Watercolour painting

I also love watecolours even though it hard ...I am gradually learning to understand what the paint does through a mixture of practice, reading books, watching on you-tube and one off day classes with various artists.

What I would like to know about water colour painting is do you soak the paper first? If so how do you stop the colours from running in to things. I know about layering, but I find it very frustrating nearly finishing a painting only for it to leak where I don't want it to.

This was one of my watercolour attempts: Called 'Benjamin'

Crazy woman! I meant Lowry, not Van Gogh of course! Sorry!
This is a flower one I did at home.

Love your painting! So calm and peaceful. No wonder you put it up. You certainly have a style all of your own. I like it.

I think I did the A Sunday on La Grande Jatte one in about 3 lessons. It is something to do when you need to forget what is going on around you. Very calming. The other one I did a bit here and there at home, a bit like cross-stitch. Enjoyable though. My Art exam piece was 'in the style of Van Gogh using his palette' but as he didn't go to the Potteries it was a invention of my own. Not sure if you can see the detail on this, ie the little tea pots and the men's faces? Not a very good copy.
I like to try different things. Not too good at watercolours I find them a bit frustrating but I do like them and I have done a few flowers in my time.

Yorkshiregel how long did it take you to do those pictures putting all the dots in (a la Seurat?). You must have a lot of patience. They're lovely!

This is the last watercolour I did that managed it to the wall and not the bin! It is early morning on Dunwich Beach in Suffolk. On the headland at the back was the done of Sizewell B power station, but I left it out. And ever since, I wish I'd left it in! I really must get down to it again.

Some of you will recognise what one or two have been influenced by? We did an exercise in class where we had to copy a section of a famous artist's painting and another where we had to try the pallet or style of a famous artist. Hence the 'Van Gogh' look, and Pointillism as in Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Great fun to do.

I have tried watercolours but I am not very good at it.

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Sorry, chose the wrong picture. These are dot pictures:

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I prefer acrylics or 'painting' with dots. See below:

I find watercolours much harder than acrylics or oil. With the last two you can correct mistakes, not easy with watercolours because the paper is stained leaving a mark no matter how much you try and remove it. Also you have no control about where the colours run to. I know you have to leave lots of white spaces to make the painting glow with light.

I absolutely love watercolours. My main hobby and the only thing that I do where I find that I cant think about anything else son a total switch off from any stresses in other parts of my life

Good Lord! Look at all the fun I've missed by being an (almost) purist all my painting life! I'll have to have a go at all of that.

Sorry Greyduster, I meant push the clingfilm around on the paste/glue then push it around with your fingers.

When making flowers with tissue paper you can always use coloured tissue paper instead of painting it.

Something else you might like to try when painting silver birch trees. Draw them in quink ink, then run a wet brush along down the one side. The colour will leak across so only wet up to half way. Great affect.

Flowers can be made by sticking tissue paper on the paper and pushing it in to a flower shape. You can layer it until it stands out. Then paint it.

Fun, fun, fun!

Greyduster, what you do is wet the paper with that white glue and then push it in to shapes with your fingers. I did this with shrubbery, but you can do it with flowers too to make them look embossed. When dry you paint over it. I did a little robin peeping out of the shrubbery. Looks really nice. I have also used brick dust to get texture, same method, paint thinly with the glue then sprinkle the brick dust over and allow to dry.

Stretch the cling film across a wet wash and wrinkle it up, pull lines with the wrong end of the brush or scrumple it up and leave until just about dry. I'm getting better at it.

Now off to try sugar!

Some really lovely paintings on here, it's a great relaxing hobby. I do it occasionally for the enjoyment it gives, but am not very good.

Cling film wrinkles the colour up I can't think of another way to explain it

I've used salt Nfk (and sugar) but where does the cling film come in, please?

I'm still persevering with watercolours. Thanks to those who gave me advice last year on stretching paper. I'm having more success now - partly because I'm using better paper. I've got to the point now where, when I tried to return to acrylics I made a right hash of it, so I have to carry on!

I'm now experimenting with the wonders of salt and cling film. It's good fun. If I eventually succeed in being happy with anything I will post it. But so far I can't match anything on here!

NotTooOld I know how you feel. I am just coming out of my block. I have started with sketching, but hope to progress to painting like I used to do.

At Art class we were asked to 'paint like the Masters'. We spent a whole term doing that and it was great fun. What you do is copy a small section of a famous artist's painting and see how difficult it is. You have to use the same pallet as much as you can but it produced some excellent results. I would like to show you one or two of those and one of my own style but I do not know how to upload them.

honeypot43 Love your picture with the butterfly and foxgloves (or are they penstemon?). So delicate.

Wish I knew how to upload paintings.

Love the paintings that have been put up on here. Would like to know how to do it.

Is it ok to talk about other kinds of painting, not just watercolour painting?

I used to do a lot of painting, mostly in acrylics and watercolour, although I have painted in oils which is different altogether. How do we upload our paintings/sketches? I cannot find out how to do it. I see you have managed it Lilylilo so maybe you could tell me how?

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I started watercolour painting last autumn and love the challenge. I do try other mediums on occasion and also sketching to try and improve my overall technique. A very satisfying way of spending some spare time even if I'm not always satisfied with the results. Here are 2 of my watercolours including my first attempt as an animal