Dartmoor stream and old bridge - an experiment with foam rollers with watercolour
Detail scanned: An Old Packhorse Bridge on the edge of Dartmoor. Watercolour and mixed media, Vivien Blackburn This one was an experiment with some foam rollers I'd bought at the weekend, working from a plein air sketch I'd done. Also an experiment with Bristol board ( very smooth) as it's only the second time I've used it - the first was with oil paints in Cornwall. I swept the rollers over several colours that I wanted to appear in the trees and put them down with one line - it gave a wonderful speckled appearance that I later adjusted with glazes. I love these rollers! Then I used it to put background sweeps and areas of colour for the foliage, grasses and stonework, before working into them with brushes and watercolour, gouache, coloured pencil (a very little), oil pastel and charcoal pencil. They were extremely cheap and are going to become one of my favourite tools I think. I've often used much larger paint rollers wi...