Sky Wash 1

Sky Wash 1
(View from Gunthorpe Bridge)
Watercolour on Paper
28cm x 19cm (11" x 7.5")

Last year, I was inspired by the blog One Hundred Washes to start each painting session by experimenting with a watercolour wash. My intention was to loosen up before stating work on the main painting and to learn more about working with watercolour.

Some of the results were good - the picture on Happy Christmas 2011 started life as one of these experiments, but overall, I realised I have a lot to learn about painting with watercolour.

I've decided to go back to basics and practice some simple sky washes. I have picked 7 or 8 different washes from John Lovett’s Splashing Paint DVD and from programmes on the Painting and Drawing Channel.

This first sky is from Geoff Kersey's Top Tips for Watercolour Artists. The sky is painted using two wet in wet washes (wet in wet means paint is applied to paper that is already wet with water or paint. The paint spreads out and creates soft edges, adjacent colours merge into each other and the edges of the wash merge into the background).

The first wash is a pink wash, which I applied to the horizon and faded out toward the top of the paper. After this had dried, I gently rewet the paper (so as not to disturb the pink wash) and added areas of blue and grey, which merged and mixed together on the page.

After the sky was dry, I decided to  use it as the backdrop for a view of the Trent looking west from Gunthorpe Bridge. I wet the river and the area around the horizon before painting the trees. This gives the reflections and the trees in the distance nice soft edges.

At some point, I will try this again and leave more white in the sky. I will also think more about the foreground I am going to add. This time I left myself with a distinct horizon line at the bottom of the sky, which I didn't need and had to use as the bank of the Trent.