paintings prints and stuff

A very quick sunset demo in watercolour One of my students was painting a sunset and had started with the dark clouds, planning to add the colour later.   This was a really quick demo to show her how it is better to get in the luminous colours first , so that they then shine through thin layers of cloud - just as it works in life. So ....  messy and rushed!  but hopefully it showed what I meant, with the underlying glow shining through the clouds.   If elements have to be luminous and full of light then I try to get them down first whenever possible, whether it's sky or leaves against the light. This was done in the S&B Zeta sketchbook.

Watercolour and coloured pencil, approx 7.5 x 9.5 ins This one was done yesterday as a class demo.   Last week we'd looked at how various artists handled trees and undergrowth.   This week we looked at the sketchbooks of John Blockley, David Hockney, Kurt Jackson and David Prentice, also the line and wash work that Sue Lewington does. Then they wanted a demo of birches to see how I worked and discuss methods, order, techniques etc. It was done straight into watercolour, no preliminary drawing with pencil, with a mix of White Nights and W&N artists pans , on heavy watercolour paper, type unknown as it was donated by one of the class.  There are slight touches of watercolour pencils in there too. There has been a lot of this sort of light on my journey to and from work lately - brooding skies ahead but sunlight where I am, making the landscape glow.  This particular section is on a highish plateau - the countryside isn't actually this flat roun...