This is a simple approach to drawing this building in ink and watercolour washes.  I love visiting St Fagan's Museum of Welsh culture and this building is just one of many.  I drew this as a task for one of my classes and is not meant to be too realistic as in hyper realistic.  It is a watercolour sketch and as such requires a fluid apporach.  I used Daniel Smith paint and I used bottled ink.  I painted this on 200lb watercolour paper trying to used both sides of the sheet in the art pad (waste not want not). I find using pen and ink a good way to capture scenes quickly and with a style that I like very much. There is a link here to the history of the Building.  wollen Mill

This was to be a short experiment to continue in the same material as the Ludlow painting, gouache. This was inspired by a demonstration by Robert Brindley, which was featured in an Artist magazine. I am quite surprised how versatile gouache is. It dries quickly but mixes well. This example was on 200lb watercolour paper. I have been using both sides of a sheet not to waste paper! Adding more details with trees and twigs. Adding more sky and foreground tones. I used white, yellow and orange tones. Next, sticking just straight on the paper and build up the layers of gouache. This us a free and relaxing approach.

Having visited Ludlow, last month, this little painting was used to explore using Gouache paint. I used A4 black paper, white pastel pencil sketch and used some cheap paints to paint this scene. It is impressionistic and drawn free hand.  Realising that the white gouache was not opaque enough I used Designer's white gouache paint, which was what I needed, more opaque and mixed well with the other paints.  As this is an experiment, I am quite pleased with the result, I hope to use gouache more in my pure watercolour efforts. Below are some screen shots of the process used: I used black paper and drew outline in white pastel pencil.

This is an old drawing I was asked to draw for a student's daughter as a birthday gift.  I think I did this in 2017.  I wanted to add to this blog to show how involved something like this is. This was in fact my second attempt as the first one was done by scribing the paper and added graphite to make the hair more realistic, but after spending a week on it still was not right, so this then became a pure graphite attempt, and I was very plased with the likness. I used various pencil grades and I also used an fine pen eraser to create the effect of the lighter fur.  I realy focused on the eys as this is where the likeness really mattered.  

This pastel painting on pastelmat paper was one of the tasks I used for my classes.  I really enjoyed this one as the photo is one of my own and the way the pastel pencil was able to be layered on this paper so well.  A real find in terms of paper and method. I used watercolour for the sky only and used pastel for the mountains and the building the two mixed really well. I did this scene a few times now and each time I did get lost in the moment and found it so relaxing and made me relax.  Using these materials does give way to calmness and enjoyment.