Two More

Idleness being foreign to one's nature - pause for mirth - I have two more watercolours to offer: one being rough and, I think, energetic, the other involving a complete change of palette - I watched one of Charles Evans' demonstrations on YouTube the other day ... I know he's an artist who demonstrates on behalf of Winsor and Newton but I think his comment that you  should only ever use artists' quality paint is right: I've been experimenting with some other brands recently, and next to W & N artists' quality they just don't work.....

You might wonder why not - it's true that a good painter can make use of just about any materials, from student quality paint to tea or coffee used as dilute ink.  But while cheap and cheerful materials are easier on the pocket in the short term, they just make life so much more difficult that it takes a lot of the pleasure out of painting.  Colours aren't intense enough - paint has a sluggish tendency and pronounced unwillingness to spread on the paper - and to cap it all they fade.

Good paint makes good work possible: it doesn't make it inevitable, but at least you're giving yourself a chance - working with inferior materials, be that paint, brushes, paper, canvas, just makes the job so much harder than it need be: and in the end, there's no saving in that.

Use the best you can get.

The Broken Wall I -
ignore the gum strip at the bottom!  Must invest in a few mounts....  This is the rough and energetic one.

The Broken Wall II -
And this is the different palette: principally in terms of the yellows; I've not used Lemon Yellow for some time, but employed it here; and I also used Venetian Red rather than Burnt Sienna as my red-brown.