Bird Cages in Watercolours - and other great watercolour art

Every week Aquarellistas (artists who have watercolours as their main technique) in the South of France (Riviera to be precise 😎) get together. We work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, There is an inspirational subject that can be followed, but painters with other plans are most welcome too. The level varies from beginner to very advanced, but we have one thing in common - a passion for watercolours!

 

Michele painted this marvellous bird cage with a very fine pointed brush. The cage is empty and she adds a meaningful poem:
«  Ouvrez, ouvrez la cage aux oiseaux,
Laissez les s’envoler, c’est beau…. » 

(Open, open the bird cage. Let them fly, it is beautiful)

The subject for last week was 'Bird Cages', an interesting subject that connects to being imprisoned, and at the same time to being free. Technically it is a nice challenge - if only the choice on 'how to get those bars'. With masking fluid, a one-hair brush, oil pastels, the back of a pencil or another solution... And a background that 'goes on' behind the bars...

 

Celina's bird cage in progress, right now it is 50 shades of grey but that may very well be a reaction on the magnificent and colourful work that she finished (see below) and the background will almost certainly change!

 

 

Brenda's cage looks monumental. I am pretty sure it is going to be fantastic with a cool background! It was so much work to paint all these thin lines in stinky masking fluid. Next week you'll no doubt see what beauty this basis has led to

Anabelle and myself created simple but really good looking cages, drawing with the back of a pencil on wet, coloured watercolour paper, added more colour after drawing. But I forgot to take pictures. Must be the heat!

And in the meantime....

 

 

Celina finished her pour/doodle. Very multimedia now, and here's how she did it: a first layer of pouring with lemon yellow and a bright green. Then the second layer - she first covered some areas with masking fluid and then did some pouring with sap green. Not really happy with the result she decided to do some collage, added some homemade collage bits made from stencils - baking paper and acrylics andI then painted with black indian ink and made marks with a white gellyroller.>. And finally put on a layer of matt medium for protection. Now you know how to do one for yourself! 😍

Laurence is a new aquarellista - she really looks forward to creating landscapes later on - but patiently follows the program and as you can see, it works well, these spheres really jump off the paper!

 

"Blue Tea"

Before-mentioned Anabelle is also new, also talented - and she definitely won the 'painting with tea' competition last Tuesday 😂. We have that all, every week and we always find it very funny.

 

 So, these watercolours are partly painted with ginger tea - and as you can see it doesn't really matter. The spheres are super round and well-painted, so the chapters 'make a shadow by flowing wet-in-wet colours', 'white in watercolours is the white of your paper' and 'achieve volume in a round object' are achieved with a golden star.

These doodles are also by Anabelle, both are actually little stand-alone landscape artworks!

 

Cathie has almost finished her Valbonne commission. Isn't it fabulous! Look forward to the finished version next week...

 

 

Sonya is far away, she was in the rain, and renovating their house so took a break and painted this sturdy cat for a friend... Well done and keep us posted Sonya!

 We can sit outside when we work in the Hangar, the trees give us enough shadow to be (more or less) cool. For Judith the shadows are an inspiration...

...you can almost see them softly move in the wind. A fantastic, calming experiment - and very much in line with the 'veils' research, that is still going on. Funny how visually the yellow is much smoother than the blue, although they are painted in the same layering technique

Jutta worked on a (large) daisy. It is clearly a warm day in this painting, it must be created in the South of France 😎 looking very good and the masking is not even off! 

Last week's landscape is now finished. It is a deep and moving landscape with such a friendly blue sky! I love the effect of the white borders, they give the whole painting more perspective...