Q&A: watercolour dullness

Here's a question I received via my website: I love your watercolor on paper. My question is the paper watercolor paper and is it gesso ex? My paintings often look to dull. I love your colors and brightness. What am I doing wrong. I use WC paper not gessoed.

My answer: Hi and thank you Judy. A common problem and a simple solution. Dullness could be caused by a number of things: poor quality of paint; poor quality of paper; too many pigments being mixed together; or overworking/re-working of washes. Unfortunately, watercolour materials do not come cheap. Alongside decent sable-type brushes you will need artist-quality paint and paper – student quality, albeit fine for learning, doesn’t quite cut it. Mixing too many pigments together will result in muddy wash of colour. I keep my mixes fairly open and mainly use either one pigment/colour or two. Watch out: some colours (eg. indigo) can contain two pigments to start with. Re-working washes (areas of paint) will result in the painting losing its freshness. I believe this is due to the pigment particles being disturbed from their initial state – a bit like smudging a fresh pastel mark will result in a duller result. Oh, gesso doesn’t really make a difference except that it can improve the surface of the paper if you’re using cheap stuff. I hope this helps.

Always happy to help!

Chilled to the bone/watercolour
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/229833019/fine-art-print-from-original-watercolor

Commission: Evening clouds 2015

Upon reading the client's colour brief I wondered "how am I going to incorporate those colours?" But, that's what I like about commissions: the challenge can force you to use, hitherto, un-explored colour palettes. Purple was required, so I used it as my base colour (I normally choose orange, red or yellow), and it works. Of course, I painted a small test-piece first to make sure I interpreted the client's requests correctly… it would be silly not to.

Evening clouds/acrylic on canvas

Restraint…

Perhaps it's not my most genuinely popular piece, but it does represent something which is quite essential to my art in terms of concept and execution. It's not all about the paint which is applied to the surface, but what layers are hidden, what pigment has been removed and the ability to know when to stop. The removal of paint is absolutely necessary to create some of the effects in my paintings, so the paper towel, or cloth, is as important as a brush to my methods. But, ultimately, it is the ability to stick to the plan, and resisting the temptation not to over complicate… how else can you express the vision of a cold, bleak and barren snowscape?

Winter solace
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/211652223/semi-abstract-landscape-original

Primed…

I love working on gesso-primed, smooth, hot-pressed paper. Gesso provides an excellent ground with the added bonus of allowing the artist to create a surface structure that is a little different to the norm. This piece (below) was painted onto a lightly textured gesso ground which was applied with a decorator's roller. The fine-grain imparted a quasi-pastel feel to the finished painting.

Sky four - distance

Amongst other things…

Here's my latest commission, plus some details. Part one of three:

Oblique illumination 2014/acrylic on canvas/ 

Q&A: Underpainting

I've been asked if I use underpainting and, if I do, why? Yes, and I do because it's a handy little tool. I find that initial wash sets the tone and these areas, which remain uncovered by the opaque layers above, add a subtle bit of interest and an extra dimension to the finished work. Partial or total coverage, warm or cool – whatever is required.

Transparency

The monotypes (see previous post) were fun, but I fancied a bit of colour again. So I decided to produce a couple of acrylic landscapes. I wanted to retain the simplistic structural elements, and linear composition, of my recent monotype work, ie., concentrating on basic shapes to portray the wider, panoramic landscape. I thought it was time to experiment too. Going back to my roots, I thought I would try some watercolour-esque washes of dilute heavy-body acrylic. These translucent washes added a new dimension to my work… I even left the canvas unpainted in one. To be honest, I'm still fond of the opaque blocks of colour, that so often frequent my work, so it was nice to strike a balance between the delicate nature of the wash and the robust heavy-body brush work in these two new pieces (below).

Daybreak over distant tors

Dark edge