Alan Owen Watercolour Lessons

I have been following Alan Owen on YouTube for quite a while.
His carefree easy style strikes a chord with me and so on occasion I "paint along"..

This is one such occasion.

Here is the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQvirO00Cxk

Storm Passing

Another book I am reading is by the same author David Bellamy 'Skies, Light and Atmosphere'.

I love his brooding watercolours or as Jethro Tull once said 'Brewing , heavy weather'. 
So I have decided to follow all the exercises and learn ... I hope.

One thing I did learn in Ruins III reworked was don't give up if something goes sideways.

My first attempt at the 'rain cloud' was a disaster, to me it ruined the entire piece so I reread what David had said .. 're-wet the entire sky'... oops

So I took a sponge and removed the whole cloud,re-wet the WHOLE sky and redid the cloud. 
It worked (well in my opinion it worked) 

I'm a lot happier with this except for the dark 'rain' that was caused by the removal of the old cloud which filled in some scrapes that I had put in.

Oh well you can't win em all :-)

Alan

Watercolour Exercise ..

Currently reading one of David Bellamy's books on Watercolour techniques.
Yesterday I completed one of the exercises.
Thanks to my new found knowledge of how it 'fix' a mistake I was able to rescue this from the 'bin' :-)

Alan

Ruins III reworked ...

My friend Constance sent me a long email in response to my Ruins III post.

I said "Constance it's only a piece of paper! I will just repaint it" 

She said "Alan , It just a piece of  paper but there is something special taking a painting not quite right and turning to something remarkable. You will learn a lot in doing it."

She was right ... Well it may not be remarkable but it is way better :-)

Thanks Constance! 

She explained how to: 

Cut down the tree (well remove it)
Fix the background
Repaint the sky
Rework the shadow and sunlit sides of the ruin.

This is where I started, That tree had to go!

So deep breath ...

I took cell phone photo's of the process ...

First, scrub off the tree and wash out the background to the right of the ruin and lighten the ruin itself

Then repaint the sky and the background to the right of the ruin

Rework the sunlit and shadow sides of the ruin

Et Voila !

Yeah OK but they are cell phone photo's the original really does look better :-)

Lessons learned ; 

Even in watercolour you can fix things.
Listen to your friends :-)