South Wirral Art Society

Watercolour demonstration by Brian Rudd 12^th July 2011.

Brian is a Graduate in Fine Art and has worked professionally in a number of colleges here in the North West. Currently he runs adult art classes in the Runcorn and Widnes area.

Eighteen members attended his demonstration of painting woodlands in watercolour, and working from a photograph he was able to complete a painting within the 2 hours allocated. Members seemed delighted by this and gave us encouagement when it comes to our turn on our practical night.

Here are some of Brian’s top tips;

·         Seal the edge of your painting with masking tape. You can paint over the edge but when you peel it off it gives you a crisp edge.

·          He uses a watercolour box with solid water colour but as they wear down rather than getting new tablets he buys tubes and fills the holes – it is more economical.

·         To keep his brushes straight he uses a small section of wood and using an elastic band fastens his brushes flat against the surface.

·         For this exercise he used a small 1” emullsion brush, and toilet paper as a way of drying the brush. The paper was 140lb.

Now to the painting;

·         He started with a light pencil sketch – horizon followed by the postion of the principle trees.

·         The principle with watercolours is to paint light colours first moving to dark colours, so he started with the sky using blue with a halo of yellow.

·         The foliage was applied using a stippling effesct starting with the lighter yellows and greens and getting darker with each layer.

·         For the tree trunks don’t use black use a dark brown and blue. The trunks were applied using broken lines reflecting the fact that foliage hid some of the trunks.

·         The basic process was background first, blocking in the colour before moving onto the detail, buiding up the painting with layers of paint. With watercolour, as they are transparent colours underneath will show through layers above and change as a result.

For Brian his general rule was that if you ‘squint’ at a picture you can see tones and colours better and that 75% of the time is spent mixing colour – getting the tone and colour right makes the act of painting so much easier.

 

 

 

Thank you Brian – a well attended and well presented demonstration, and judging by the comments made everyone loved it.

Peter Appleton

Secretary