Interiors in Watercolour
With a complicated scene it is tempting to be very detailed and tight.
Choose your composition carefully and decide which areas you wish to focus upon, you do not have to do sharp detail all over your paper.
You may also decide to enhance light or dark areas to assist your composition. Leave an object out if you wish, or even move it slightly, unless you are doing an illustration for that purpose, then why emulate photography, you have far more scope to enjoy and explore the medium and other possibilities. Constable would move his trees 30 yards or so to make the composition required, did you notice the difference? Unless you had the real landscape and painting in front of you I doubt it, all that matters is that the painting works. In the painting of the Norman Undercroft I used a limited palette of Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine and Prussian Blue and concentrated my focus on the closest column, the explosion of arches from this and the contrasts of warm and cool shadows and light cast throughout. I have not reproduced every detail of the stonework, just indicated it.
In the painting of the “Dining Room” it was very tempting to go into a lot of detail. I decided to use the chandelier to bring the eye down and in and to use the strength of the table reflections to hold the eye, linked with composition. I deliberately treated the carpet more loosely as it was a peripheral area and I wished to still enjoy the qualities of looser watercolour.
The study of “King James’s” bedroom also presented compositional and perspective problems. It was painted on 14”x10”, 140lb. Bockingford, Not, which at that size I do not need to stretch, but just tape down, the other works shown here are the undercroft on14”x22” 140lb. Waterford, Rough, stretched, and the dining room on14”x22” 140lb. Bockingford , Hot Pressed, stretched. Again I could bring the focus onto the foot of the bed and the table to give depth and lead the eye in. The interior of the church was a different focal situation with my taking the eye to the stained glass window in detail, but loosening off as peripheral areas spread out, again simplifying them and enjoying the qualities of watercolour.
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