Progress report

I'm making some progress with my pink/purple lake. I have completed one version of it that has some good aspects to it. I'm particularly happy with how I handled the dark reflection of the trees in the water. I mixed a good dollop of sepia paint in with the dark water wash I had used for the bottom part of the picture. I then used a stick to draw the paint across, creating a fuzzy effect, which I think works well.

The colours I chose work together, and I managed to blend them with enough subtlety to give a good impression of the pink clouds reflecting in the water. But the darker water in the bottom right of the picture gave me some trouble: as I was working wet-into-wet, there was a lot of water on the paper, and some of it ran back from the bottom of the paper, producing heavy backruns.

Not good enough to show here, but there is enough that I'm happy with to have another go! The pictures here are cut-outs from this first attempt, with the bits I like and the bits that are not so good.

So, I've started a second attempt at it. My first wash was the best wash I've ever done, thanks to a lovely big squirrel brush I bought in the Utrecht art shop in New York (heaven for art supplies lovers like me!). It holds so much paint that it glides over the paper and there is still plenty of paint in the brush by the time you get to the end of the line. It has a distinctive smell. I'm not sure if that's how squirrels smell, but it reminds me of the smell of old fur coats in my Mother's wardrobe! I think it's going to become one of my favourite brushes!

Don't forget to click on the pictures to see them in a larger format. They look better on screen than the overall picture looks in reality, but, hey, that's the beauty of online art!