Be Brave With Colour

English Bull Terrier
Watercolour on Paper
21.5cm x 26cm (8.5" x 10.25")

The subject for the May meeting of the Shelford Group of Artists was Be Brave with Colour. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the exercise Tony Slater had planned. He started by laying a tarpaulin over the floor. We mixed up a load of paints, wet our paper and then tipped the contents of our palettes over the paper.

After the paint had settled and dried, we tried to identify imagery in the mixtures of colours. We spent the rest of the sessions bring these subjects to life.

I couldn’t see anything in my wash apart from a variety of animal faces - everything from a little bunny to a hippopotamus. Tony was keen on the hippopotamus, but I decided on the English Bull Terrier. The deciding factor was that I have a blurry photo of one on my laptop and I didn’t fancy painting a hippopotamus (or any animal) without some kind of reference material.

I developed the picture with the techniques I used when painting  Moo! and Jack. I was a little rusty and could benefit from watching Jean Haines' Amazing Ways with Watercolour DVD again.

It’s not a masterpiece, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon and it’s inspired me to paint some more animals - I'm particularly inspired to model the physique of the dog.

Moo

Moo
Watercolour on Paper
25.5cm x 35.5cm (10" x 14")

It is typical. You spend the whole day looking for a cow and when you give up looking, you bump into a herd of them. I met this one on a recent walk through the Cheshire countryside with David, Jane and Lydia.

This is my second painting using the style and techniques taught by Jean Haines (http://www.jeanhaines.com/). The first one was the picture of Whitby Abbey that I posted a few weeks ago.

Since then I have bought and studied Jean’s Amazing Ways with Watercolour DVD.

In some art DVDs, I have the impression the artists are trying not to give too many secrets away, but Jean is very open about her style and provides a clear explanation of the techniques she uses.

Her style provides an excellent means for learning about the mysteries of watercolour. She works with a lot of pigment and a lot of water - for the uninitiated, this can be an unpredicatable combination.

Her key message is that watercolour is controllable. I suspect she means controllable in the same way as a surfer controls the sea. It is a case of learning to work with it and anticipate its behaviour.

Whitby Abbey



Whitby Abbey
Watercolour on Paper
52cm x 34cm (20.5" x 13.5")



The ruined abbey is set on a hill above the town and dominates the skyline. Dracula came ashore at Whitby in Bram Stoker’s novel and the town has a spooky charm. It is a popular holiday destination for Goths.

The painting is a bit of an experiment. The inspiration was an exercise from Jean Haines (http://www.jeanhaines.com/) book Colour and Light in Watercolour.

When I started, I didn’t have a clear vision of how it was going to turn out. I thought it might be moody and brooding.

One of the last things I did was add the white patch to the top left corner. I added it because the sky was looking a bit boring, but it really improves the whole piece. It works well with the shadows on the small tower slightly to the left of the centre and brings the whole thing together. The scene instantly becomes a sunrise with the sun burning off the morning haze. Dawn has come. Dracula has been defeated. A new day has started with all that promises.

I am pleased that, for me, it is an uplifting image because whenever I look at it I will remember Elaine’s father, Pete.

We visited Whitby in November 2007 with Pete and Elaine’s sister, Julie. It is the last trip we had with Pete. Painting the abbey brought back memories of our visit. We had a good time, but the severity of his illness was already apparent.