The rain's finally stopped, so I'm back on the watercolours at last. I thought I'd…
Hills In Shire Colours
As I said in the last post, I felt like I could do a second quick painting today. Because I’d managed to paint an imaginary landscape quite quickly using the tundra watercolours, I thought it made sense to repeat the exercise with the Shire supergranulators. And, what’s more, I thought I’d paint a very similar scene.
As normally happens, I’ve supplemented the Shire set with cerulean blue (because Shire blue is too green for skies) and rose dore (to both tone down and complement the greens). Cadmium yellow and titanium white were also called upon towards the end, the yellow for a major role and the white for a cameo.
I started with cerulean blue, rose dore and Shire grey in the sky. Just as with the last painting, I wet the sky first, dabbed in colours wherever I wanted to, tipped up the board and dabbed out some white. It took me two or three attempts to get this one right in places but the paper was wet enough to be forgiving.
Then I worked my way down all the grassy shapes, throwing in all five Shire colours and the rose dore. I found the Shires to be a bit low on pigmentation and needing to be put on much drier than tundra colours. These will run out quite quickly. I also didn’t notice that much difference between the Shire green and Shire olive. I don’t think I’ll be replacing this set of colours when they run out. I did throw on some salt at one point and its effects are visible on the background hills.
To match today’s first painting, I needed to add trees in the foreground. The low pigmentation of these Shire colours gave me similar problems to painting trees using Shire colours. So I needed to be rescued by cadmium yellow again. The trees were all stabbed in with dry paint on a Merlin brush, Shire blue in the middle, cadmium yellow on the left, Shire grey on the right. Just as with the earlier painting, I wet the bottom of the trees and brushed them into the foreground to link things together.
As finishing touches, I added not just the birds but also a circle of stones on top of what might otherwise have been a boring round topped hill. And I added some tiny white highlights to the stones and some white bits to the birds.
And you know what, I think this is another success. It’s the moody sky and the colours in the hills that are the highlights. And I like how, while most of the cadmium yellow has turned to green, there are a few bits that are still yellow, creating extra interest. Needless to say, this one is up for sale.
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