Practicing Watercolor

 

Watercolor is a medium I simply love and learn to work with - very slowly. I probably should practice way more often and regularly, but I only have so much time. Whenever I can I do sit down and play with my watercolors.

I remember loving watercolors in school (many decades ago), but I never learned how to use them correctly - if there is something like "correctly". Maybe I should use the term "creatively". Beside the student grade watercolor I had in high school I never owned "real" watercolors until a few years ago.

I started out with watercolor pencils and watercolor crayons.

Although I did enjoy them, I missed the "flowing" of the colors with the water. So my first set was a travel set of pan watercolors by Winsor & Newton. You can see how heavily I used some of those colors.

Very soon I wanted a bigger set and thanks to my tutoring money I was able to afford one. This is also from Winsor & Newton.

I used and still use this set a lot. I learned to mix colors which I throroughly enjoy. You can also easily see which colors I feel drawn to - the reds and the earth tones.

After a while I became very curious what the difference was to more professional colors. Eventually all of my tutoring money went (and still goes) into art supplies, mainly those more expensive watercolors (thank you, students of German!).

This set contains professional watercolors by Winsor & Newton plus some metallic ones, also W&N.

Beautiful colors, but so far I haven't used them too often. However, they do make a difference to the "regular" pans.

My latest set is from Sennelier. Oh my word. These are honey-based watercolors from France and they are - yummy. I don't have a different word. Buttery and brilliant. I'm completely taken by them.

When Karen Abend offered a Sketchbook Revival get together with Kimberly Hyndman about "Delightful Doors in Ink and Watercolor" I signed up. Since I didn't have too much time, I only did one of the doors (instead of three), but I enjoyed it so very much. I mixed the bricks and door frame with Payne's Grey and Ultramarine Blue and the door with Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Sienna. I probably could have done better, but I'm quite content with my painting.

And I already have a new set of watercolors I want to try - a Schmincke set, a German company. And better paper. More tutoring...

I'm joining Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.