Low tide at Appledore, Devon. For sale.

One of the restrictions I like to impose on myself is to use no more than 2 washes for a painting.  By which I mean, no part of the paper should be returned to and overpainted more than once.

It’s simply a matter of retaining transparency and that fresh look that, to me, the best watercolours have.  I normally manage to keep to my ‘rule’ (or at least for 95% of any painting) though not necessary to good effect of course.  Hence why probably two-thirds of my efforts never get seen by anyone.  Here are a couple of recent examples though.

The first is of Appledore at low tide, from the sand, with the town and harbour areas very simplified, as it’s not about them.  I only wish I’d painted most of this slightly darker, but to try to darken with another wash would be a bad idea, so it is what it is, and overall I’m relatively happy with it.
In fact the vast majority of this painting is just one wash.  The first wash incorporated the sky and most of the town and beach areas.  The second wash incorporated killing some white remaining in the town areas, adding sky-reflections to the ‘puddles’, a few small  marks to the harbour wall and town, the far off boats, and an area of extra ‘rippled sand’ texture near the foreground on the right.  
Most ‘details’, such as the stones on the beach and any definition of the town were added dry into wet or wet-against-wet as part of the first wash.

Often watercolourists talk of a first wash laying foundations and a subsequent wash, or washes adding gradually more ‘detail’.  My method of painting in two washes is usually to incorporate bits of ‘foundation’ and bits of ‘detail’ into both washes.  For the ‘detail’ this means using the method of ‘dry into wet’ quite a lot (i.e. adding thick, undiluted tube paint into wet or semi-wet areas).
I find this integrated approach helps knit everything together. 

People who have seen John Yardley paint sometimes describe his approach as having ‘no apparent method’.  He just paints from one section to the next, seemingly at random, and he may or may not need to return to any part later with a second wash.  But I’m sure this is mainly because he knows exactly what he’s doing and has such great control over the medium – there is most definitely a method to it, just not one that’s so easy to break down and describe.  Essentially is it part of a direct approach that tackles everything at the same time – tone, colour, shapes/mark-making, edges and so on.
When I paint for myself I think there may also appear to be little apparent logic to it, for any onlooker – were there one.
For good demonstrations I feel this usually needs to be changed, so that explanations can be made with clear examples.  Also of course one needs to regularly step out of the way of the painting, which means that building up just one area of a wash (in one area of the painting) quite gradually, with ‘dry into wet’ is less convenient, as well as being a less satisfactory visual experience for other reasons.  It’s good if a group can see a painting gradually appearing as a whole, rather than a small section at a time.

Ambleside church in the snow, 25 min demo.

The second piece here is another recent (25 minute) demo painting.  This is using just 2 colours as well as 2 washes, these being Winsor Blue (Red shade) and Burnt Umber.  This is based on a view of the church at Ambleside, Cumbria.
The first wash incorporated the sky, some dry into wet for the hill at left and trees, buildings at the back, plus some soft edged marks in the woodland at right, and a wash of cool colour over the whole of the ground area to kill off the white paper everywhere except for underneath the glow of light in the sky.

The second wash (once first was completely dried) started at the back, adding some hard dry-brushed edges for trees and building definition (including the spire), then the trees at right, gradually moving down and forward (warming the colour mix more to Burnt Umber) to paint the died grasses/rushes and finishing with the track marks and more distant patches of rushes – the colour again cooled as moving back towards the distance.
This long sentence is kind of like the actual process, all done in one continuous move!

Workshops Update:

Windrush House, May 2017 is now full, in fact over full with a couple of extra people accommodated.   

Timsbury, Bath & Northeast Somerset ‘Better Landscapes’ course: April 2017:  
I still have a couple of places left for this.  For details please see under ‘Workshops’ on my Tuition page, and do get in touch if you’d like any further information, or to book a place.

New in, for anyone who may be interested and who lives further North, I’m delighted that I will be running a couple of workshops at
The Sandpiper Studio, on the Wirral, for the first time, in September 2017:  http://www.thesandpiperstudio.co.uk/

I’m doing one day for beginners, and one for ‘Intermediate’ level – i.e. people with experience of watercolour, but wishing to improve.
The content will be very different for each workshop.

Wye Valley painting holiday week, July 2017:
http://www.alphapaintingholidays.com/
There are still places available on this, but it is filling up.

Finally, my weekly Beginners class are now producing some excellent work, sometimes well above the level of what ‘Beginners’ are really entitled to!   I’ll hopefully show you some of that soon.  Each week now (week 9 of a 12 week course) we start with a very quick ‘ice breaker’ exercise (so coined by one of the current group) before working together on a full painting which incorporates a range of the key techniques.  This week’s limber-up was ‘chickens’ with minimum brushstrokes; any mark made without lifting the brush from the paper counts as one ‘stroke’.  If you press the brush down flat on its side, as well as use the tip it’s surprising how much you can get done in one stroke of a loaded squirrel mop. Here’s my demo sheet from the class.

Chickens mark-making exercise.