WATERCOLOUR PRACTICAL
In Ireland, winters tend to be mostly dull and damp and as a watercolour painter this gives me a great opportunity to play around with infinite varieties of mixes of grey. By March, however, I'm longing for some brighter colour and thankfully by then spring is making its presence felt. It certainly is a time of renewal, and as flower and leaf buds burst, I can finally dip into some colour. The light is different too. There is a clarity to it that sets it apart from other times of the year and the increasing temperature allows us to get painting on location again without having to painting. Getting outside to paint we are not just in front of the subject; it literally surrounds us and I am absolutely convinced that this, along with the sounds and smells, all helps to interpret our subject effectively.
