Cyclamen 1st part - Ciclamini parte 1

Close up - Dettaglio 

. I started very loose and wet-in-wet making sure to preserve some white areas for contrast.

Ho iniziato con il bagnato su bagnato, avendo cura di conservare del bianco.

More details... I'll upload the final painting soon - have to take a new photo! 

- Altri dettagli... A breve  invierò la foto del dipinto finito (è venuto sfocato!)

P.S. The finished painting is here.

Ps.  vedi il dipinto finito qui!

Watercolour studies - more pears!

If you have seen my earlier posts (here and here) you can see how my paintings developed, getting simplier!

I also changed the accent colours, choosing from the real ones I would see.

 I painted many more, but already sent them as postcards! 

At the end I ran out of the ready cut  paper - and used some Canson 200 gsm paper for the last pears( as the one above). It dried much faster, and doesn't have the structure of the Fabraiano Artistico coldpressed watercolour paper, but it's also interesting.

Now - it was time to stop!

But I will definitely repeat this painting session as an excercise soon. I also recommend it as a watercolour lesson to everybody: choose a  simple subject, paint small size and repeat several times!

It's very meditative and zen - and you learn a lot!

Watercolour studies - pears!

Some days ago I painted a series of pears from my garden (link here).

 I started with more naturalistic paintings, but slowly started to simplify. 

Below  you can get an idea of the process!

 More tomorrow!

Painting pears in my garden - so delicious!

Pears, watercolour  10x15 cm

We have had such a hot July, but finally last weekend the temperatures went down a bit, allowing me to move outdoors and enjoy my garden again. I wanted to paint a series of postcards for the postcardartgroup.

The vegetation and flowers have suffered from the heat, but I did find something to paint!

        Pears, small watercolours in progress, 10x15 cm

I started to paint the small pears that are maturing right now.

The first paintings were more naturalistic, even if I was using a loose style. 

I repeated the same subject several times...

 It was very relaxing and meditative to repeat the same subject with small changes, to see which changes would actually improve the painting. or which solutions I'd like more. 

Usually I like to paint large, but doing all these studies was possible because I kept the size small, like a postcard - and I highly recommend this excercise to everybody who loves painting!

                          The postcards are of now, but  I'll show you more pictures soon!

Playing with watercolours... Summer colours!

Alcea Rosea, watercolour 24x30cm on Fabriano Artistico 300grs paper

I have either been very busy or very lazy lately, so it's definitely time for a new post!

I painted this hollyhock (Alcea Rosea ) from my fantasy, last week,

when the flowers in my garden were already suffering the heat of July...

And this is what I did first, an underwash just playing with some colours. 

To be honest I wasn't really sure what it was going to develop into!

And yes, I admit I was definitely inspired by Jean Haines, if you don't know her work, click on the link for lots of inspiration.

 work in progress

Lesson 5: Play with your watercolours!

 Take your material and start playing - it's easy and fun!

Start with any piece of watercolour paper and use clean water to wet it with your brush. Check the wetness of the paper by turning it and looking at it from the border : it should be damp all over, without pools!

Now choose 2 or 3 colours  and start dropping colours onto the paper! You can mix some colours, if you want, or just let them mix on the paper. 

Let the colours spread and see how beautiful the result is without  any effort!  This is the basics of wet-in-wet painting and You will enjoy playing like this even if you are a more experienced painter!

This is Wet in wet - It's easy!

 Wet-in-wet is one of the basic watercolour techniques - so now practice!!

This post will be continued...

Paint what you love! Watercolour Lesson 4

A couple of close-ups of a sketch of my orchids!

When you've managed to get the materials that suit you personally, success is only a few steps away, here's the formula 

1. Do something you love
2. Learn life long
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2

I found it here, link to Watercolour Painter, where you can get more information and find step to step instructions as well!

A lot of fun just playing with colours, capturing the pattern and colours of my flowers!

Watercolours allow you to play freely and get fresh sketches more than any other medium!

 While this is a more traditional painting from some time ago! Link to my post here.

Watercolour Lesson 3: mixing colours!

So let's mix the colours we need! In the last post I said  that you only need a few colours to start - actually with 3 basic colours you can easily mix all colours as this triangle above shows. 

Just YELLOW, RED and BLUE.

Here I used lemon yellow, alizarin crimson and ultramarin blue.

By varying the quantity of the different colours you vary the tones.

I.e. using more yellow and less blue you get a lighter and brighter green. More blue will give a darker green.

For BROWNS you mix all the 3 colours - but ATTENTION- mixing them in exactly the same proportion might give a dull tone of brown! Excercise by mixing different browns adding more or less of the 3 basic colours.

What about the other colours you have? They will help you to mix different tones: for example the Prussian blue that is a greenish blue will be an excellent base for your greens adding either lemon yellow for spring green or cadmium yellow for moss green. 

If you drop some cadmium red - it is a more orange red, i.e. with some yellow in it - into your green you will get beautiful brown shades.

And so on - mix the colours you have, try them on paper and write down the colours you used. This helps you finding your favourite colour combinations. 

Mixing your own colours you will learn a lot and you will get vivid and interesting colours, not so flat as ready  made colours might be!

Lesson 2: Choosing you watercolours - START PAINTING!

This post was going to be about choosing you watercolours - 

but I really think it's more important to START PAINTING whatever colors you have!

                                                                work in progress...

Anyway this is also a reminder for who has had lessons with me! If you are going to buy your watercolours, I recommend to start just with a basic box, like the one in the image above. You can also use watercolour in tubes. I suggest starting with these basic colors:
Lemon yellow
Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Red
Alizarin Crimson
Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarin
Prussian Blue
Yellow Ochra
Burnt Siena

If there's a white pan in the box, put it away - the white is not used in traditional watercolour painting! You only use the white of the paper! (But don't throw it , you can use it for abstract or botanical paintings!)

As you notice, there is no green, purple or orange - because you can mix all the colours you need out of the three basics: yellow, red, blue. If you are not familiar with the mixing of colours, check out this link for the color wheel. The Siena and ochra are additional and good for neutrals or landscape painting as well!
I plan to prepare a post on mixing colours as well, soon.

What else do you need to get started?
- A couple of round brushes - one as large as you dare, and a smaller one -size 12 for example - for the details. They should have a nice point and be capable of holding a full brush load of water (and paint). A synthetic brush will do well for starting.
- 1-2 jars for clean water.
- A plate or palette for mixing colors.
- paper towels

That's all! Now go on painting, mixing and having fun!!