With the whole day available for painting today, I've finally completed a watercolour in the…
Windsor Castle
Another watercolour landscape today and another one completed not long after lunch. I can feel myself settling into a routine of painting in the morning, writing everything up and then going for my walk in late afternoon, when I can start thinking about the following day’s painting. I’ve done a painting of Windsor Castle today. As well as being in the mood to paint a castle I thought I should also get in some practice at painting water.
The main colours today were French ultramarine, rose dore and transparent yellow, so this is in the key of triadic right. I had been intending to use burnt sienna too, but she ended up sitting on the bench all afternoon and not coming on. Cadmium yellow, cadmium red and white gouache made cameo appearances towards the end.
I started by putting down a pencil outline and masking some whites. I’d already made a mistake at this stage, including the roof below the big tower, partially hidden by trees. I’d have been better off leaving it out – everything would have harmonised together so much better without it. That was a pretty bad mistake.
After the masking fluid went down, I put down an underpainting using my three primaries. I tried to make the castle bright with the yellow, to include a lot of the red everywhere and generally make everything look colourful. The underpainting was pretty good and has been pretty well untouched in the sky and the water but I did make one error. There was a big triangle at the front of the blue boat that I wanted to keep white, so I’d outlined it in masking fluid and put a masking fluid cross in the middle to remind me to leave it white. And somehow I painted over that triangle. I managed to dab most of the paint off and would have been happy with the resulting pale grey if it wasn’t for the white cross that my masking fluid had left in the middle of it. Still, I managed to cover up the cross towards the end.
Once the underpainting had dried, I painted everything else in. The castle only needed one more layer plus some marks for windows. And the grassy verge took I think four layers eventually, with me adding whatever primaries in whatever places looked best.
Where I had the most problems was in the big band of greenery through the middle. My aim was to have lots of reds and oranges in there, with the odd bit of blue in the darkest areas and not much green. It ended up greener than I was hoping for. And right from the start I wasn’t happy with it and ended up adding several layers. I tried lots of different ways to shove down the paint with a brush or stab it in with a Merlin brush or a sponge but the more I worked at it, the more muddy everything became. Eventually I had to stab in cadmium yellow and cadmium red with the Merlin brush, these colours being opaque, so able to show up against the mud behind them. I also stabbed in bits of French ultramarine where I wanted dark colours: along the far bank on the right and behind the boats to create value contrasts at the centre of interest. I think I’d have spent a lot less time on the band of trees if I’d left out that partially hidden roof.
Finally I tinkered a little, adding the odd white highlight to the castle, painting in the boats and adding some swans. And that was me done.
I guess it’s worth putting up for sale be a use the bank is great and the castle and the water are both pretty good. Even the band of trees isn’t looking that bad. The boats aren’t prefect but are acceptable. It’s just that roof in the middle of the trees that holds this one back a bit for me.
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