Moonlit Square - Finished

Well today has been another busy day over at the exhibition with visitors particularly enjoying the gold paintings and the hot tea on such a cold day :)
Thursday and Friday were a bit quieter which allowed me to make some progress with the ‘Moonlit Square’ watercolour and I’ve finished it off today, hope you like it :)

and then it was done...and...

Took off the masking fluid and added a couple of extra marks today, all done now and ready to be framed. I'm pleased with the water in particular...Hopefully it'll go down well when it goes on exhibition at the Farmoor Reservoir in late May, I'll post the exact dates nearer the time...

Here's the painting I'm entering for the Summer Exhibition at the RA, just before I wrapped it up in bubble wrap... As always, it'll be an exciting time waiting to see if it's accepted. On the one hand you dream of getting in and on the other, you try and tell yourself it'll come down to getting a bit lucky with the judges, if they don't like your particular style, that's just bad luck, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your art... No big deal, just one of those things, no need to feel rejected if it doesn't get in...but deep down inside, I really want to get in...:)

I need to take my painting forward and something like this would be a great boost of confidence...:) Anyway, I'm delivering it Tuesday afternoon and we'll hear back by the 1st of June...so time will tell. Good luck to all those other artists entering and if you didn't enter this year...start on that painting for next year...:)

Then a bit of detail...

Added a bit of detail tonight, most of it's in I just need to take the masking fluid off and then put the final glazes and marks in the white areas...I probably would have finished it tonight...but Jack seems to have "borrowed" my putty rubber, so I couldn't remove the masking fluid cleanly...never, mind, should get it all finished in the next session :)

First Wash...

Started on the watercolour tonight, took a while for the masking fluid to dry, so didn't get that much done. I'm quite pleased with it so far. It's doing to be tricky balancing the accuracy needed for the tower and boat with the looseness i want in the water and sky...I probably won't do much more with the water and sky, but I'll have to wait until the rest is in and the masking fluid comes off, to see exactly how much balancing needs to be done...

You’ll have to squint to see it…

I’ve started on picture number one, have kept the single boat, but gone for a vertical composition, so hopefully it’s a reasonable mix of peoples suggestions :)

Not a great photo I’m afraid, I’ll splash some colour on soon and that will hopefully make it much clearer…

The tower and boat have required much more drawing than I’ve done on my other watercolours, so I’m interested to see if I can keep the spontaneity that some of the other pictures have…I guess we’ll find out over the next few days...

Vote now!

I need to do a couple of pictures for an exhibition at the Farmoor reservoir taking place during Artweek this year. So tonight I’ve been doing a few sketches.

I probably won’t turn them all into paintings in the time I’ve got, so I thought I’d get you all to vote on which one(s) you’d most like to see…when I finally sit down to paint, I’ll see which one is the most popular at that point and paint it…so get voting…unlike ITV, this won’t cost you a penny…;)

1. a single yacht sailing by an interesting looking observation tower

2. a group of three yachts

3. a yacht hiding behind some observation sheds

4. three small yachts under a big sky