playing with watercolours

all images copyright Vivien Blackburn

Today I felt like a break from the big canvasses and a 'play' with watercolour and flowers. The weather isn't good so I looked at my sketchbooks and worked in watercolour from sketches I'd done some time ago. I was in the mood for the lovely way that watercolour bleeds and flows, which is very much the way I started on the big seascapes.

I hadn't done much watercolour painting lately and I really enjoyed it :)


The first image is based loosely on a mixed media/collage painting which you can see here http://www.vivienblackburn.com/flowers.html - interpreting it in a different medium exploits another range of marks and possibilities. All of these images incorporate a little coloured pencil.



The third is from a sketch of an oriental poppy I did in a friends garden - I did a large mixed media version of it some time ago so the image may seem familiar.

I used a Chinese brush, bamboo pen (to pull out lines of wet paint and to scratch through wet paint, making darker marks), watercolours, a little coloured pencil and my solitary watercolour pencil in a deep blue, to draw through wet paint and to scrape little flecks to drop in the damp washes to create those little speckles.



Because I was only experimenting and not setting out to do a finished painting, they are simply on cartridge paper from a sketchbook and not on good watercolour paper.


I must do more watercolours, it's reminded me just how lovely they are to use :)