On Mersea Island
Near "The Company Shed" Watercolour/gouache 5"x8"
Mersea Island is a remarkable place on the East coast of Essex. We went there yesterday with some friends to lunch at “The Company Shed”, a very simple restaurant that cooks whatever is caught that morning. They provide the plates and tables – you bring the wine, the bread, the mayo – whatever. You can’t book up so the wait might be 15 minutes or 2 hours. 90 minutes in this instance. Which gave me some time to sketch. Not a lot to say. I am nearly always more pleased with what I paint second rather than my first sketch. As was the case here. So here they are. The new gouache kit is working well for me. Here is the second sketch:
5"x8"
Hi Noel
I’m following your watercolours with great interest, and see you are using white.
Have you seen Peter Welton’s work? He is an advocate of ‘negative painting’, therefore having no need for white. His website is http://www.peterwelton.com and though his images are tiny on the web, in real life they are large and stunning – and each and every colour shines with life.
Good work. Keep the brushes wet and don’t hang about.
M
Mark Rowden said this on June 22, 2009 at 9:01 pm |
Hi Mark
Thanks for your interest. I was brought up in the “white paint is evil” school of pure watercolour! But as I’ve grown to love oils too, so I’ve become more flexible about using white with watercolour. Having said that there’s something very satisfying about planning to reserve areas of white. Some use masking fluid but to me that’s going back to painting white by another method. My two blog watercolours in Morzine were both done reserving the white of the snow as untouched paper. I bet Peter Welton’s paintings close up are awesome. By the look of it he is not doing any “wet into wet” (which I personally prefer) but rather painting with one-touch areas of considered, clean, colour. Sort of JS Cotman meets SR Badmin. Very meticulous – I would go crazy trying to do this! Yes, the brushes are wet at the moment – I can’t post all of it….
noelgarner said this on June 23, 2009 at 10:04 am |