I recently created a simple watercolour painting of leaves filling a rectangular piece of paper, and instantly saw the opportunity to turn this into a pattern repeat. I painted watercolour leaf springs freehand onto a 9″ x 12″ 200gsm cold pressed watercolour / multimedia pad by Winslow from Eckersleys in Australia, using Winsor and Newton paints Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, … Read More
Using lino printing to explore colour combinations.… Read More
A sketchbook for every occasion, and a nearly finished painting.
This weeks drawing board is dominated by a drawing that’s been on the go for over a year, plus some experiments and design explorations in a variety of sketchbooks.… Read More
Saving test prints in a Japanese bound book I’ve recently been pulling a lot of test lino prints. Whilst OK, they are not good enough quality to sell or even give away, but still too pretty to chuck in the bin! So I decided to make small books from them. Making a book I collected all of my prints and … Read More
Free motion embroidery on water soluble film I recently experimented with water soluble stabiliser, a film that is used in the machine embroidery process. I came across it on an internet wander, and I suddenly realised that I could use it with some Mulberry silk strands I bought nearly 2 years ago at a Halls Gap craft fair, from a … Read More
Watercolour painting on laser engraved plywood Laser engraving a design onto wood such as plywood, creates a wonderfully crisp image, but more importantly if you want to to add colour, it provides a ready made indented work surface, which helps to contain liquid paint colours to each separate element. Essentially its colouring in, on wood. Types of paint Water based … Read More
A fresh, modern way to mount and protect watercolour paintings It’s quite a simple process: glue a painting to a wooden board or panel and give it a protective coating. I have used a cradled wooden panel as my mount and protected the painting at various stages of the process with varnish and wax, to create the look of a … Read More
Tropical leaves. This weeks drawing board has a new crop of watercolours in my tropical leaves series. Top row: Colour swatch sketch book, open on my Winsor & Newton watercolours page, I find it a really handy reference when working out colour schemes for new paintings. (Underneath sketch book) a tropical leaf painting I keep coming back to, its been … Read More
Saltbush leaves and flowers This weeks drawing board has a beach vibe and a few experiments Top row: Sketch book with colour swatch samples from some new tubes of Winsor & Newton paints – Winsor Blue, Phthalo Turquoise, Indigo (my new favourite colour!), Paynes Grey & Burnt Sienna, plus a little sketch of an Agapanthus flower using Winsor & Newton … Read More
I had a problem recently with masking fluid that wouldn’t come off my paper. I’ve been producing a series of Jacobean flower inspired paintings. Part of my process is to mask off certain parts of the painting to help keep the images light. We’ve had some extremely hot days so far in our summer down here in Oz, and I … Read More