As I said in the last post, I felt like I could do a second…

Hills In Tundra Colours
The rain’s finally stopped, so I’m back on the watercolours at last. Ā I thought I’d let myself back in gently by painting an imaginary landscape and by giving the tundra supergranulators a runout. Ā No pressure, just all the fun of painting. Ā As well as the five supergranulating tundra colours, I’ve used cadmium yellow. Ā More on that later.
I started off with a sky of tundra blue, tundra violet and tundra pink. Ā It’s just impossible to go wrong with those colours. Ā I thoroughly wet the sky area first then dropped in the three colours wherever I fancied, with the board tipped up. Ā I tipped the board up and let the colours run, stepping in to mop up puddles with a dry brush and dabbing out the odd white area with kitchen paper.
Then I added the mountains, using whatever colour I fancied everywhere. Ā This is where I noticed the tundra green and tundra orange actually blending nicely into the other three colours. Ā Up to now I was resigned to mainly using them for things like buildings but, no, they’re proper landscape colours.
Before adding the foreground hill, I tried painting some buildings along the top on the left of the painting using paint straight from the tube and a palette knife and later a credit card. Ā I’d seen Steve Mitchell (The Mind Of Watercolour) do something similar on YouTube, then spray the building shapes and, when the paint started running down, sweep the dribbles across the foreground. Ā It didnāt work for me, though. Ā I couldn’t get the right shapes on the paper. Ā So I decided to cover up the resulting problem area with trees.
I know from prior experience that I can’t just add foreground trees with these tundra paints and that I need help from outside the palette. Ā So, while the trees were initially stabbed in with dry tundra green paint on a Merlin brush, I also needed to stab in some cadmium yellow down the left sides of the trees and some shadowy tundra blue down the right sides. Ā I also wet the bottom of the trees and brushed them into the closest foreground area to keep everything connected together.
Then I added the birds as a finishing touch.
I rate this painting as a success and it’s going up for sale. To see the price, click here.Ā The sky’s moody and there are interesting colours in the mountains and interesting textures in the foreground. Ā Perhaps most importantly, I’m starting to understand how to make these colours granulate.
This painting came out pretty quickly. Ā I don’t know whether this was because I had one eye on the dark clouds in the North or because I was so excited to be back on the watercolours or because imaginary landscapes are quicker than real ones but it was one of my faster ones. Ā I felt like I had more in the tank and could do another quick painting.
To be continued in the next post.
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