French Fields Watercolour background and gouache foreground.

Had fun painting "french fields" in watercolour for the bright background working light to dark in a traditional watercolour manner and then painting the foreground dark to light like you would an oil painting but using gouache which is basically opaque watercolour. A few sections of this painting could be compositions in their own right.

For the background I used Gaston Balande's work "view of the village of lauzières with the house of balande" recently sold at auction in France. I printed it out, its an oil shown below and on my work in progress.

Watercolour Landscapes

An exercise to revive my watercolour techniques after painting so much in acrylic

A watercolour painted on shiny card primed with absorbent ground

I coated a piece of shiny cereal packet card with several coats of absorbent ground to see if it would take watercolour paint well. I painted a view of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. I was able to create texture effects in the ground prior to paintng which was an interesting idea.

Here's the video

Poole Harbour watercolour by Gabriella after Ray Balkwill

I painted a Poole Harbour scene after following a Ray Balkwill exercise in his book. I used similar colours and his boat in my scene. I was only working on a small scale again. My own style comes through quite strongly and it has none of the looseness that Ray's work has. I'm happy with it though as its ok to be me.

Link to video of me painting this

Watercolour Exercises Charente Maritime

I decided to produce a few watercolours while in France. It was very rainy outside for quite a few days so I had to rely on logs, photos and books for inspiration. I enjoyed painting the summery scenes but found it harder to work from collections of pics than from real life. Select photo to view a big version

Exercises to explore washes

Noisy Seagulls

The cart was fun so I produced another below

I added white gouache to the sky