Just a brief one from me this week as I’m feeling quite overwhelmed with the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ that’s going on – most, if not all of which has nothing to do with my creative endeavours!
Cutting straight to the watercolour chase then, here’s a painting that I’ve done based on a reference photo that I took during our recent camping trip. The view is along Streat Lane, in East Sussex that leads to the campsite that we stayed at.
I was pretty pleased with how this turned out, though also slightly frustrated as it was very nearly a lot better too!
There was a delightful lattice work of shadows across this lane from the light piercing the hedge on the right hand side. Sadly, I lost all of this detail when trying to rescue the shadow wash that I’d applied, which was far too dark. In an effort to lighten it, I sprayed with water, but this then diffused the wash across my filigree shadow work!
There was no need to tell you this, as I doubt you’d be any the wiser, but as I consider this blog to be a safe space (relatively speaking) where I can be honest about my ups and downs!
Foreground shadows aside, I was pleased with much of this. For the telegraph pole on the left, which was one of the final additions, I used masking tape to mask off either side of the telegraph pole. I felt it was important to keep the edges of this crisp and straight and not to try to rely on doing this entirely freehand, particularly as I wanted to to have it lighter on one side than the other.
I’d not done this before but was pleased with how it turned out. I might revisit this view again, but next time try to retain the filigree foreground shadow which I think would really help to lift this.
4 thoughts on “Camping inspired watercolour painting”
Bravo John, pour ce souvenir de vacances, très belle réalisation. La technique du ruban adhésif, je l’utilise également par exemple, pour l’horizon dans un paysage de bord de mer. Mais ici, dans ton aquarelle, il me semble que ce poteau est trop “parfait” dans ton aquarelle, comme un collage surajouté (!) et que tu aurais réussi à main levée, un poteau plus dans l’ambiance du reste de ta belle aquarelle. Bravo encore John.
Bien amicalement Serge
Merci beaucoup Serge et je comprends que le post soit “trop parfait”, mais je ne me faisais vraiment pas confiance pour le faire à main levée ! Peut-être que la prochaine fois j’essaierai d’être plus courageuse !
It’s lovely. Would you be able to scrub out some of the latticed shadows with an eraser shield or some sort of masking stencil or would that take more time than a second version?
Thanks so much for this. I could try to do this but I don’t usually like trying to correct something as substantial as this (even if no-one else notices, I’ll always know that i messed it up!) – I think I’ll still try to come back to this view again paint it again from scratch!