Watercolour icebergs

Yesterday I went to an exhibition to see the art work of the Swedish watercolour artist Anna Törnquist, http://www.annatornquist.se/akvarell/. I love her style and also her sense of humour in her paintings. At the exhibition there were a couple of painting of icebergs that I fell in love with. I became so inspired that I wanted to have a go myself on an ice motive. I have used only a painting knife here, and I really enjoy this way of painting. I have been working on the floor, using the whole body working with the painting knife. I feel this is more "my" way of painting - really a joyful day of painting!

Watercolour doodles and exercises

 I havent't been painting so much lately, except for some excercises. I bought a watercolour dvd by Peter Saw wich a really enjoy. All though it is not quite my style of painting, I find it a great tutoring dvd. I have learned to paint trees and stones in small "doodles", as he calls it - just small and simple excercises not meant to take a lot of time nor to become anything but an excercise. Paper quality matters, as you may see. The above is painted on quality paper, the one below on poor sketching paper.

 Below is another doodle of a rock.

 Here is a more me-ish doodle, the first appearance of an eye.

Drawings

Two different drawings of the same figure. One loose and very quick pen drawing, and another a little bit more elaborated, but still very quick, pencil drawing. It is interesting how the medium changes the expression.

I am fighting against my own impatience when it comes to painting, though. I like the quick and spontanous way of expressing my self on the paper. But I still don't master the watercolours and the different paper qualities well enough to be able to control such a way of expression. So, I have to fight my own desire to paint in a quick and bold way as it very often ends up with a disaster! There is so much to learn about painting tecniques, different paper qualities, amount of water held in the paper, how the different pigments flow. Luckily, this summer I am going to attend to workshops! It is in Sweden, at Gerleborgsskolan www.gerlesborgsskolan.se . It will be 4 days in July and 5 days later in August. I am looking very much forward to it!

Woman with headscarf

 After struggling the last week with nothing working with the watercolours, I made this quick version of a woman with headscarf today; loose pen drawing and than more or less splashing paint on.

In the version below, I wet the paper first. I usually don`t do that, but I wanted to explore more soft settling of the pigments. I also tried to use more skinlike colours on the face. But for some reason, I find it more difficult than using the blue/purple shades I often use for faces.  Hm, I like the more spontanous one above better.

A new portrait appearing on the paper. No preliminary sketch, as I haven`t used a model nor a reference photo. That`s what I like the best - to see who will appear and what mood they are in!

Back to portraits

I was practicing on painting negative shapes - painting the bakground rather than the form itself - when this figure showed up.

Watercolour iris

Today I have been struggling with some wet-in-wet exercises - nothing worked out right. The exercises is, however, from a highly recommendable book, with lovely photos and good tips: "The essence of watercolour" by Hazel Soan.

At the end of the day gave up the wet-in-wet exercises and decided to just paint a flower, after inspiration from a nother very nice book, namely "Painting flowers with impact in watercolour" by Julie Collins.

So, then I finally managed to paint this iris.