off-piste

A fragrant rose

| andi mulholland

img_1285

This painting started with a loose sketch using Derwent’s watercolour art bars. Their solid sticks can be used wet or dry so I usually start with a dry line drawing and spray the paper to activate the pigment before I start painting. I then work on the damp page, working the art bars into the paper to add weight to the lines and tones.

Today my water spritzer widget wouldn’t work so in my panic and haste – before the moment was lost! – I grabbed a bottle of fabreze which gave a lovely fine, fragrant mist and did the job admirably.

The finished painting is now framed and under glass, ready for sale (Here), so any lingering fragrance is encapsulated within.

 

Sunnier times

| andi mulholland

begonia

I can see the sunshine in this. It was made in my sketchbook some time before the darkness and cold arrived, when there were real shadows surrounding objects sitting on a table. One of many (seemingly endless) exercises in the early stages of OCA Watercolour 1 – this one working with warm colours. There are messier ones in this series; the painting with grey and brown tones had a particularly bad ending.

However this one was made off-piste, away from proscriptive exercises, just for the pleasure of painting, after I had worked out a lot of issues surrounding a begonia and some citrus fruit. Wax resist and masking fluid also feature.