Tuesday 28 April 2009

Moor Hen Pond in April

The Ecology Park Ponds are a mass of fresh spring green at the moment with intense colours even in the shadows. It's quite a challenge to find form in the middle of all that fresh bursting out all over spring green. Plus the colour of the water keeps changing!

Moor Hen Pond in April (from the Ecology Pavilion)
10" x 7", Talens Van Gogh watercolour pencils on Arches HP

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm experimenting with watercolour pencils at the moment - on small 'sketch-sized' paper. I don't normally sketch and paint at the same time but I'm minded to give it a go. In the meantime I'm testing different brands of watercolour pencils to see which I like best. I'm also trying to find a way of 'painting' with watercolour pencils which suits me - and have been reading a book about Cezanne's watercolours which has proved very inspirational!

This was done last night at home using a reference photo but trying to use it for the purposes of making a sketch and working in my normal 'sketchy' way. I was using my Talens Van Gogh watercolour pencils which have a great range of colours in the blues and greens - however this 'sketch' came alive when I added in the pink and the red!

My brush technique is getting interesting and I think you may be seeing more!

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9 comments:

Jeanette Jobson said...

The colours are lovely in this drawing. It looks very lush there in spring. Are you going to do a similar view using the wc pencils and wash?

I use we pencils at times, mostly for detail work, sometimes to cover larger areas. I like them for the most part and as I was given a full set of them at Christmas I need to make use!

Making A Mark said...

I laid the watercolour pencils down, then created a wash, then worked over the wash with more watercolour pencils and then went in and 'dibble dabbled' with a damp brush!

Most of the time the brush was fairly dry with just a hint of moisture which enabled me to stop absolute floods of colour escaping!

Lindsay said...

You have certainly captured all that green beautifully. What I like best is the view of the clouds in the reflection. Really rich.

Anonymous said...

Beuaitufl colour!
Ronell

Robyn Sinclair said...

I love that pink in the foreground water. Beautiful reflections as usual, Katherine. I will be interested to see more of your technique with watercolour pencils, I ended up using mine dry all the time, now you've made me want to experiment again.

Sarah said...

Spring has sprung obviously, lovely greens

vivien said...

pretty colours

the leaves have suddenly really come out haven't they? everywhere here is green and with bright yellow fields of rape

Driving home today towards a terrific thunderstorm over home but driving through sunshine was fabulous.

Deep dark sky ahead and flashes of lightning and sunlit fields around me,with long shadows and glowing bright bright yellow rapeseed flowering

A huge hailstorm as I drove under the cloud near home

annie said...

Well, my slow server finally let me back into the blogs. Thank you, everyone, for your patience with my Google Reader emails--the only things that work when my poor tiny server gets overwhelmed. It will continue, off an on, of course, but at least I now know to load up the Reader with your blogs so I can follow your work...

This is exciting, Katherine.Please show more WC pencil and brushwork? You folks are just so inspiring and I am learning so much-- that lovely pink reflecting in the water, for example.
And it's fun to see what new techniques you come up with.
annie

Gesa said...

when i came back from chile i marvelled in the spring colours on show here, and this sketch gets to them in a beautiful way. i'll be trying to get to loch lomond over the next couple of days - hoping to catch the last remainders of a bit of bareness before it's all lush yellow greens (but have a couple of ideas for them too).