I just thought that I'd drop a quick note here to remind my website visitors that I also run another blog at www.robwighamwatercolours.blogspot.com. I started this other blog in response to some requests to detail how I paint my watercolours - so the blog features my methods and thoughts on painting itself. Hopefully it will appeal to those who are hobby painters or those who just have an interest in watercolour painting techniques. This blog, within my website, I use to introduce new paintings, sales or other features. I hope that, between the two blogs, everyone's wishes are catered for! But, as usual, if you'd like something else or have any comments, please just drop me a line...
By the way, the painting above is one I've not reproduced before on the website, as it is a copy, and not my own composition. You might recognise it as 'Chirk Aquaduct', by the incredible early watercolourist John Sell Cotman. It's a copy made many years ago and which I came across recently. It illustrates the point that it's perfectly OK to copy other artists' work, as long as its not for sale and you don't claim it as your own! In fact, this is how I learned to do watercolour - though these days all my compositions are my own.
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This is 'Anticipation', watercolour, 19.5 x 11" (49 x 30 cm).
This is a scene from my local woodland which I have long admired and wanted to paint. All the elements fascinate me: the yellow cornfield at left, the silver birch stand in the distance, the beautiful beech trees, the sunlight and shadow and the tangle of branches against the sky. In reality you can barely see the sky for the branches here but a bit of simplification has produced a view which looks like what I see in my mind's eye when I stand at this spot. I walk here most days with my dog, and I usually make a point of passing this spot: a railway line, now disused and removed, used to pass through the view in the shallow gulley just behind the person. Incidentally, the person is not me although the dog is Zena with her colour changed to make her stand out against the autumn leaves. I've waited a long time to paint this scene - I've been planning it for months - and I absolutely love the result. It's still on my board where I can see it as at this point I cannot bear to take it off and store it in my folder! This is the biggest painting I've ever created at 30 x 22" (76 x 56 cm). It was great fun to work at this size, despite my initial misgivings about it - the paper looked huge! Once I got started, though, I enjoyed the freedom of painting on this scale. This painting was commissioned by a client whose husband is a winch man on a Royal Air Force Sea King Search and Rescue helicopter and the painting was to mark his first operational rescue, now some time ago. It was an honour to paint this painting! I wanted to make the weather real and to give the snow a sense of movement - of blowing in our faces. I enjoyed painting the sky, in particular, allowing the paints to separate and spread by themselves to create the rich greys, and allowing them to blur into the snowstorm. I hope this painting pays adequate tribute to those brave men and women that do this job every day!
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AuthorA professional artist living and working in the beautiful north of Scotland. My work is realistic and quite traditional, though strongly interpretational in nature. My inspiration is the beauty of Nature, and the wonderful colours and moods she shows everywhere. Archives
April 2022
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