Yesterday I had a lovely gift arrive, a parcel of watercolour paper from Mum & Dad – they know I’m running low, especially after Mum accidentally packed one of my pads and took it back to England with her :-).
Apparently the paper they’ve bought is easy to lift pigment from, so I decided to do some experimenting and try it out today with a great image I picked up from the Watercolour Painting Club that ties in well with Halloween too. The artist is Valerianna Claff and she lives in the woods that she paints. This is a single colour, Indigo, and began with a wash of colour across the top running into clean water towards the bottom. While the paint was still wet I ran a damp brush though it to create the white trunks in the background.
Once this stage was dry I added the middle distance using similar techniques and then finally painted the darkest trees in the foreground. Although I think the first wash could have been darker and needed to dry more before making the white tree trunks, I’m very happy with the way the paper behaved and how the paint lifted.