How to paint a loose watercolour of Espalion Bridge - Aveyron - France

How to paint a loose Watercolour of Espalion Bridge – Aveyron – France

I have had many students come to me in the past specifically requesting a way to paint more loosely with Watercolour. My own path with most mediums is actually to start with a strong drawing but work loosely from the start, gradually tightening up until I am happy.

This way you are always in control and the painting remains fresh. In this method I will show you how it differs slightly, in that we start with the figures firstly and although we still paint them fairly loosely, not as loosely as the background! With most other media, figures are painted towards the end. Firstly let me show you what you will require: One sheet of 300 lb ROUGH Watercolour paper. Yes, very heavy–but it is ideal for this style. A set of watercolours; I use Windsor & Newton Artists’ Quality. Artists Quality is more important in watercolour than any other medium; they are finer, stronger and more transparent, and behave quite differently to students. Here is my palette.

Like fisherman find it easy to collect floats and flies, so it is for the artist with brushes! Here is my full set of watercolour brushes, but I will only use five of these for this painting: a half-inch oval mop, a No. 8 round nylon, a sword, a 3/4” flat and a 1/4“ flat. The nylon sword and flats are slightly stiffer and springy, ideal for dry brush work we shall be doing.

The paper is heavy enough that it will not require stretching, simply masking-tape it to a good drawing board or 1/2” ply.  A pot of water and you are ready to go.

Draw out the scene lightly in pencil. Perhaps wet your watercolours if they are dry and test at the side of your paper. I am going to start with a wash of aureoline yellow. It’s a wonderfully transparent yellow, far nicer than lemon yellow! Let me show you. . . .

Here is a wash of yellow ochre being applied. A wash is a thin coat of paint and can be just one colour or a variegated wash blending one colour into another; or a graduated wash graduating from strong to lighter or thinner. Remember, we do NOT mix with white in watercolour; we use the transparency of the medium and the white of the paper. Pink is thinned-down red; cream is a thinner yellow. As a rule work, from your large brushes to your smaller and lights to darks.

Above left I add some lemon yellow and look at the difference? It is more opaque and darker. I then add some bright red to give you an idea of a graduated wash linked in.

Continuing down into rose and purple, softening it out lighter with water to do a graduated wash. Note that wet-into-wet and wet-next-to-wet will blend; wet-over or wet-next-to-dry will give a hard edge. This brings us to our next technique, a glaze. A glaze is when you put a wash over another dry colour. This will either increase its strength, if the same colour, or change its colour, as in red over yellow making orange.

Here you see an example of that as I paint a thin coat of aureoline yellow on the umbrella and once dry glaze over some cerulean to give a green shadow.

This continues as I paint a darker green under the umbrella but also gently drop in a little wet-into-wet dark at the corners. I can teach anyone the basics of a medium, but only you can get the feel of the paint, water and what it will do, by practice. How far the paint will leach into surrounding wet paint, etc. We paint in watercolour by "controlled accident", and you really have to feel and be sensitive to watercolour more than any other paint! Lots and lots of loosening up, practice, mess and failures will lead to success–don’t fret!

For the figures I use a sword brush which gives you wonderful control by twisting it and flicking loose strokes for limbs. I lay a light wash and gradually add wet in wet shadows, tightening up the details as it dries.

As you can see, the figures are painted loosely and simply, making use of watercolours’ inherent qualities.

When it comes to architecture, stonework, and windows, the flat square brushes come into use, and I am able to paint windows in with easy single strokes.

Now it’s time to paint in the sky and let the colours blend wet-into-wet as I progress to give the atmosphere of a rainy day. Using my oval mop I work from a wash of aureoline yellow; I rapidly graduate and drop in raw sienna also. You may prefer raw sienna to yellow ochre, as it is also more transparent. Then, timing the dryness of all, drop wet-into-wet, some rose into the sky and burnt sienna into the buildings, finally adding blues and a mix of one of my dark colours, burnt sienna and ultramarine.

It is time to progress to the foreground now, and so I continue with my oval mop, but could easily change to my large flat, as I will do later, as they are ideal for dry-brush surfaces.

The atmosphere has been created and I can now start to pick out some detail, so take my No. 8 round and begin working in some darks and picking out stone work.

As I have said, starting loosely and finishing tight allows you control, and you can stop whenever you wish. Do not be tempted to over-work it. Remember, also that you can always add a touch of soft pastel if you do  over-work, and bring it back, even using a little water to blend the pastel.