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Painting 1: Watercolour
by
Stephen Taylor
Front cover: Views from Bowling Green, St Ives, 2000 by James Cowan.

This course has been written by Stephen Taylor who is an OCA tutor. He
studied Fine Art at the University of Leeds and did postgraduate work at
Essex University. He is now a painter.

He wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the many OCA tutors who have
provided him with ideas and images. He says: ‘I would particularly like to thank:
James Cowan, whose ideas and help are present in many parts of the book; Ian
Simpson, who wrote much of the introduction to the course and whose own course
texts acted as the model for much of what you see here; and David Davies without
whose patience, good humour and experience as an editor this text might not have
been written.’

Other OCA tutors who gave special help were: Pam Scott Wilkie, Jacqueline
Watt, John Cartmel Crossley, Liz Elmhirst, Derrick Preston, Colin Allbrook,
Liz Douglas, Alison Dunlop, Pam Simpson, Alan Saunders, Charles Hickson.
James Willis contributed projects 7 and 8.

The copyright of all pictures in this course remains with the artists or
museums.
 Views from Bowling Green, St Ives, 2000
(the three layers)

The picture by James Cowan on the front cover was created from the three
watercolour paintings below. These were digitally scanned then each layer
was manipulated independently and merged by computer to create the final
picture. This picture can be run off as a print and at any size and on any
paper. James has also based an oil painting on the merged layers.
Contents

Learning to paint

You and your course

Histories of watercolour painting
Uses of watercolour
Characteristics of watercolour
Basic materials required for watercolour painting
Keeping sketchbooks
Keeping a logbook
Reading and books for the course
Extending course projects
Practicalities
On completing the course

Aims and structure of the course

Course aims
Course structure

Notes for students tutored by post

Assignments and tutorial reports
A working pattern
Student profile
Your assignments

Project and tutorial plan

1: Making a start
Project 1: seeing what the paint can do
Part 1: simple shapes – fish and leaves
Part 2: happy accidents
Part 3: options
Part 4: washes
Part 5: reserved shapes
What have you achieved in project 1?
Project 2: drawing and sketchbooks
Part 1: drawing and watercolour
Part 2: starting a sketchbook
What have you achieved in project 2?
The logbook and theoretical studies

2: Using tone
Project 3: pictures in light, middle and dark tones
Part 1: tones from a single layer
Part 2: tones in several layers
Part 3: lights and darks in a room of one’s own
What have you achieved in project 3?
Project 4: tone and composition
Part 1: dramatic rooms
Part 2: imaginary rooms
Part 3: wet skies
Part 4: imaginary skies
What have you achieved in project 4?
Theoretical studies
Assignment 1

3: Looking at colour
An introduction to colour
Project 5: some possibilities of colour
Part 1: still life with colourful objects
Part 2: colour with greys and browns
 What have you achieved in project 5?
Project 6: colour harmonies and colour invention
Part 1: a green scene
Part 2: six little pictures
What have you achieved in project 6?
Theoretical studies
Project 7: buildings in a landscape
Part 1: preparation
Part 2: planning
Part 3: painting
What have you achieved in project 7?
Assignment 2
Project 8: a portrait
What have you achieved in project 8?
Assignment 3

4: Working on the spot and from studies

Project 9: finishing on the spot
What have you achieved in project 9?
Project 10: using a diversity of source materials
What have you achieved in project 10?
Theoretical studies
Assignment 4

5: Widening your options

Project 11: mixing media
Part 1: coloured paper and opaque paint
Part 2: altogether now
What have you achieved in project 11?
Project 12: watercolour and collage
Part 1: papers and paint on paper
Part 2: mixing views and mixing materials
What have you achieved in project 12?
Theoretical studies
6: Themes and series
Project 13: your own show
What have you achieved in project 13?
Theoretical studies and your logbook
Assignment 5

Appendix 1: How paint works

Appendix 2: Preparing paper
Appendix 3: If you plan to submit your work for formal
assessment
Project 2: drawing and sketchbooks
[16 hours]

Part 1: drawing and watercolour

pencil–inks–ink, pencil and paint
Part 2: starting a sketchbook
a series of studies

Materials you will need for this project

• your usual paints and brushes
• an HB pencil
• your A4 sketchbook
• some black waterproof ink
• a nib pen with a medium standard nib
• a waterproof pen (there are many brands available and you can start
with any of them).

Part 1: drawing and watercolour

[5 hours]

We described earlier how English watercolour is said to have moved from

tinted drawings in the eighteenth century to the ‘pure’ watercolour technique
of Cotman and Turner at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

‘Pure’ watercolour
The idea that Cotman's mature style is ‘pure’ depends not only on the fact
that he used transparent washes with little or no body colour; it also implies a
minimum of drawing in either pencil or ink; these play no visible role in the
finished work. Some authors have made comparisons between this early
nineteenth century English style and that of some traditional Chinese and
Japanese watercolour, regarding their purity of means as an ideal in itself.
Of course pictures made with simple transparent paint alone can have a
peculiar beauty. There are wonderful works made this way in many
traditions, and watercolour is often used like this by modern artists. However
drawing, or more generally line, can also play an active and visible role. Lines
of all sorts can be vital to the success of a picture. For example look at p 81, 93,
121 & 168 of Reynolds.

Rowlandson (p 81) used ink and watercolour lines throughout; looking at the
stair handrail you could almost say the subject of the painting is a line. On the
other hand, Bonington (p 93) carefully integrated coloured watercolour lines
within coloured areas to bring out their shape and texture; notice the
scratched lines probably done with a brush handle in the lower left-hand
corner. Thick broken lines are used as part of an imaginative mixed technique
in Samuel Palmer’s painting (p 121). And a similar equality of effect of line
and colour can be seen in John Marin's cityscape (p 168). The illustrations in
this course book provide other examples.
In your own painting, be prepared to use drawing in any way you like to get
the effect you want. It is only by experimenting that you can discover the
potential of drawing for yourself.

Pencil [2 – 3 hours drawing and painting]

You may have already used pencil drawing as a guideline. In this exercise
you consider two different approaches to painting over pencil drawing used
as a ‘guide’. You need an A4 sketchbook, an HB pencil and your usual paints,
brushes and water.

1: Simple solid objects Look around where you live for two pieces of
furniture next to or overlapping each other: a chair and a table perhaps, or a
cupboard and an open door. It doesn’t matter what you choose as long as you
have simple shapes and perhaps a bit of wall and floor. You will be using
your objects for several sketches. The next two sketches show how little detail
you need.

On half a page of your sketchbook make a light outline drawing of the basic
shapes of your objects. Keep it simple. If you haven’t done much drawing
before, don’t worry about ‘not being able to draw’. What matters is just to
bring out the general shape. Don’t worry too much about getting the
perspective precisely right either. Draw lightly and use a rubber if you wish.

On the other half of the same page, make a second drawing of the same or
very similar objects. When you have finished you should have two little
groups of objects.

Choose a colour. Then, with a small sable or similar brush, paint two pictures.
Fill in one of your drawings slowly, carefully trying to work up to the outlines
you have drawn. Take your time. Let each layer dry before you add the next.
Use one colour to bring out the shape of one object and use a different colour-
darker or lighter-for the other object. Try a third colour for the background.
When you have finished you should have a small picture. Even if the detail of
your objects is not ‘exact’ the overall shapes should be clearly described and
reinforced by the painting. The next painting was done this way.

Paint over the second sketch very quickly, not bothering to fit paint carefully
into the pencil outlines. Work as fast as you can. You should find that you can
make a reasonable impression of the objects together, even though the paint is
not fitted neatly to the lines you have drawn. As before indicate some colour
differences. The next painting was done in this way.
When you have finished, compare your results. Under a heading of ‘Drawing
and Watercolour’, make very brief notes in your notebook and include
answers to the following questions:
• The first more precise method of fitting wash into pencil outlines can
be very useful for some subjects. What did it help to bring out in your
drawing? Is the pencil concealed by your paint, or does it act as an
accent to your painting? (Either can happen.)
• In the second, looser approach, how would you describe the role of the
pencil lines. Is there a sense in which the separateness of the pencil is of
interest in itself? Would this effect be stronger if you had darker pencil
marks? Two examples of paintings with visible drawing can be seen on
p 139 and 175 of Reynolds. (We will be looking at combined effects of
line and paint later in 1: Making a start.)

2: Complicated objects and textures Simple shapes are relatively easy to

follow with a brush. But of course many things you may want to paint will
not be simple, for example, trees, crumpled textiles, effects of water.
Sometimes it can help to draw such things beforehand, and sometimes
drawing can get in the way; it can literally cramp your style. Finding the right
approach is inevitably a matter of experiment and experience. However you
can quickly get an idea of the issue by making two very different kinds of
painting based on two different sorts of drawing.

Find some objects with complex surfaces, like a pile of clothes or some bushy
pot plants.
In your A4 sketchbook, quickly make a very rough sketch of the things you
have chosen. The faster and rougher the better. Allow yourself 30 seconds–
really! Put the drawing to one side.

On a second page try a more detailed drawing of the same subject. Try to fill
well over half the page. As before, if you are not used to drawing don’t worry
about perfect accuracy. The point this time is to accumulate lots of little
details. Once again, don’t worry about perspective. Allow yourself five to ten
minutes at least.

Now choose a single colour and varying the tone as you wish by appropriate
dilution of the paint, carefully paint over your second detailed drawing using
a sable brush. Try to be as precise as possible. After fifteen minutes or so stop
painting and put it to one side. It doesn’t matter if you have not covered the
entire drawing.

Now turn to your first rapid sketch. Using the same colour use your sketch as
a starting point to paint in the main elements of your object. Stop when you
feel you have done enough to show the sort of texture or arrangement your
subject makes. This should take no more than a few minutes.

Look at the two pictures side by side and make brief notes in your notebook:
• Did the detailed pencil drawing help you paint each object satisfactorily, or

did you feel you might sometimes produce better results by not following the

drawn details so precisely?

• What are the advantages of the more careful method?

• What are the advantages of the quick method?

Inks [2 hours drawing and painting]

Pencil is sometimes a visible element in watercolour, but ink is almost always
visible. If you haven’t done so already, look through Reynolds and this course
book for paintings with very visible inked lines, or strong lines added in
watercolour. In this exercise we will experiment with some of the many ways
to use inks.
1: Painting over ink Take a pen and black waterproof ink or a waterproof
pen. If you have never used inks before, practise for a minute or two on some
scrap paper.

On an A4 page in your sketchbook draw one or two simplified pieces of

furniture, like the ones you drew earlier in this project. If necessary, do your
drawing in pencil first, correcting using a rubber, and then ink over your
drawing.

When the ink is dry freely paint over it to bring out the shapes. Use two or
three colours if you like.

Because ink creates such a strong impression you can use even quite dark
paint very loosely without destroying the effect of the drawing beneath. If
you wish, you can make very strong edges by making a change of tone or
colour fall exactly along an ink line. Work quickly and see what kind of
picture you can make.

When you have done your ink drawings, it is a good idea to investigate using
a brush to apply ink both undiluted and diluted with water to some areas of
your drawing. Then in a moment you will be able to see what happens when
you paint over an ink wash.

• How does your picture compare with your pencil-based drawings?

• Does the watercolour change the colour of the ink in any way?

2: Strengthening Inks can be used to strengthen or ‘accent’ a painting, as

shown in the picture below.
 A painting strengthened with ink by OCA tutor Liz Elmhirst

Draw a simple group of objects in pencil as before. Use watercolour to make a

little picture with at least two or three colours. As the paint is drying draw
some ink lines in one or two areas of your picture to strengthen shapes. As the
paint is not completely dry this will probably produce a bleeding of ink into
watercolour. Don’t worry about this, this is part of the investigation.

When the picture is completely dry strengthen the shapes further with more
ink lines. You now have two types of ink strengthening: ink-on-wet and ink-
on-dry.

Ink, pencil and paint together [2 hours drawing and painting]

Finally, in pencil on a fresh page in your A4 sketchbook or, if you prefer, A3
pad, draw an interior scene based on a view you can see in your home that
has several larger objects in it. Include simple and quite complicated shapes,
but don’t worry too much about perspective or quantities of detail; once again
it is a general impression you're after. Fill the whole page. You are going to
try out a range of methods.
When you have got something that looks reasonably like the room, ink in
some lines. You may pick out a single object, or a series of patterns, anything
you like. But don’t go over the whole picture with ink; leave areas to be
developed in other ways.

Next, using as many or as few colours as you like, paint in some of your
scene. If the colours run into one another it doesn’t matter. You can always
strengthen areas with ink or colour later on. Start to take the whole scene into
account. Perhaps you can strengthen those areas where there is no ink as yet.

Do you want to create some reserved shapes? If so, plan ahead and either
paint round the area or use masking fluid to be removed later.

If you put too much colour down, lift some off with a dry paper towel. If the
paint is dry, lift it off with a damp paper towel. If you do lift off colour notice
how tenacious the ink is. To create certain effects some artists put a part or
even the whole of their picture under running water. If the painting has inks
these will resist even this kind of treatment, allowing the picture to be worked
on almost indefinitely.

Let your picture dry and consider how best to go forward.

You are using this picture to try out what you have learnt so far. You are also
using ink and colour, so your picture is likely to be quite strong and colourful.
Feel free to use any method you like, just to see what happens.

Do you need more ink in some areas? Or what about Conté crayons or any
other kind of drawing material that you have? If you feel you need more
paint add that too.

Keep going until the whole page is full. When you have done as much as you
can, let the picture dry and consider your results.
Look back at the earlier exercises in this project to remind yourself of the
different methods you have tried. Then make brief notes in your notebook on
the following points:
• Some of your work may look good because the layers have worked
well together. Which parts of your pictures best show this kind of co-
ordination at work?
• How much dark ink line is concealed in your last painting? Could you
have predicted which areas of ink would show most clearly and which
would eventually be concealed at the start of the picture?
• Some parts of your work may look a bit overloaded. Specify two areas
and say how you think you might avoid this if you painted a similar
picture a second time.
• These last exercises were experiments with mixed media. Look through
the illustrations in this book and jot down two examples of work that
show mixed media techniques; we will return to mixed media in
5: Widening your options.

Part 2: starting a sketchbook

[10 hours]

On p 132 of Reynolds is a page reproduced from a sketchbook used by Eugène

Delacroix in Morocco in 1832. Delacroix was 34 at the time. He was a
sophisticated metropolitan who had lived in Paris for most of his life, with a
independent and modern approach to art. Like Turner and other North
European artists Delacroix’s visit to a Mediterranean country provided him
with ideas which inspired his work for many years afterwards.

Delacroix chose Morocco partly because of an interest in Oriental culture

common in nineteenth-century Europe. Like many contemporaries he
expected to find a land of extremes, an ancient theatre of the passions of the
kind imagined in the epics of Byron. He quickly realised, partly through his
sketchbook recording, that the daily life of Arab society in North Africa bore
little resemblance to the Arab world of fashionable Parisian imagination.
Delacroix had drawn and painted from life for many years. Using
sketchbooks to record and respond to things had become a natural thing for
him to do. By doing this he not only helped himself to change his vision of
North Africa, he also made a source book for future work back in Paris.

You can see that Delacroix worked at speed, catching colours and basic
relationships with both pen and ink and watercolour. He also added notes
and reactions. He collected objects as well as pictures. He took back with him
a range of clothes, weapons and everyday items to remind him of what he
had seen and to use as elements in his pictures. If you also consider that he
wrote many letters about his journey and, when at home, kept a regular
journal, you can see that Delacroix's activity as an artist was many-sided-he
would use any source available that would develop his art.

(Later in his career Delacroix kept a photograph album which he used as a

direct source for painting. In 1850 he published an essay on photography and
painting.)

The following pictures are examples from more recent sketchbooks. The first
three are pages from the sketchbooks of Nelson Rands; the last one is from the
sketchbook of Nick Jones.
Collecting and sketching today
Collecting material for your art is as important as ever. And there are so many
new sources to use. I will look at how you can use some of these sources later.
(Photography, for example, is introduced in 4: Working on the spot and from
studies.)

I want you to start this process now by beginning to use your sketchbooks on
a regular basis, if you don’t already. Think of your sketchbooks as part of a
wider activity of collecting and exploration. Collect all kinds of material;
anything that will help your development as an artist.

Often it is just a hunch that sends an artist off in a new direction; it can be a
sound or a memory, just as well as a view or an object. And it can take any
number of steps for an initial idea to evolve into a finished work. For
example, the British pop artist Peter Blake recently described making an early
collage of his, called ‘On The Balcony’:

‘I painted a group of children sitting on a bench surrounded by and holding all the
versions I could put together of ‘on the balcony’ so there is the Manet, and there were
photographs, there was a Picture Post cover of the royal family on the balcony, and I
just collected everything I could on the subject... [this] would have been 1955 [and] I
then worked on it again in 1957.’
(Interview in Modern Painters, Summer 2000)

Just before this collage he had painted two pictures of children reading
comics. These paintings were based on a childhood memory, perhaps sparked
off by something he had seen more recently, but the collage came out of these
pictures. Once he had started, the new work accumulated through a process
of collecting, assembly, reflection and painting again.

This sequence of events is typical and shows the very open approach of the
artist to his material. He obviously has an intention, but he lets new things
happen all the time. And, for him, collecting things is an important part of
this process. The great thing for any artist is to keep an open mind. Actively
look for new things-on a daily basis if you possibly can.
Looking around you
Some people undervalue sketchbook work because they feel they don’t see
that many things ‘that would make a picture’. There is a prejudice against
drawing and painting things on the grounds of a pre-existing idea of what
paintings ‘should’ be. No wonder they have empty sketchbooks! A more
creative attitude is to be open to new observations which, almost by
definition, cannot be ‘seen as a picture’ in the first place. The exercises which
follow help you kick-start an open sketchbook approach.

A series of studies
Over a period of at least a week make a series of paintings in your A4
sketchbook of some uninteresting things. Make at least five studies. Ideally
you should work in your sketchbook every day for fifteen minutes to half an
hour if you have the time.

Work anywhere you like but try to choose at least two quite different
locations. (There is advice in 4: Working on the spot and from studies which you
could look at now if you choose to work out-of-doors.)

Here are some suggestions for subjects. Of course if you can think of less
interesting things, do those instead.

• a plug in a socket • a sticking plaster

• inside a wastepaper bin • a cardboard box
• broken crockery • a bus shelter
• the exhaust pipe of a car • a bit of packaging
• garages • the pavement
• behind the shed • an electricity bill
• the underneath of a phone • a door handle
• somebody else's holiday photograph

Use any methods you like but try to combine watercolour with pen and ink in
some of your studies. This is an opportunity just to try things out.
Do not make perfect detailed drawings, but try to make informative ones. The
aim is to observe and provide yourself with information; this means that
notes might be almost as valuable as what you draw and paint. Add detail
where you feel it is important to the character of what you see, not as an end
in itself. Correct or change anything, at any point.

See if you can supplement some of your studies with additional information:
perhaps a photo, or even a bit of the object itself if this is practical. Stick this
information next to your study. Try painting from one of your photos if you
like. There is no fixed format for a useful sketchbook.

Remember your sketchbooks should represent you. This project is just a way
to help you start out without preconceptions. Later in the course you will
need personal work to refer to all the time.

Now is a good time to re-read what we said about sketchbooks in You and
your course. Your sketchbooks should be a kind of ‘visual diary’. As they
develop they should show your interests, your obsessions, your discoveries...

This is a sample from Painting 1: Watercolour. The full course contains 12 Projects and 5
tutor-assessed Assignments.