I have done a few more tree metallic watercolours and again they do not translate well into photographs. I am going to have to play around a bit with lighting and see if I can get photographs to work better. I have decided that I would like to do some larger metallic watercolours. I am going to order some black Stonehenge HP watercolour sheets and see how that works. I have been in the garden and found some interesting roots I would like to draw. I may even try to do some root metallic watercolours. I have been drawing roots in an A3 Moleskin sketchbook which I really like to draw in. Below are some of the drawings and the roots that I want to work from.

  I don’t really understand my newfound fascination with watercolours. I have realised that there are a lot of interesting watercolour paints out there such as the Daniel Smith PrimaTek and A. Gallo watercolours which I have been hankering after. One of the points Julia Cameron makes in The Artists Way is that artists often deny themselves luxuries – things that artists like. We will spend money on other things but things that make the inner artist happy are deemed too frivolous. I decided that I will set up a fund that I will put a bit of money in every so often. I will then use this to buy the materials I really want, such as a set of A. Gallo watercolours or a nice pad of Arches or Saunders Waterford paper. This week I had a little tree production line going of trees in metallic watercolour on black watercolour postcards. They have the ghostly quality I mentioned before but this doesn’t come across in photographs. I remain frustrated by the whole tree carry on. I get the q...

  Since posting about interpreting dreams, I have not been able to remember a single dream which is typical. I’ve been working on my watercolour/drawings with mixed results. I still have not come up with anything that I am completely happy with. I want to submit some work for a fundraising exhibition for Leeds Poetry Festival. The work has to be postcard sized (A6) and I am not used to working on such a small format. Most of my work has a ghostly quality but this is lost in most of the watercolour postcards I have done so far. I am getting increasingly frustrated. I am very tempted to go back to drawing but I have a stubborn streak. I will keep at it like a dog with a bone until I get a result that I like. I am wondering if pastels or charcoal might work better with the watercolour so I might try this next. Below are some of the results so far.

  I’ve been wondering whether to get some Japanese Etchu cards to try, they look lovely with four deckled edges, but they are quite expensive. Instead, I bought some Hahnemuhle watercolour postcards to experiment with drawing and watercolour and I’m not sure I like the paper. I’m also not sure I like the result of my experiment either. The issue for me is that my drawing style is quite precise, whereas watercolours are a much looser medium. I don’t know if there is a way to get the two to work together. I’ve washed some of the postcards with watercolour and am going to try drawing the trees in with chalk and painting them in with mica in gum Arabic and see how that works. I’ll post the results (even if they don’t work).