Pen and wash sketches on Hahnemuhle paper

With the theme of this month's art group evening meeting being "pen and wash" I took the opportunity to try out the Hahnemuhle Britannia hot pressed watercolour paper.  Rather than attempt a detailed painting, I decided to use slightly different media with three different sketches.

I used very wet washes of watercolour and the paper relaxed a little, but soon flattened as it dried.  I was able to add several subsequent washes in places, as well as lift colour easily without any adverse affect on the paper, and the colours stayed bright.

These three sketches are approximately 6" x 4", the images were from plein air sketches I had completed quite some years ago.

This is pencil and wash, rather than pen and wash

Black Pentel brush pen and watercolour

Rotring Art Pen (with water soluble sepia ink),
brown Graphik Line Painter and watercolour

Weird Wiltshire

We visited a small local museum last week to see an exhibition entitled "Weird Wiltshire" - a very interesting variety of work by local artists, including paintings, sculpture, mosaics, jewellery etc. There were certainly plenty of themes to explore as the county is noted for its ancient burial mounds,  the stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge, huge figures of white horses cut into chalk hillsides and an abundance of crop circles appearing during the summer months.

I was intrigued by the impressive 6 metre tall figure of St. George which towered above the
museum gardens - a must for a quick photo and a sketch to be added to my journal later in the day.

Pencil and watercolour

More mini collages

A few more mini collages on the Hahnemuhle 3" x 4" sample paper.  These are great to make when I only have a limited amount of time in my art space or have no larger art project on the go.  Again, scraps of hand printed tissue, book pages, lino prints, odd sketchbook drawings, postage stamps, fabric oddments, texture paste, gesso, acrylic paint, coloured pencil, gel pens.  Anything goes!

Another sample sheet from Hahnemuhle - Akademie watercolour paper "Britannia" - on which I have tried out watercolour paints, watercolour markers and a couple of small ink and gouache resist images. These all worked well and I was particularly pleased that the latter came out so well - I have tried this technique on Bockingford paper, but when I washed off the gouache all the ink went as well and I was left with almost blank piece of paper - all that work down the drain!

April Sketch Outing

The forecast was "cloudy with rain later", but we had beautiful sunshine for this month's outing in Old Town Gardens.  The bandstand was surrounded with a glorious display of white magnolias and there were plenty of seats from which to work.  The nearby kiosk kept us supplied with hot drinks, "bacon butties" or sweet snacks - a perfect sketching location.

I worked in the Hahnemuhle grey sketchbook for my attempt at the bandstand, using a black (nearly dry) Pentel brush pen, watercolour markers in blue and burnt sienna with a light touch of watercolour. Later at home, I did some more work on it, adding white highlights with gel pen and gouache.

The Bandstand, Old Town Gardens

I only managed to complete the kiosk on site, the background was added later from my photograph.

The Kiosk, Old Town Gardens
Pen and wash on watercolour paper

A couple of us finished off the day by visiting Swindon Museum and Art Gallery to view an exhibition of paintings donated in the mid-1900's by a local landowner - these included works by Graham Sutherland, Ben Nicholson, LS Lowry and Henry Moore.