I have to confess, I've never had any formal art training so when my local art group enlisted the services of tutor, Jane Austin, to teach a water colour class, I jumped at the chance! Jane works with a wet-on-wet technique. It's fast, it's bold and Jane likes to work on big pieces of paper so it was already ticking lots of boxes with me.
We worked from a photo of an evening sunset. Your eye is drawn to the brilliant colours in the clouds, but it is the dark formations in the foreground that provide all the drama. These were achieved by mixing deep blues and alizarine crimson with small amounts of red and yellow. As the paint dries and the paper soaks up the colours, subtle variations appear which add to the depth and complexity of the subject.
The effect reminded me of my Wall to Wall series of hangings: the hand mixed dyes were taken up by different fabrics giving variations of colour and the discharge dye bleaching process revealed hidden layers.
My first attempts at this water colour technique were a bit hit and miss but I can see the potential and it has reawakened my love of hand dyes fabrics.
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