Before the kelp-and-rocks watercolours I did (see video and blog here) I had sat in the sun looking at that big dark slab of rock that’s such a favourite of mine and done a few paintings. The session didn’t have an auspicious start as, when I turned from watching the waves over the sea wall, I dropped my pencil box with the bottles of watercolour; fortunately none broke.
I started with a line drawing using Payne’s grey acrylic ink, then used a wet brush to spread some of this around.
I added some hematite genuine and Luna black watercolour, and a bit more ink to re-establish the lines at the back.
I then wanted to add a little of the yellow lichen and greens on the rocks, and ended up overworking it (and I’m not showing you!).
I decided to have another go, this time starting with colour and adding the ink line afterwards, once the watercolour was dry. But that didn’t go quite to plan as I knocked over the bottle of ink. Splat.
I managed to pour some of the ink back into the bottle, and attempted to wash off as much of the ink as I could and dabbing at it with a piece of paper towel, without loosing the watercolour beneath. It ended up looking like this; I could possibly still rescue it with some opaque acrylic and/or oil pastel ( I didn’t have those with me).
I had another sheet of paper already taped along the edges and used the piece of paper towel I’d dabbed at the spilt ink to make the start of a third attempt. There’s a little inadvertent pattern (the same mark from stamping down on the surface without changing the angle of the paper towel, or varying the distances between marks) but I thought it a hopeful start.
I left it to dry and then added line using Lunar black watercolour (if you zoom in on the photo you can see the line is granulating, fragmented not smooth). I really like the result, and one out of three isn’t bad going in my book.
Here’s a view of the slab from the ‘other end’. When the tide is in, much of this is covered.
