In the middle of our painting week a storm was expected in the evening. Thunder and rain were predicted and we sat at the dinner table when suddenly the wind started (what a relief from the warm and damp day) and dark clouds were coming in.
Most of us (painters) stepped away from the building to make pictures of these beautiful clouds and of course I did that as well.
The clouds were very dark but there were also bright spots of light, our pictures are really inspiring. In fact there was not much rain, just a few drops (there was more the next day) and even though we could hear thunder, the lightning was above the lowest clouds.
Of course I used my most impressive picture as my reference the next morning, painting on a large sheet of watercolour paper with a dark colour mixture that should result in dark grey or even black.
The painting is made with the picture as my guideline, but as our teacher and coach Ad van Aart always says, the picture may have inspired to make a painting, but the art happens on the paper. The painting almost painted itself, using my hands as a tool and I know that trying to correct what happened would have spoiled the whole image.
The result is even better than I hoped for.
After the first painting happened so easily and in very short time, I decided to try a second one, on a smaller sheet of paper, using a different kind of paint. This paint is made with two pigments and I hoped it would give me a nice stormy sky.
Unfortunately that did not go as I wished for. This paint works in one layer and adding more does not give me the possibility to make some areas darker. As I work on a tilted surface (both in my studio on a drawing table and on my field easel) the water that runs down the paper slowly takes the paint with it to the lowest point.
Finally I asked Ad van Aart for help, as this would never become a nice dark clouded sky and I was getting a bit tired. The suggestion he made was to let the painting dry and start drawing on it with charcoal or another drawing material. I decided on charcoal and started drawing in the dark parts of the clouds, using my fingers and a piece of eraser to get the result I wanted.
There was one last surprise, after using fixative for the charcoal, the blue pigment from the paint resurfaced a little and that gave just a bit more depth to the final result.
After all this I am really happy with both works, the watercolour that went so smoothly and the experiment that turned out great after I used charcoal.
The information about the materials I used in both works can all be found in my Tumblr blog.
If you are interested in my original artwork, please contact me.
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