Urges to paint
The light and weather over the past few days has been wholly appropriate to getting out and sloshing some pigment around. Alas, illness last week and weekend has meant I am behind schedule on virtually every work project, so it’s the desk still for me.
It is not just the weather though. I finally got around to ordering a watercolour technique book from Amazon (David Bellamy’s Watercolour Landscape Course) and of course as all such book when carefully considered, the inspiration is welling up.
I have never been wholly satisfied with my watercolour skills, but there again I have never pursued them seriously. I was once competent, though with more illustrative techniques than artistic. These days it is a matter of re-learning the techniques I once knew and developing new ones - it takes a lot for me to be satisfied with my own creative work, but it is a worthy adventure.
The image above is a section of the first ‘proper’ watercolour I had done in, possibly, ten years or more (I am terrible with assessing the passage of time, but suffice to say it’s been a while!). I was surprised to come out of that painting session, on a beach in Portugal, with a decent handful of satisfaction - at least the sky kinda turned out as I wanted it, the light is a reasonable rendition of the day, though I was pretty much technique-stranded on the rocks!
The new book, although covering the basics of washes and paint application techniques, is written by an artist whose style is very similar to my own aspirations. Bellamy describes how and why he solved the various problems in rendering certain scenes, demonstrates staged paintings and compares photographs of the original scenes with his finished pieces. In particular, his advice on using very limited palettes (just three tubes of colour) has opened my eyes to new possibilities as I always feel that enforced constraint breeds creativity rather than stifles it. Getting beyond just slapping paint on paper is much more valuable to me right now and this book really has been inspiring.
I know friends and family have asked me to get the paintings online - I will, I promise, once there are more than two.
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I like it…particularly the rocks!
You could say ‘the rocks rock’
Could have. Should have. Guess I have rocks in my head!