Watercolor - Painting or Paining?

For Christmas we were given an unexpected gift, a set of watercolour paint!

We have both talked about water colour painting on an off for a while, and here we were with no excuses and decided to try them as soon as we could..

Having all the equipment necessary to start a few days ago we got down to business and worked on our first project I picked some roses. and came up with this:

I am so used to painting with oil paint and realized trying this new medium is certainly a very different technique from what I am used to. I found the paint thinning to hardly a colour and building the petals slowly hardly using the brush and waiting for parts to almost dry before applying similar colour to mix into the petal.

Next my favourite subject, a doggy:

I realized you have to have a different mind set from painting with oil. I managed after a fashion to complete the picture but knew by the end of it my patience had been slowly draining and concentration certainly giving me a hard time. I thought it would be a good idea to show the work I did, but, now at least if I decide to continue, like anything you want to do when it comes to creativity is practice,
Practice ,practice so hopefully watch this space !!

Babs




I tried using watercolours about 8 years ago and after much splashing came up with this:

Last week I used a photo of some hollyhocks resulting in this:













And today a photo of a water-lily led to this:

Watercolour paints are so different than oils it is like learning another language, You have to rely on the paper colour to capture white, it is impossible to predict the results when painting wet on wet. But somehow the process is quite relaxing.
I suggest if you meet anyone who paints with watercolour bow your head and give due respect.

John