New SAA Watercolour Practice Paper - reviewed!

 As seen in the SAA 'Paint Magazine September 2014...

I was recently sent some samples of the SAA’s very popular watercolour ‘practice paper’ to try. The SAA have upgraded and improved their previous product and I was given the opportunity to try it out for myself. This is a product that I have been familiar with for many years, very economical and good quality, I recommend it to all my beginner students. When you are starting out the last thing you want to worry about is ruining an expensive sheet of hand made paper! I also use this paper in my demonstration workshops and put little squares of it out in all my classes for students to try their colours on.

The first thing I noticed is that the new paper is whiter than the previous one, something that is quite important to me. As always I stretched the paper onto board before using, and left it until the next day when it was flat and dry. Stretching is not hard to do and will hugely improve the working surface of any paper.

I decided to do a little sample painting of the peach coloured poppies in my garden. Wanting to try a range of watercolour media I used a combination of my favorite Talens paints, as well as some excellent SAA watercolours, watercolour pencils and even some ‘Brusho’ pigment powder. 

 As with the previous practice paper this one is fairly smooth, being close to a ‘hot press’ surface in some other ranges. The advantage with smooth paper is that you can get more accuracy; the disadvantage is that it can be harder to control washes. However, the paper took wet into wet techniques well and was equally responsive to flat washes and some of the mixed media I applied. The brightness of the paper shone through the pink flowers and I was very happy with the result. Due to its smooth surface beginners will find it easy to put an initial drawing down, this paper would also be very suitable for other techniques such as pen and wash, mixed media and collage.

I had hoped that the new paper would be as good as the previous one; I was relieved to find that it is far better!

The finished painting "Peach Poppies"...

 

 

The frog who turned into some prints

 Tree Frog Painting

Just before Christmas I became aware that my daughters friend Alice was about to celebrate her 18th. Alice is a rare type of teenager; when she comes over for supper she ends up making me a cup of tea (after apologising for existing generally), frequently offers me petrol money for giving her a lift somewhere I was already going and is pleasant to talk to. Of course many teenagers behave this way to other people's parents, and we all know it is a sign that they are not to be trusted in ANY way, you can see through it a mile off. But Alice is just nice. To everyone. Most importantly of all she helped me with my kung fu grading exam, and if it weren't for her then my own resident teen would do no school work whatsoever and be even more disorganised and random than she already is.


So it was clear, Alice needed a gift. Now like me, Alice loves frogs, and she keeps several pet ones. I can no longer encourage frogs into the garden due to our resident feline serial killer. Who incidentally has decided that the cupboard where I neatly store my dressmaking patterns and books is a good place to sleep. There is no room in there but he doesn't care, trampling my patterns with his muddy paws, and sometimes chewing the corners for added fun.

 Gimlet in the sewing patterns cupboard!

I had wanted to paint a frog for some time, so after consulting a few different wildlife books, I came up with a design. The frog was painted in a combination of watercolour and gouache, and then I had the original scanned for prints. The teen wandered into the studio several times that week and I hid the picture. "What are you working on?" she said. "Secret stuff" I replied. The teen cannot keep a secret. Not if she tries, not for money, not even for chocolate. She simply cannot help herself. There are advantages to this of course, because a little interrogation will get anything out of her. Not for her the sullen, secretive, tell the parents nothing approach....

Limited Edition Tree Frog Print

Anyhow, the frog painting was kept a secret, and the first print (I needed the original for exhibiting) was signed, mounted and wrapped for Alice. "What is it?" said the teen, furious that I wouldn't tell, as I gave it to her to take to Alice's party. "It's a calendar," I said, keeping my face deadpan, "Architecture of west Suffolk churches". "Ha!" said the teen, not believing a word.

I am pleased to report Alice was delighted with her present!

 

In more recent news... today's weather:

 

The studio in the snow.

 

Of course, snow is pretty, and it has covered up all the dead animals Gimlet has strewn about the garden, but on balance I would prefer to be without it. 

 

Living at the top of a hill, on an estate where they don't grit all the roads, taking my little pink Corsa down the hill would be easy, getting back up far less certain. I can't get to kung fu or swimming, visits from friends and private students, have been cancelled, as was my Saturday Art Class. I dislike winter at the best of times, but now it is becoming a real pain:

 

Come back summer all is forgiven!

 

 

Showing Off

In most jobs, however glamorous or fun they might seem from the outside, it is 98% hard slog which no one ever notices or sees. But sometimes there is a rare opportunity to show off; to make people say "Oh, that's clever!" For doctors it might be that rare and sudden procedure that saves a life. For racing drivers all those hours of tedium on the track pay off when they win that grand prix. For visual artists one of the best ways of showing off is undoubtedly to paint glass or water (preferably both at the same time).

There is something about painting these reflective, transparent, half-there-half-not-there items which people find really impressive. After all, how do you fix something on paper if you can see through it? If it changes colour every time you move your head slightly and reflects a hundred colours.

 Both the above paintings of mine are several years old, they both depict flowers and glass and they are both hanging in my mother's house. Not the biggest art lover in the world, nevertheless, my flower paintings are her favorites, and she obviously likes glass too. I think she actually paid money for the top one. When I was starting out she went through a phase of sneaking into my exhibitions, and buying my work under a false name. She had the best and kindest intentions, but you can imagine how mortified I felt when I discovered the truth about my sales...

Apart from my self confessed wish to show off occasionally, I genuinely enjoy the challenge of glass painting, and having not done any for a while I decided to return to the subject, and combine it with another re-visit: hydrangeas. 

I painted this one a couple of years ago, and it gets very high views on my websites, but I confess I have never been entirely happy with it...

There are some things I was pleased with, but the vase was actually cream, and ended up getting darker and darker as I struggled to get it to look three dimensional. My (at the time) not quite under control addiction to prussian blue (an incredibly strong pigment) meant the leaves were somewhat too dramatic, and took the focus away from the flowers. Finally, and this cannot be seen from the photo, the paper was a creamier colour than I like. A few months later Saunders Waterford made all my dreams come true (easily pleased, me) by launching something called 'high white' paper and I never looked back.

So back to the present day, and the hydrangeas in my garden were starting to turn to autumn colours, and I saw an opportunity to try them again. This time I picked three blooms from the same plant, one still bright summer pink, one faded to pale pink, and one tinged with autumn greens and  reds. 

I put them in a big square vase and did my best to capture the rich greens in the leaves without overshadowing the flowers. It is going into the local Rotary club exhibition next week, so it will be interesting to see if people like it. My students were split, some preferred the earlier painting, but I am definitely happier with the more recent one, I think it is fresher and lighter.

I really enjoyed painting glass again, and if you like to paint I would advise you to try it too, and remember what I tell my students:

"It's transparent, not invisible." If you can see it, you can paint it. And then you can show off... just a little.