JUST, BLUE!

My uncle posted a video on Facebook where he had visited a lodge in Texas and there was this blue jay that was angrily screeching at the guests, probably not happy that its peace and quiet was being disrupted! There are no blue jays where we live, but that bird looked so interesting. Just one colour on it – blue. After a week I realized I was still thinking about it. So I painted this from a reference image of the web as his video was not clear enough for me.

RAMSHACKLE SHED

This was a watercolour I did on a small block. There was a cycling track for kindergarten and it had this very ramshackle concrete shed to store the cycles with a rusty iron door. It was also a bright day and this corner looked so very appealing to try out my first “on location” painting.

STORYBOOK TREE

The illustrations in children’s books are so cute! I was reading out a story to my toddler cousin and while she fell asleep, I just couldn’t stop admiring the drawings and paintings. And so, here we are, with a watercolour line and wash!

FAST AND LOOSE TREES

I was trying to get familiar with the loose watercolour technique and wanted to get that ‘not trying too hard’ look. Found out that that takes especially more practice, planning and its probably the hardest look of them all! Oh well.

STONE WALL BEHIND THE HUMP

This was my second “on location” painting, but in the same location, looking at a different part of the kindergarten cycling track. I wanted to do this specifically for the stone arrangement behind the grass mound.

FIELDS AFAR

This is a watercolour painting done mainly in washes and with a little bit of detain for the foreground. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but – seems alright!

THE LONELY GATE

This was a wet in wet painting and was so much fun to do! I wet the whole page except for the two posts. I had to wet it a couple of times to get it wet enough and then I just dropped the colours in and let them do their thing. When everything was dry, I put in a few strokes and this painting was done in no time at all!

BREAKING WAVES

Waves and water are really hard to do in watercolours as you mostly have to leave the whites in the right places to get the effect that you want. I then saw a tutorial on youtube where they use an opaque watercolour called gouache to add in the critical whites which could not be left during the course of the painting. I thought that was quite interesting. I did not have gouache, but I tried using white acrylic, which is opaque anyway and gave this ambitious watercolour breaking wave tutorial a shot!