Watercolour on Location: Joseph Zbukvic

Lunch Sketch #6

I am getting more ambitious with my lunchtime sketching, this time I used real watercolour paper, taped onto board. The painting took three lunch breaks to complete also and not the usual one. I am trying to be more patient when I paint, I think three hours is a long time while professional portrait artists can spend one hundred hours easily on just one painting, I have room to improve my level of patience.

Neil Young

How to paint trees with watercolours

A nice nice video that offers tips on how to paint trees with watercolours.
See also: Terry Harrison demonstrates his top tips for watercolour artists from Terry's dvd available from www.terryharrison.com

More Alvaro Castagnet

Another Alvaro Castagnet video for my blog.

I've started painting again after a break for 25 years!
Well, if I think about it I have never really learned to paint, and therefore have never actually really painted.  I am older now and hopefully a little wiser, I can see that I have shyed away from painting because it was too difficult and that one actually has to make an effort to learn the skill, much like learning to play a musical instrument. It wasn't within me, I did not have the desire, but now I do and I want to learn the art.

So, at the moment I am using water colours and I have used acrylics last weekend, both demand different skills and I am enjoying the challenge of learning to express myself in these mediums. I find Alvaro Castagnet's confident style appealing, I like his fearless, cocky approach to painting in water colours.

Lunch Sketch #4

I must admit, it is hard to finish a sketch during ones lunch break; today it was complete sometime between - afterwork and the evening meal. The sketch took one and a half hours to complete, I am learning a lot by my mistakes and there were plenty!

Jeff Bridges?

Alvaro Castagnet Water colourist with Spanish flare.

I found Alvaro's technique very compelling when I stumbled upon it yesterday on YouTube. He has boundless self-confidence which is probably the most important lesson of all when learning to paint: to be daring and not being scared to make mistakes.
Visit his website here.

Lunch sketch number two

It may not be the best caricature I have ever drawn but I am happy to be sketching with my new mini-water-colouring set, a 'Field Box' from Winsor & Newton.

Obama?