Watercolours

At the weekend, I finished my Christmas Rose (Cotman and Winsor&Newton watercolours - I'm not talented enough to buy the expensive paints!). I had not stretched the paper properly and it started buckling when I applied water of course, so the paint settled in the valleys. The fact that the paper buckled actually contributed to the organic feel of the picture, so I'm pretty pleased with the result.I got watercolour pencils at the weekend and experimented with them - the colours were a lot more vibrant than I anticipated, and I was really pleased with the result. So, they will be my tool of choice for the holidays (along with my pencils of course!).

(I bought the watercolour pencils (Derwent Aquatone) in the Art&Hobby shop in Dundrum Shopping Centre, with the AnPost voucher I got as my going-away present from IBM. So, thank you to everybody in the IBM Dublin Software Lab who contributed - Plenty more money left in the voucher to get more paints! - I'm enjoying my new life and I now have the time to draw and paint more!)