It was a completely grey and rainy day, so I decided to continue working from photos. I chose two images I had made recently in New York, with blue sky and few cloudy areas. I worked on 28 x 38 cm watercolour sheets, roughly A3 format. I made 6 washes – three monochrome and three where the blue was combined with yellow ochre. There wasn’t that much of a yellow tone in the photos, but I wanted to practice the technique.

I found it quite difficult to achieve smooth graded washes. Mine were stripy and changed tonal intensity abruptly. So I tried different brushes, varied the amount of water, the angle of the painting board, and also experimented with sponge, paper tissue and wet brush to create the white spots for the clouds. I also used different blue tones and tried mixing in Payne’s grey. I think I need much more practice. Making washes won’t improve in a day so I’ll leave it at that for the moment and proceed with the other exercises, but will certainly get back to the topic.