Watercolour Pears

Hello, I am back for my second post of the day to share another watercoloured card which I have painted as part of one of the lessons in the Online Watercolour for Cardmakers - Intermediate Techniques Course.

I used Bockingford 140lb Cold Pressed watercolour paper to make a 5" x 7" card blank and painted my pears using Quinacridone Gold, Permanent Sap Green, Alizarin Crimson and Olive Green paints from Winsor & Newton's Professional Watercolour range.

 

The teacher, Dawn Woleslagle, used the inside of a Wplus9 die to draw her rows of pears. However I don't own those dies, so I made a stencil by stamping an image of a pear onto thickish card and cutting out the centre. A wet on wet technique was used to paint the pears, enabling the colours to merge together in a variety of ways. The stems and leaves were painted in freehand.

Again I decided not to add a sentiment to my card - but I can always add one at a later date if needed. I am really pleased with how this turned out. The colours are a little more delicate than they were for my previous apple card and I love the subtle look that this gives.

Thanks for looking,

Lynn

Watercolor Apples

Hello, today I am sharing a watercoloured card which I have painted as part of one of the lessons in the Online Watercolour for Cardmakers - Intermediate Techniques Course.

I used Bockingford 140lb Cold Pressed watercolour paper to make a 5" x 7" card blank and painted my apples using Quinacridone Gold, Permanent Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson paints from Winsor & Newton's Professional Watercolour range.

The teacher, Dawn Woleslagle, used the inside of a Wplus9 die to draw her rows of fruit (she painted pears). However I don't own those dies, so I made a stencil by stamping an apple image onto thickish card and cutting out the centre. A wet on wet technique was used to paint the apples, enabling the colours to merge together in a variety of ways. The stems and leaves were painted in freehand.

I decided not to add a sentiment to my card just yet - but I can always add one at a later date when I need a card in a rush. I am really pleased with how this turned out for my first attempt at this technique!

Thanks for visiting. I'll be back shortly with another similar card to show you.

Colour Mixing Wheel

Welcome back to my third post today! Here I am sharing the results of a colour mixing exercise which I've done as part of the current Watercolour Online Card Class.

I transferred the colour wheel chart onto Bockingford 140lb Cold Pressed watercolour paper using pencil and black Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens. The India ink in these pens is waterproof and is therefore perfect for painting without the ink bleeding. Once again I chose to use Winsor and Newton Professional grade watercolour paints in three Primary colours - Rose Madder, Aureolin and Cobalt Blue (see the largest circles on the chart below). These colours were then mixed in pairs,  in equal proportions, to obtain the secondary colours (indicated by the medium sized circles on the chart below). Further mixing of the primary and secondary colours yielded the six tertiary colours (as shown in the smallest circles below).The central brown colour is a combination of all three primary colours.

Finally I tried mixing complimentary colours together (opposite each other on the colour wheel) to achieve neutral tones of browns and greys. Again it was fascinating to see how my own paints reacted and the wide range of colours that were achievable.

Thanks for looking and I hope that I've inspired you to get out your paints and try this yourself.

Watercolour Glazing Chart

Hello! This is my second post today regarding Watercolour painting exercises for the current Online Card Class.

This post focuses on the (new to me) technique of paint glazing. I chose to use Winsor and Newton Professional grade watercolour paints for this exercise, due to their translucent nature. I started by transferring the glazing chart supplied onto Bockingford 140 lb Cold Pressed watercolour paper using pencil and black Faber Castell Pitt Artist pens. The India ink in these pens is waterproof and therefore ideal for painting without the ink bleeding. The entire chart was painted using only three Primary colours - Rose Madder, Aureolin and Cobalt Blue. I started by painting two vertical columns red, two yellow and two blue. When these were fully dry I over painted the second column of each colour with one of the other primary colours as indicated. This produced three secondary colours as shown below.

I made sure that the paint was all thoroughly dry before proceeding to paint the horizontal stripes in the same manner. You can see the finished glazing chart below. All the variations in colour were achieved by layering just the three primary colours in different combinations. I found this a really interesting exercise to see what a wide range of colours could be made from using only red, yellow and blue. Of course, different shades of these three colours, together with various ratios of paint to water, would yield infinite combinations of colours - I can't wait to experiment some more!

Thanks for looking,

Lynn

Watercolour Paint Swatches

Hello and a very belated Happy New Year to you all! Sorry for my lack of blogging recently - I have actually made several cards but haven't had time to show them on my blog yet.

I am currently participating in a fabulous Online Card Class, Watercolour for card makers - Intermediate Techniques.This was part of my Christmas gift from my lovely husband, who also bought me a beautiful set of 36 Japanese Gansai Tambi watercolour paints, a colouring book and some die storage drawers - I'm so lucky!

The teacher, Dawn Woleslage (of Wplus9 fame), set a series of Pre-Class exercises to help us to familiarise ourselves with the properties of our own particular paints. First of all we were advised to make paint swatches of all of our watercolour paints, to enable us to better assess their individual qualities. I painstakingly transferred the swatch charts onto Bockingford 140lb Cold Press watercolour paper using pencil and Black Faber Castel Pitt artist pens (waterproof India Ink). The thick black line within each rectangle is used to establish whether the colours are Transparent, Semi - Transparent or Opaque. One coat of each colour paint was applied to the whole area, then a second coat was added only to the right side of each rectangle to show how the colours become deeper with a second layer of paint.



My first swatch chart shows my new Japanese Gansai Tambi paints from Kuretake. They are deeply pigmented and I love the vibrant colours! As an added bonus there are three metallic paints included too.

 
My second swatch chart was painted using my set of 24 Winsor and Newton Cotman pan paints - also a gift from my husband several years ago. This is my trusty set, which I used to paint landscapes etc when I attended evening classes a couple of years ago. The Cotman range are student grade watercolours which tend to be not so translucent, due to the quantity of binders used during production.

Out of curiosity I purchased a few tubes of Winsor and Newton's Professional watercolour paints to see how they compared to my student grade Cotman set. My third swatch chart below shows these, although I only have 14 colours at the moment. I deliberately left spaces on my chart to include future purchases when I can add to my collection (although there are actually 96 colours in the range, so this may take a while)! The difference in quality was immediately noticeable, with the paints having a more delicate feel to them due to their translucent properties. This makes them much more suitable for techniques such as glazing, where paint is layered. I am looking forward to becoming more familiar with these paints, which I think will be ideal for botanical type paintings.

Thank you for reading this far and I shall be back soon with some completed colour mixing exercises.

Lynn