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Posted
Cotman watercolours are student quality, so maybe if you went for artist quality? I googled the" Blue Rigi" such a lovely painting, maybe you can find a site that answers your question. But as watercolour is a quick , immediate sort of medium, my guess is he would have completed the painting quite quickly.
Posted
Cotman paints are a great starting point and theres nothing too much wrong with them as student quality. But, as Blue says, artist quality paints are better by far, and you will notice the difference. Buy a couple to try and you''ll see what we mean.
It would be impossibly to say how long it took Turner to paint a picture. How long is a piece of string? The trick in glazing layers is to let the previous layer to dry completely before putting on the next. Which can mean waiting 20 minutes or more before touching it. Factor that in and a painting can take longer than it first appears.
Be careful with glazing. It is a great way to add depth, but with watercolour too many layers can quickly turn your fresh clean colours into dull mud. Once you get past three layers, you could have problems.
Posted
Thank you .. I thought it might be a question that had no real answer. At the moment it seems like a flurry of painting activity & then needing to leave it for at least two weeks so that the paper & paint can become as one before going on to the next stage.
Upto now I have been trying to discover how he achieve the effects he did so haven't been too concerned with paint quality I'll try the artist's quality paints..I guess they would give me a purer colour? Do they contain a higher proportion of pigment?
Posted
strange as it seems student quality may help you..if you do use artists quaility you could choose one that has a good binder .I wont name the ones I preffer for reasons only known to my self,, ,I think that turner used his own mixtures from powders mostly earth ones with additives he knew well and were shared among his circle of friends in a secretive way.his bright colours were probably poisonous //today .I hear. "oh this one has honey in it and wets down so easily in my palette "
and.."" you know""I hate those they dry so hard in the palette "" of course the manufacturer makes paint to sell ,,,and ignore that one,
so saying all that ,,their artists quality paints that you can glaze over better than others .
I found out the hard way ,
you have probably guesed by now Alan Owen is an odd ball who ignores the advice given by others,, untill he has found it out himself , lad..you test swatches out with a light wash over with a soft squirrel brush ,then come back on here and tell me what you find.
you cant see the wind but you know it there when you see the tree bend
Posted
He did leave an enormous amount of sketch books, preparatory sketches & "colour beginnings" but nothing really about his techniques.As far as I can discover very few were admitted to his studio when he was working.
There seems to my untutored eye an enormous difference in technique between the sample watercolours he worked up to show customers & a commissioned studio work. There is anecdotal evidence that he could produce a sample watercolour in an evening when on one of his tours but I don't think he used the same paper.
The Whatman he reserved for the studio paintings( quite different in many respects from a modern day Whatman) has a very distinct character and was tough as old boots.I am using what I think must be a very similar gelatine sized handmade paper because on a good day can achieve quite a few of the effects even if one has to go slowly.
The comment about more fillers in student paints was a bit of a light bulb moment because it seems as though he excelled at manipulating depth, weight,viscosity & reflectivity. Thank you!
Posted
being in the paint trade all my life I have some experience of mixing from powders and using binders .but when as an apprentice the boss sent me out for a pint of beer to add to some vandyke brown crystals ,to over glaze some birds eye maple or italian walnut..it didnt all get used for the purpose it was intended .neither were the box of dapples, or sky hooks.,
Posted
Dragging the subject back to the original query
I attended a Turner study weekend at Tate Britain a couple of years ago run by Turner expert Eric Shanes. Apparently JMW would arrange a large number of sheets of paper side-by-side and would add a bit to one sheet, then move to the next etc. By the time he got back to the beginning the first one was dry.
He also made a lot of use of sheets of paper pre-tinted by hand, his Dad acting as his assistant on these tasks.
If you are planning a trip to London you can contact the Tate Works On Paper section in advance and ask to see some of his sketchbooks. Your own private view and all for free. They are fascinating!
;-)