Water
This week I was practising painting water, following some exercises in the book Painting Water in Watercolour by Terry Harrison.
I learnt a few things:
- I need more than an hour to really make progress (my puddles still don’t look like puddles – my husband thought they were gaps in wood!).
2. Techniques I thought looked simple in the book, need more subtlety than I realised (the picture of a puddle in the book was deceptively simple).
3. Water is key in watercolour (unsurprisingly). Too much and you get unwanted runs and cauliflowers in your paintings (see puddles again!), too little and you don’t get that gorgeous merging and transition between colours.
Lastly, a rather surprising outcome… some pictures look better upside down!
This (⇑) is the way it was meant to be – a bad attempt at foliage which I was going to reflect in water but abandoned. When it dried, I noticed that upside down (⇓) it looked like a landscape with distant details!
More from me this weekend!
notallwomenarethesame 
I’m really enjoying reading your posts and seeing these mini paintings! Thank you! I love how turning the painting upside down gives it a whole new dimension. Another thing to encourage us lifetime-learners is zooming into the image – you can find places where it really does look great! Ronnie 🙂
Thanks Ronnie. I also find it amazing how different things look when they dry and also when they are photographed.