Watercolour warm-up exercises

Today I have made some warm-up experiments with watercolour. I have both of Jean Haines watercolour DVDs, and I warmly recommend them to all who enjoys exploring the watercolour medium. Also to those who want to loosen up their watercolour style, as she has a very playful and relaxed way of approaching how to paint in watercolour. One important point which she stresses is to do some warm-up excercises with paint and water before one starts to paint one`s "masterpiece". It has several important advantages. One is that it will take away any preassure on one`s shoulders as to create something fabulous, and instead, one can just enjoy the colours flowing on the paper and the. Second, she points out, one learn a lot from these simple excercises with regard to how the different pigments interact with eachother and with different types of paper qualities - which will eventually be tools you can use later when you better know which pigments and paper quality you want to use to achieve your desired results. Thirdly, it will give inspiriation and stimulate your imagination for possible compositions for later paintings. You can learn more about her ideas, as well as look at her very inspiring demonstrations, in her two DVDs. I look at them often, and  as I am a novise, I learn a lot from them.

One of the tecniques that she demonstrates is making structures with salt. Spread some salt on the wet paint, and some interesting patterns will evolve. Here I have also used a lot of water and let the pigment flow down the paper.

Try using salt on different pigments. It will generate different moods and  associations.