Vibrant watercolour - how can you make your watercolour sketches and paintings more vibrant?

Vibrant watercolour

How can you make watercolour sketches and paintings more vibrant? Careful colour mixing is one way and, of course, this goes for all types of painting. If you mix more than 2 colours together then there's a chance that your colours will become duller or even muddy looking. This can be made worse if you are using student quality paint which has less pigment and more filler.

Transparency
I've recently been checking the transparency of each colour I use.   (I have a mixture of Schmincke and Winsor and Newton artist quality watercolours.) Currently, I'm experimenting, particularly with flower sketches, using all transparent colours and, not surprisingly, there's quite a difference in vibrancy. There are a number of reds, blues, yellows etc to choose between and I've removed the opaque ones and put them to one side for now.

You can check paint transparency before you buy a half pan or tube by checking the maker's info. A small square symbol that is completely black indicates that the paint is totally opaque. Totally clear means it's transparent, an so on...

Drawing in a Walsall saddlery

I've been drawing in a Walsall saddlery to produce work for an 'Echoes' project run by Walsall Leather Museum.  It was a fascinating time gaining a glimpse into this small business.  The building was used as a leather horse collar workshop in the early 1800s but with the growth of other means of transport, this died out and it's fitting that a leather business continues to be in the same premises.
I'm wondering whether to create an etching or drypoint from my sketches.

More botanical approach to plants and flowers

I'm enjoying exploring the shapes and colours of plants - pencil drawings and watercolour.  .

Matisse inspired collages

I've had a lot of fun creating collages relating to a garden theme, inspired by Matisse's collages, seen at Tate Modern recently.

Art exhibition at Burton upon Trent

Some of the prints now showing at the Brewhouse Arts Centre, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire.

 

Mystery woman buys painting in Hungry Bistro, Wolverhampton

She was really only passing through Wolverhampton and didn't plan to visit (as I understand it) but she had to wait for her train so ventured out of the railway station.  Luckily, she found the Hungry Bistro, opposite the Grand Theatre, and went inside for refreshment.

I am guessing now.... but she was probably charmed by the atmosphere, warmed by the tea or coffee... er ...maybe she had a cupcake... anyway she spotted a painting of mine on the wall, liked it and bought it!  Was it a present or are you enjoying it yourself?

 

'The Great War in Portraits' at the National Portrait Gallery and the RI of Painters in Watercolour exhibitions

 When I visited the Bailey 'Stardust' exhibition a few weeks ago I didn't really have time to see the first world war exhibition and they have very different moods.

The National Portrait Gallery's literature says that, 'In viewing the First World War through images of the many individuals involved, The Great War in Portraits looks at the radically different roles, experiences and, ultimately, destinies of those caught up in the conflict.'

It's an interesting and thoughtful exhibition of drawings, paintings, photographs, film and a piece of sculpture. The sculpture is Jacob Epstein's Rock Drill - man and machine, 'the Frankenstein monster that war has made us'.  It sits at the entrance with its chopped off arms and shows the way in.

The skillfully painted, traditional portraits of royalty and heads of state set the scene and show some of the international players at the start of the war when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and before empires crumbled.

Then the exhibition moves on to show the ordinary men and their leaders.   Work by William Orpen, war artist, is well represented and again its good, traditional portraiture.   The compasisonate, pastel images of facially mutilated solidiers by Henry Tonks haven't been shown before.  He was working at a hospital in Cambridge doing documentary work at first but became interested in his subjects and their difficulties and continued painting them.  The pastels are shown near the films of the Battle of the Somme.   One film produced by the British and the other by the German government for propaganda purposes.

Still photographs were displayed to show personal stories e.g of an underage soldier who lied about his age, signed up and died more or less immediately.

The German Expressionist paintings by Kirchner, Max Beckman and Lovis Corinth created a stronger emotional impact, in many ways than the restrained traditional pieces.

After a break, I went on from this exhibition to see the soothing Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour exhibition at the Mall Galleries.   A wide range of skilled work was on show.  I particularly liked Ann Blockley and Shirley Trevenna's loose textural and vivid paintings.