SUNDAY WORKSHOP November 29th 2026: Making a watercolour landscape painting from one of Clare's drawings!

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In this workshop I want to show my students the benefits of waiting before looking for details in a watercolour landscape painting - to hold onto the trust that the painting comes together with the final layer of paint. Here are the instructions my students will be given, along with a copy of one of three drawings (all of which you can see in the galleries, plus the process through the making of a painting from one of the drawings).

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·        Look at your drawing and choose the three main colours that will make up your first wash (your choice!)

·        Put the three colours on your palette and have plenty of clean water to mix with them.

·        Use your biggest brush and fill it with the wash of colour you’ll use in the sky area. Do not skimp on water in your brush.

·        Decide on any areas you want to leave white. You can lightly draw them in, so you remember not to paint them!

·        Place your first wash of colour across the top of your page down a quarter or a third of the way down your page. Do not let your brush run dry. Keep re-loading your brush so that this first wash remains wet.

·        Move on to your second colour, make sure there’s plenty mixed up with water. Load your brush and carefully and deliberately set your second wash across more or less the next third of your page (leaving any relevant light places white) again using your biggest brush and allowing this was to melt with the first wash.

·        Now lay your third wash of colour on the lower area of your page. Remember to not paint your lightest places and to keep the wash good and wet. Allow it to flow with the second wash. By the time you finish this wash, the whole page should be still wet. This means your first two washes were wet enough to have remained wet by this stage.

·        Working your way down from the top of your page, paint onto the wet paper. Paint some of the shapes you see from the drawing. Of course the paint will run but it will leave a ghost of itself.

·        As your page begins to dry, the paint you put onto it will move less. Some parts of your page will be drier so you can control the paint as you place it.

·        Develop your darkest places slowly and in layers. The darks can become themselves in good time – not too soon.

·        Now for the final stage. Once your page is dry (you can use the hairdryers if necessary) work your way across the page slowly and methodically looking at the clues left by your wet-into-wet, and finding the shapes and details from the drawing, put the final layer of information down.

·        If a shape looks to harsh, soften some of its edges. Remember to work your way around some shapes therefore revealing them. This is the layer which creates the details and unifies all the wet-into-wet layers that went previously. Your painting becomes itself during this final layer.