water colour – Page 3 – The Consulting Artist

London Calling

I was over in Ohio last week at the 42nd annual state HR conference. It was an excellent trip catching up with old friends, making new ones, and learning from each other. Whilst there I gave a talk on Art for Work’s Sake, and two more on collaboration. At the end of each session I gave away a copy of Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist. I give this book away often, so often I’ve lost count of the number of copies I have bought and passed on. This time – I decided to add a little something of my own to the mix, so I included a small water colour and pen sketch with each book.

I painted some water colour onto wet card and let them dry overnight. Then I drew on some iconic London related imagery, added the London Calling call sign, and my signature. All in all I guess each one took me about 45 minutes to make, the blue one slightly longer. I think I will repeat this experiment with future book giveaways, I enjoy being able to include something personal, something handmade.

Poppies

Two quick sketches made as I practiced with wet on wet painting.

These two sketches came about as I practiced with mixing wet paint on wet paper, and wet paint on dry paper. To start, I took a big brush and painted a broad line of water across the top of the page before adding the flower heads. The flower stalks were put on after the paper was dry.

In this first example I made the top of the page too wet, so that when I added the red/white mixture and the dark spot – things diffused too much. You can really see this on the left and right flower heads. With the two in the middle, I subsequently added a little more detail as the paper dried. I like the effect I got by going back and adding something as the paper dried.

In this second example – I used less water to start which made it easier to get the softer effect of poppy petals.

La Piscine

As an untrained splosher of paint – I get frustrated, a lot. The desire I have to attempt to bring a vision either from my mind or from real life, onto paper, is limited and often completely thwarted through not really knowing how to work the materials I am using. But I enjoy the process of trying – and sometimes something works – to an extent at least.

Whilst staying in Cagnes sur Mer this summer, water was all around us. The beach in particular, and the pool, featured a lot on this stage of our trip. Water water everywhere. It looks tantalising as the sun flicks and shines off it, and I thought I’d have a go at trying to paint it.

Rather than try to copy water – I played with the idea of a swimming pool in my mind, La Piscine. I did briefly think about calling this post Piscine About, thankfully I abandoned that idea. Anyway – here’s what I came up with after about three hours of dabbing, blotting, drying and mixing. The act of releasing myself from ‘what I think this should look like’, regularly proves to be a challenge, and an enjoyable one at that.

I subsequently had another go, this time putting some background colour on the paper first (a mix of white and windsor violet). I think this second attempt is just a mess – I failed to create much contrast between the shades of blue, and the violet doesn’t do anything for me either. Carole suggested I keep it and maybe use it as a background for something else. I might play with some of the travel ephemera I brought back to France and see if I can overlay anything interesting on here.

Both pictures are 24 x 32 cm on 270 g/m2 French water colour paper.

Here is La Piscine, framed and ready to go to its new owner.