Exercise Exploring one subject in a variety of ways

Chosen to work a portrait as I experiment with watercolour and another medium.

Pen and watercolour:

Watercolour and charcoal:

Watercolour and  water soluble crayons:

Enjoyed working with the water soluble crayons, I liked the  marks left by the crayon and deliberately avoid softening these marks. Worked on a larger size version  of the portrait:

Not happy with this so washed back the image

And repainted it, happier with positioning of the eyes and nose

Exercise Painting a landscape on a coloured paper

Same landscape painted on different coloured  acrylic ground, listed in the order they where painted and for me in order that  I painted them with last one being my favourite, oddly the coloured ground is at odds with the landscape but  I think it makes for a more appealing painting despite is abstract quality.


Grey ground:

Green ground:

Burnt Sienna:

Exercise Tonal Studies made on a coloured ground

Tonal studies of figure, water colour on colour ground


On colour card:

On Acrylic:

Exercise Free expression

Reading through the course notes for section five this exercise appealed to me the most... though I struggled not to include identifiable objects in my studies, perhaps I am trying to hard to help the viewer guess the title but association between the title and the ideas for the paintings developed quickly.


Desert:

Desert 2:

Birth:

Green dream:

Quiet night:

3:00 am:

Carnival:

Ant story:

Ant story 2:

Fear behind the curtain:

Fear behind the curtain 2:

Peace:

Exile:

Flight:

Exercise Drawing on a coloured ground

I am experimenting with different coloured grounds here initial on coloured card and then on paper covered with and acrylic wash.

Face studies, watercolour on coloured cards for me, here the  blue  ground is the blue ground works the best.

Studies of Cyclamen plant,  watercolour on card

Here I felt the yellow and green grounds worked well, so  I used a olive green acrylic as the ground for a further plant study

Testing how the watercolour took to the acrylic ground in my sketch book. The acrylic attacks as waterproof film across the paper, so the watercolour is not absorbed and sits, taking a long time to dry, on the acrylic.

Final Study, the watercolour is appears more opaque on the acrylic ground looking at the study it would be possible believe it was done all in a acrylics. One nice feature of the painting of on the acrylic ground is being able to mix the watercolour on the surface of the painting, able drop dark tones in to the pools of red watercolours when painting the plants petals.