This piece is a continuation of Paints on a Plane. Once I arrived home I wanted to continue playing with the wet on wet technique. A friend got in touch to say he liked the earlier sketches so I said I’d develop something for him. I scaled up from postcard size to A4 and off I went.
I usually use Windsor Newton water colour pans when I paint but I decided to start out with some liquid water colours I bought a while ago. Big mistake. These liquid paints I have are cheap by comparison and they don’t blend.
I quickly switched back to what I was used to (Windsor Violet and Windsor Yellow) and continued to experiment. The main challenges I faced was being too heavy handed, and not sploshing enough water on to the paper to start with. I persevered with a few more attempts before going for it with lots of water on the paper and the addition of a third colour (Cerulean Blue). I tried to make my strokes both lighter and quicker this time, and I left more time for the paper to start to dry before applying the foreground.
Here is the finished painting and in the spirit of working out loud, you can see some of the practice runs in the slideshow beneath.
