaze for the shadows. And then I was done,
And you know what? I quite like this. It looks like the sort of work urban sketchers put all over YouTube but with a bit of my style thrown in. It’s up for sale.
And there’s more. I enjoyed this one so much I added the Liz Chaderton book to my wishlist the following day. Along with a set of waterproof black fine liners of varying thicknesses – it was a bit frustrating using just the one pen for all lines and black areas on this one.
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