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The superbly cool thing about watercolour is, once you've done all your research and preparatory drawings, design etc and you're hitting paper with water ... it's all on ... right now!!

The difficult thing about watercolour is that once you're hitting the paper with water, it's all on ... very scary ... right now!!

watercolour is FULL of dichotomies!!

ooohhh ... what to do?

here are 7 things I'm thinking while I'm painting ...

1. this part is wet but it's raw sienna and it looks stunningly luminescent and glowingly beautiful with burnt sienna dropped next to it ... let them mingle. i'm using harmonious colours.
2. this part should be a dark shadow so i'll drop some dark cool violet or a neutral violet mixed from my palette. i'm thinking about my value range.
3. I've got too many hard edges, while it's still damp i'll spray some water to get some of them to run and blend. I'm thinking about Edge variety.
4. In my focal area, i'm about to place my brush next to a vibrant green so I'll need some neutral lightish red next to it ... maybe alizarin with some of the vibrant green mixed into it or burnt sienna with a tiny amount of cobalt blue in it - depends on what palette I'm using. Here I'm thinking about complementary colours.
5. i've painted enough brush strokes with my 1 inch flat brush time to change to my number 16 round. I'm thinking about shape variety.
6. this part should be in the background but is has a light yellow pulling it forward, I'll neutralise it and make it recede into the background with a glaze of a dark coolish purple - perspective.
7. I've got a really super shape here, i'll repeat it 2 more times, different sizes, different directions and not exactly the same shape - repetition.

and there's much more as you can imagine.

Watercolour painting demands your complete attention, keep focussed while you are painting and stay in the zone. 

keep playing my friend!!​

One of the reasons I love watercolour painting is the speed at which I can achieve a painting. If and when I'm clever, I can have a painting today! It took me a long time to get to this point - I've been painting watercolour close to 30 years - it's not an overnight process!!

A huge obstacle for watercolour newbies is allowing the watercolour to have it's way. There's a saying "before I paint, I'm in control, once I put that brush down the watercolour takes over". The secret is, until you get a really good feel for water balance in your brushes, paint and paper, you need to let go and stop trying to control the uncontrollable. Watercolour, as it should be painted, will be difficult for you.

Embrace "mistakes" and "accidents", runs and bleeds and allow the painting to speak to you and tell you what it wants. 
Have another read of my webpage "About Me" and note the last sentence - "I love watching paint dry!"

Stop fiddling and controlling and start watching what the paint does and note that where the water goes the paint will follow. You'll start to notice the really cool effects and passages - watercolours will paint themselves if we let them and they'll certainly ​do it much better than we can!

When we're painting watercolour it's time to stop and smell the roses! 

The scary secret is, you might not get the results you wanted or expected and you certainly might not know what to do next - that's the shock of it!! Use your artist's sense of composition, value structure and design to decide next steps - does it need more darks or lights? are the shapes correct? is it balanced and unified, etc etc.

Make a cuppa and watch the paint dry!!

ciao i miei belli amici!!
​Amanda

​New Students are often fearful of putting the brush to paper. Some people are able to articulate this fear and its foundations, mostly not.

Many students tell me of the harsh and cruel comments they received about their art when they were young. From teachers, parents and friends – some well-meaning, some not, some from overt jealousy.

It’s not easy to stop this “stuff”, other people’s “stuff”. It gets in our head and, let’s face it, sometimes we can’t stop it in it’s tracks even as adults. Children don’t always have the same awareness (sometimes they’re better at it than grown-ups!) that perhaps the comments come from an adult’s sad place. Their bad day still affects us, it still hurts, we don’t understand – that’s ok!

What I want you to know is, you don’t have to be affected by other people’s fears or opinions. Mostly they’re irrelevant. Your own opinion and pleasure is what matters. As you grow, you will develop your art - learn, love and live your art.
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The best way to banish fear is to just do it – just paint, no expectations, just enjoy the process and have fun!