I think part 3 of this course was quite important for me. The beginning focused on technical skills with mixing colour, and I enjoyed these exercises. I think I made nice progress in my use of the medium, colour intensity has improved and I can now mix and include a multitude of different colours in a painting. My washes have also improved and I feel much more comfortable with watercolours.

What I would like to improve on is the painting style. I think I have not yet really understood how to give room for the medium to develop its own life. I’m still too much trying to control, rather than letting watercolour effects do some of the work. To improve this, I think I will have to do more paintings on my own beyond the course exercises. Maybe choose simple topics and few colours and practice a quicker and looser style, just as my tutor suggested. I’m really eager to work with vivid colours, and the research I’ve done during this part of the course was highly inspirational.

But I will take a small break from coursework before tackling part 4. This is because part 4 is about landscape elements, and I want to wait until the winter is over before I get back to landscape topics. I want to make excursions outside the city to make new photographs and also to paint outside. Maybe I’ll change my mind later on, but for now I have different plans.

For now, I’m intending to switch focus from watercolour to the drawing course and complete its final assignment. While doing this and as time permits, I would like to review the basics in watercolours, making simple studies to practice washes and maybe also experiment a bit. I will also see whether I can include some research and exhibition visits.

I’ve also finally taken up the suggestion of having a small sketchbook that I can take always with me. But it is very difficult to fit drawing into everyday life, because I’m usually busy and stressed. The first two drawings were made recently during lunchtime, at the Ford Foundation building. This building has an atrium with tropical plants and trees, and people are allowed to sit and have a break. I drew the top of a tree and a flower.

While working on assignment three, I also made three small pastel studies of fruit. The assignment painting was so dull in its colours that I needed something to counterbalance this, so I chose arrangements in vivid colours. The next step will be to do this kind of mini-still life in watercolour as well.

A first attempt was made with the Lemons and Tangerines. As a start, I made some sketches and experimented with composition in my sketchbook. I had in mind to use a square format for the watercolour, but this meant placing the bowl somewhat awkwardly to the left or cutting the shade off. On the sketches it looked as if the landscape format was better able to accommodate the shapes of bowl with shade, but I found the square format more interesting and therefore stuck with it.

Recently I bought sable brushes, and this was the first time I used them. It made a huge difference. I used a large brush, which was just great. It was able to take up a lot of paint so I was able to paint large areas in a single go, but with its fine tip, I could also make very fine lines. I overworked the study so the difference is not very visible, but in its earlier stages the painting was really magnificent with the bright colours of lemon and orange against the light green tone of the bowl.

I read so often that synthetic brushes are comparable to natural brushes, and I have used synthetic brushes exclusively until now. But I think I will switch, because the difference is remarkable and I seem to get along much better with sable brushes.

The painting is a bit overworked and I think I will repeat it, trying to get the effects that I want with less layering. My main focus was on the tonal values and I think while trying to get these correct, I overcomplicated the painting. In particular, I saw that the green sheet of paper under the bowl had a dark tone where it met the white table, but under the bowl, its tone was lighter than the lower contour of the green bowl. I tried to capture this in graded washes, but these became irregular with brush strokes and unpredictable flow of pigment, so I added more layers which resulted in a dull tone.

The problem is that there are very soft gradations in tone which could be worked out more easily with graphite, coloured pencil or opaque paint, because these media permit more control and reworking. With watercolours, I have not yet found out how to approach the problem. There were these earlier exercises of monochrome tonal studies which focused on the issue, and I remember how technically difficult I found them. There was an artificial element in that they demanded to make a firm decision where one tonal area ended and another begun. But when I look at my objects, there are soft gradations not clear boundaries within a coloured area. So I’m not sure how I’m going to tackle this in the future.

But despite the overworking, I found the reflection and three-dimensionality of the lemon quite successful.

Roses

I bought a bouquet of roses – rose petals with a yellow inside. They look wonderful. I made sketches in coloured pencil and HB pencil before painting them in watercolour. The sketches belong to the drawing course, so I won’t include them here, but I’ll include the watercolours.

The first rose became a bit too dark for my taste in some areas. I still have to experiment with getting the tones right. I used Winsor & Newton watercolours in tubes and a big sable brush, with rose madder and Turner’s yellow and sepia for the background as main tones, plus chromoxide green and some more red and brown tones for the shades and the stem. With the second painting, I used fewer colours, trying to improve the clarity of overall impression, but this was compromised by the uneven background wash. Need more practice…