When I started painting in the summer of 2015 I began with acrylics, but I was given a cheap watercolour painting set and produced these two paintings: -
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| Mumbles Tram - 2015 SOLD |
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Woodham's scrapyard - 2015 SOLD
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To be fair to myself I don't think that either of these paintings is total rubbish. The tram in the top painting is not badly painted at all. Likewise, in the lower painting the front buffers and pistons of the train are really rather nicely done. However the tram is the only thing I like about the top painting, and I think that the boiler of the train in the second painting is fairly horrible. So I left the watercolours alone for over a year, and concentrated on acrylics.
So, over a year laterand I became curious. I think that I've improved at least a little bit painting acrylics. Would this show if I tried another watercolour? This time I made sure that I had proper watercolour paper to paint on, and a good Rowney set of watercolour brushes. This was my first attempt: -
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| Glasgow tram - November 2016 SOLD |
I did try really hard with this, but at the end of the day I don't think that it's a patch on my best acrylic tram paintings. It isn't down to the draftsmanship, which I think is fine for this composition, but it's just so muted and washed out.
I did swallow my pride and start to read a beginners book on watercolour painting, and then I produced this: -
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| Lincoln Cathedral and old city walls SOLD |
There's just a few things which I picked up from reading the book which I was able to apply to this one. There's no part of this that I think is total rubbish, but I'm really pleased with the sky , the foliage, and shadowy ledges at the bottom of the picture. I could not have painted a picture like this a year ago.
This is the follow up: -
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| Tintern Abbey SOLD |
Again, there's things that I could criticise. The shadow in the main part of the abbey are a bit too dark, I think. Still, I like the coaw in the foreground, and I like the hills in the background either side of the building. There's a nice texture to some of the stonework.
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| Green Line Bus in East Grinstead |
Back to public transport: -
I think that I've avoided the washed out quality of the Glasgow tram above in this painting. This is actually a mixed media painting. I did use layers of watercolour, but for the most part this is gouache, which tends to be more opaque than plain watercolour. Even as it was I still found myself darkening and darkening the front of the bus, before applying a couple of layers of more translucent watercolour to finish it off.
Encouraged by what to my eyes are signs of improvement in my watercolours I left the acrylics alone during the Christmas period of 2016, and kept reading up on watercolours, and also watched some tutorials on YouTube. This resulted in these two paintings. Firstly, a lighthouse: -
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lighthouse SOLD
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There's so much that I'm pleased with about this painting. In fact there's only one thing I'm really unhappy about. Can you see it? I was too impetuous painting in the top of the lighthouse before the sky was dry enough, and the colour bled into the sky. I lifted as much as I could, but you can see a smudgy area still. Nonetheless I'm really pleased with the sea, and the rocks as well. In all honesty I could not have done this a year ago.
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| Elvet Bridge, Durham |
Continuing experimenting with getting water effects, although this time it's the River Wear in Durham. It's one of my favourite cities, and the Elvet Bridge is one of my favourite buildings within it. I dampened both sky and water areas, and painted most of the reflections wet on wet. I'm pleased with the effects that I achieved, and indeed it's the water that most people have been complimentary about.
Since I was happy with the progress I'd been making in water colours over the Christmas holiday in 2016, I wanted to experiment using watercolour pencils - I was given sets by both my mother and my daughter. Again, I watched several tutorials, and in this picture I tried to combine some of the things I'd liked. : -
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Parrot - watercolour pencil
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Believe it or not the 'explosion in a paint factory' effect of the background is intentional - it's a completely different style for me, but the whole thing was an experiment anyway.
You can learn a lot from some excellent tutorials on YouTube. I followed one to paint this ruby-throated hummingbird: -
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| Ruby Throated Hummingbird |
I really like it, apart from one thing - it's not mine in as much as while I put the paint on the paper, I was still following the instructions. The idea, though, was to see what I could pick up in terms of technique through painting it. I put it into effect when I painted this woodpecker, which used a similar colour palette:-
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| Green Woodpecker |
There's bits of this I'm pleased with - the head is good for example. The background is overdone though, and the body feathers all seem a bit messy. Still, soldier on. The next attempt was this kingfisher:-
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| Kingfisher |
A much better attempt in my opinion. It isn't perfect, but it's not a bad wee attempt in my opinion.
Now, my wife happened to watch while I was doing the hummingbird tutorial, and after I explained to her what it was all about, and showed her the parrot, the hummingbird and the woodpecker, she observed - well you're doing birds now, are you? Why don't you do horses? I like horses. So I had a go - this is what I produced: -
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| Mary's horse |
I say it as shouldn't, but what the hell, I'm delighted with this one.
So - where to next after the horse? Well, it went so well that I decided I'd stretch myself and see if I could do two horses for the price of one, and if I was going to paint two horses in the same picture, then I might just as well stick a jockey on both of them: -
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| Horse Race SOLD |
I sold this one very soon after painting it. -Hello - I thought - might be worth doing a few more like that. Getting it right, though, isn't as easy as it looks. This next one for me doesn't match the one above: -
Never mind, though, and soldier on. It's not a badly drawn picture, but just not as well painted as the first in my opinion. To keep trying, though, and keep learning, that's the aim. So I had a go at another bird - this time a goldfinch: -
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| Goldfinch |
This painting is actually better than it looks here, because the scan hasn't picked out the whole of the blue background. I think this is the best bird I've painted since I did the hummingbird tutorial.
This is a very simple landscape, which I'm still very pleased with: -
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| Ely Cathedral on a misty morning |
Since learning about the Urban Sketching movement, and reading books on the subject, I'd been meaning to carry out some work using ink and wash. This was an attempt at some old grand prix racing cars: -
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| racing cars ink and wash SOLD |
It's not bad, is it? But the ink is considerably better than the wash. Soldier on. This was the next line and wash painting I produced, of Maida Vale London Underground railway station: -
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| Maida Vale Tube Station SOLD |
I think this has quite a bit going for it too, but I have half a mind that as I underdid the paint on the previous picture, I could be accused of overdoing it on this one. This is my next attempt: -
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| Triumph Herald |
For the first time this seems to me more like what I was aiming for, a line and wash picture where the ink and paint are working together, and not against each other.
Of course, I'm still painting the straight watercolours. This was based on a photograph of my grandchildren Ollie and Amelia on Aberavon beach last summer: -
From 2019 onwards most of the watercolours I made were for successive 30x30 Direct Watercolour challenges. Others were line and wash. Here's just a selection:- the pictures are in pretty much chronological order of when they were painted:-
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
To my eyes, my watercolours noticeably improved during the 2022 30x30 challenge - here's a selection of paintings from 2022:-
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
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| SOLD |
I enjoyed the 2022 challenge so much, and was so pleased with the results I got that I kept painting watercolours after - this led to a series of paintings depicting my home town, the London Borough of Ealing - here they are:-
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| 607 Trolleybus near Ealing Broadway |
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| Type B Bus on Acton High Street |
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| 207 Routemaster bus in West Ealing |
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| London United Electric Tramways tram in Ealing Broadway |
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Grand Union Canal in Hanwell
SOLD |
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West Ealing in the 70s
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Hanwell Coronation Clock Tower
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| Parkers Bakery Northfields Avenue Ealing |
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| Old Woolworth Building West Ealing Uxbridge Road |
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| Former Himalaya Palace Cinema Southall, Ealing |
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| Small Work Horse statue, Ealing Broadway Centre |
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| Church of Our Lady and St. Joseph, Uxbridge Road, Hanwell |
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| Ealing Broadway c. 1930 |
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| St. Mary's Church, South Ealing |
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607 trolleybus in Hanwell
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I undertook the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge in 2023 again - here's some of the best ones (IMHO) -
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