Over the past day or so I’ve been wondering what I can do to loosen up and paint more freely. I actually came across some very good tips in a timely newsletter from the Artist Daily website called Proven Steps of Watercolour Painting Mastery. The first one was load your brush and paint a sure stroke to avoid looking like you’ve overworked.
With this in mind I started a new piece to try it out… maybe a sunset wasn’t the best idea, especially one with such delicate tones, however I did manage to get some initial washes on without too much fiddling. I’m looking forward to playing with the stone wall in the foreground, and less excited about the fields in the mid ground – great potential for getting lost there!
I think I might have to try out their second piece of advice too, which was to try working abstract – to give up control to gain insight and discover what effects can be achieved. This will hopefully give me back some much needed confidence regarding colour and water ratios, I’m really struggling in this area at the moment and every stroke is either far too wet or much too dry, and mostly without enough pigment in either case. I think it’s back to practising scales for a while, as it were.