Four candidates

I'm always behind writing my blog, and even more so on Instagram! It's good to have a buffer, though, for when life is too busy!

We're getting to the end of our month-long masterclass with Uma Kelkar. Now I have to pick what I want to paint over a weekend watercolour marathon! We have to pick two scenes we want to paint on half sheet Imperial (did I tell you that half sheet scares me?).

Of course once I start looking through my photos, I find so many I want to paint. So I whittled them  down to four candidates, which I painted in a few minutes in thumbnail format (about postcard size) to see how they would work out. The idea is to pick something that's a slightly beyond my reach.

So that eliminates bottom right - the rocks near Coumeenoole beach. I think I can paint those on my own.  I'm not sure about top right - the view of Dunmore Head from the road on the Slea Head Drive - it's a big landscape, but I can probably figure out how to lead the eye in and make the lighting more interesting. So that leaves me with the two on the left - top: road in Beara and bottom: Clogher Head, looking away from the Ocean. Maybe they're a bit too similar? I've already tried to paint the Beara view before, on half sheet actually, so maybe I'll pick the bottom left - Clogher Head. It is my favourite place in the world after all! And then find something different for my second painting!

I painted them in three layers,

First layer: 2 minutes - trying to capture the general shapes and feelings - they don't look like much yet.

Second layer: 45 seconds, sharpening and adding deeper values

Third layer is the one at the top of the page - I didn't time it, but it's the layer that pulled everything together, except for the bottom right one, which I didn't retouch.