Doodling

I was in Sheffield this week and found a second hand book shop on Sharrow Vale Road.  I bought three lovely art book bargains, one on drawing for beginners that I thought might have some useful exercises for my upcoming workshops, one on painting outside as, although I sketch outside, I tend to work mainly in my studio, and one on watercolours.

There are some very talented watercolourists out there whose work I love,  spontaneous, unusual and fresh work.   I think because I came late to watercolours it has been, so far, the medium I find the  most challenging.  The work so often ends up muddy, or overworked.   I aim for spontaneity and brightness and am often dissatisfied with the results.

So, when my bargain book, Fresh Watercolours by Ray Campbell Smith suggested doodling as a way to play with the effects of watercolour I decided to experiment.

The learning has been very interesting and I have discovered quite a few things:

I have been adapting (doing as told without evaluating or thinking about my own ideas) to an artist whose workshop I attended quite a while ago who said that round brushes are “the best to use.”  In my other work I mostly use flats, I like the definite marks that result and they are flexible enough to make quite a range of different marks too.  So a change of brush to test this out for while.

Because I work mainly with oils and acrylics I tend to work quite quickly and I think I have a habit of getting lost in the work and not standing back often enough to evaluate what I am doing. This does not work well with watercolour when something I am working on can go from fresh to muddy in a couple of brush strokes.  I need to slow down and pause.

Planning in advance. I do sketch out my ideas before painting and test out colours using thumbnails.  However I have to own that for most of my acrylic and oils I mostly have a broad idea of where I am heading at best and the rest evolves as I am painting.  I think this can be a problem with watercolour as an unplanned colour or brush mark cannot be changed.  So, I need to spend more time planning and working through ideas.  I do find this quite a challenge as often want to get in there and get painting  and it sometimes feels like I might lose the spontaneity by too much planning in advance.  Although maybe that is the challenge – to find a balance between planning and spontaneity.

Finally less is definitely more.  Simpler palettes, simple compositions seem to work most effectively with watercolour.  A doorway rather than a complex street scene, a tree rather than a whole wood etc etc.

To all those dedicated watercolourists out there, what do you think?  What have been your greatest challenges?  I’d love to hear from you.

 

 

 

 

Published by Lin Cheung

I am an artist and teacher and I love working with people to help them be more creative.

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