Working with pigment - Ochre

The Village of Viens in the Luberon by Sandra Seymour Dale

Some of us have been on a short painting trip to the Luberon, where we visited the Ochre Factory and had an explanation (a very LONG explanation) about how to use pigments. And because I received a set of ochre pigments as a present, we decided to have a go at it last Tuesday! The recipe is easy enough - a bit of pigment, a bit of water and - for aquarelle - a bit of gum arabic. Or well, that's how we did it. There are other media, but they all contain white and we are sworn to transparency!!

Marina dripping some Gum Arabic on a bit of yellow ochre...

Anyway - it looked interesting, and felt good, concocting our mixtures like professional witches, and the results were actually quite nice... In the meantime I looked a bit deeper into the matter and it turns out that there are all kinds of other mediums to mix with. And interesting colours, as well as a better price! Worth some more study and we'll definitely take this a step further in a later stage, but for now, look at what we created! All with the same set of pigments, the same subject (the ochre landscape) and then our own personal interpretation...

Marina Teding van Berkhout
Lies Timmermans

Cathie van der StelMarina Kulik

Wet skies

Last week the Tuesday Aquarellista's painted skies, in wet-in-wet technique. And I took some really crappy pictures - with my phone... Which is a shame because the results were truly worthwhile and the pics don't do them justice. But I'll show them anyway - they give an impression of what you can achieve in terms of mystery when you drip bits of pigment or aquarelle paint on a very wet surface. It's been a worthwhile experiment for us, definitely worth repeating.

Below a very dutch landscape with a very dutch sky in a combination of wet and dry:

Marianne van Wijngaarden

We had an aquarellista from Devon visiting, Carol. She made several smaller aquarelles, we liked this seaview a lot!

A very nice cloud by Lies Timmermans- inspired by Adrie Hello
Two nebula-like skies by Cathie van der Stel


A heavy wet in wet storm! - by Brigitte Hole

Aquarelle portraits blog

To good to let pass... If you know good aquarelle sites, or video's, don't hesitate to mention them to me so others can enjoy them!
http://oncoy.blogspot.com/

Just one Picture

This very interesting face is painted by Bibbi Isaksson , one of the first aquarellista's. It inspired us to do research for wet in wet painting - and I will post about that soon - with pictures. Am now sooo busy still with the exhibition, sorry!