A winter background

A winter background

We are experiencing a cold snap and much as I want to be heralding the warmer days of Spring ,temperatures here in Mid Devon are hovering around zero. So when the weather is like this I love to paint wintry scenes with a lovely indigo/phthalo blue backgrounds, here is my quick guide for how to do it.

These scenes are made up in my mind but first I usually like a hare or fox to inhabit them

I also add a circle of masking tape to be my moon.

Next I carefully paint my hare

Now the fun really starts, you have to work quickly adding lots of pigment and lots of water. Paint in the sky

I take out some paint with a clean damp brush around the moon. I like to sprinkle water and salt onto the wet paint and create patterns and wonderful watercolour magic on the page.In this one you can see I have painted around the main tree and tree stump.

Now if you can leave it  to dry naturally and let the salt work it's magic. It takes longer to dry with salt on so just be patient, 

Then once dry I add the other trees, I paint clean water onto the blue and the sort of dab it off with some kitchen roll and hey presto, I have a winter tree trunk, now repeat this process as often as you want trees and branches in your piece.

Now add shading and detail to the rest of the picture , and maybe some white acrylic paint for snow, and voila we are in the midst of a big freeze x

 

 

 

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3 comments

Thank you for sharing your techniques. Beautiful printing.

Liz Curnock

Magical painting. Thanks for sharing the process, if not the magic!

Mary lowe

Magical! Your watercolours are beautiful

Wendy Armstrong

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