DrawingTips

Q. Do you have any hints and tips for painting in watercolour?

Use a large brush and create an rough outline with the tip using a light wash. A wash is colour which has been mixed with water, rather than straight from the pan.

Think shapes, not lines. You are creating shapes. Shapes can be created with washes or, most effectively by leaving areas of the paper unpainted.

Mix up a large amount of a light wash as an undercoat for the main areas. Which are the main areas? Keep it simple. Allow the wash to dry. Admire the sharpness of the edges and the simplicity of your design.

As with pastel, reserve detail for the end. Begin with a very large brush and end with a small one.

Applying a second wash will deepen the colour of the first wash. (Remember to mix up enough watery colour so that the colour is even throughout.

Leave the highlights as white paper. You can always fill in unpainted areas at the end. Leave a white margin between colour areas to prevent colours seeping into each other.

Q. I need a large tube for keeping my A3-A1 size maps and material in. Would Heffers/Tindalls be best? Or somewhere online as Tindalls is quite expensive? Ellie

I am assuming it should be dust and water resistant - so a free cardboard tube with plastic inserts (which we get the canvas supplied in) would not be good enough. (Cardboard is also heavier than plastic.)

So check them out in Tindalls and then see if you can find a reliable company on line. If you buy online you run the risk of it not arriving on time, and not being the quality - sturdiness, resistance to squash, decent straps etc - that you had assumed.

I think that if Tindalls have what you want you should just buy it! It is likely to be with you all your life. Derek's tip though. Try not to store your maps (or drawings) in the tube for long periods otherwise they can get impossibly curly.

Q. I wondered if you had any recommendations for what sort of sticks/crayons etc might be
good for the class. I like the vibrancy of the ones that Katy uses for her pictures but
forgot to ask her what they are. Any help would be much appreciated. Ed.

A. There is a vast range of pastels. Most people prefer chalk pastels over oil pastels. Katy uses Unison pastels available at Tindalls (ex Heffers Art) in King Street. I prefer Sennelier which are thinner and sometimes slightly too crumbly. (You see your £1.50 crumbling to dust on the floor!) Also the Rowney Soft pastel range is worth trying. And actually there is no substitute for trying them out in the shop. I select individual colours on the basis of colour, intensity and texture (different pigments, different textures). You might buy a set if you are starting out then supplement them with additional colours. With sets you inevitably find some colours you do not use - green for Life Drawers for instance - and other colours you are always short of - pale yellows and flesh colours.

Do not be tempted to buy cheap sets. The pigment is often padded out with fillers which make the colours rather pastelly(!)

Q. How best to preserve charcoal and pastel drawings?

A. 1. Only draw on one side of the paper. Stack your charcoal drawings carefully, one on top of the other. Make certain that you never drag one out from a pile because this will smudge and ruin the picture. I keep mine in a paper folder with the year written on the spine of paper, and also details about the pictures such as the names of the models.

2. With some special pictures and those in sketchbooks, cut acid-free tissue paper and position on top with a smallest amount of pva along one edge. I cut a batch of A4 tissue paper for immediate use in my sketchbook.

3. If you intend to frame your picture, spray it with fixative outside on a calm day. Please do not use fixative inside the building. Fixative does seem to dull pastel colours very slightly.

4. For easy transport from the class, lightly roll the picture. Unroll as soon as you get home and place on a flat surface so it can regain its flatness naturally. Always store flat, never rolled!

More hints and tips here soon! If you have a Cambridge Life Drawing question write to me and I will try to feature your enquiry here

Derek

5th July 2007