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 5.15
p.m., Coxley Valley
A snow shower goes over, coming out of the north and leaving clearer
skies and smoky purplish grey shreds of low stratus straggling along
behind it.
I've been so into drawing recently that I thought it was time I
worked in colour again. I take out an old watercolour box, a larger
one than I normally use, with 33 half pans of artists' watercolour
in it, most of those now looking dried and hollowed out.
 Without
any initial drawing, not even a faint pencil outline, I use a no.9
sable to wash in the pale sky, adding a touch of yellow or yellow
ochre to the mix as I work downwards, because the sky grades from
a cooler to a warmer grey down towards the horizon. I add a light
tan for the wood (you can still see bits of it showing through the
sepia, right), being careful not to let it touch the grey
wash of the sky, so it doesn't run back into it.
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I use green and sepia for the meadow, which has been trampled to mud
in this bottom corner by the three resident ponies. When that has dried
enough, I add the branches and other details with a 3 and a 5 sable.
 Lady
in Red
Constable often managed to find a spot of red in the landscape to contrast
with all the green - such as a woman in a red shawl sitting under a tree.
That's just what I need but what are the chances of that happening this
afternoon?
 Well,
heavens to Betsy, what this?! A woman in a red waterproof walks into the
meadow pushing a wheelbarrow and trundles it off behind the bare blackthorn
bushes.
The paper I'm using isn't brilliant for watercolour: it cockles when
wet so blobs of brown collect in the channels (left). But I quite
like the effect. I think sometimes I try to be a bit too in control in
my drawings so perhaps some painting is what I need.
I find that painting is very like drawing anyway; it's just
that I'm drawing with a brush. I'm still looking for shapes.
Lost Posts
It may look as if I've been free and splapdash in this sketch this but
in fact I was observing what I painted with every brushstroke. I had to
accept that I couldn't easily include details like the row of slender
white posts between the grass and the mud. I would certainly have included
them in a line drawing.
And I couldn't think of a way to show snow falling!
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk |
