Livening up your autumn and winter landscape paintings

    How often do you find yourself in a superb location for painting, but with poor, flat light and dull, lifeless colours? This happens to me rather too often, and while it pays to go out to seek painting subjects in fine weather, this is not always possible. As a result we find ourselves with a scene that needs livening up quite a bit, and this is best done by introducing some exciting light and atmosphere, and changing the colours to a degree. In this watercolour of a farm in snow I warmed up the sky with a touch of alizarin crimson, and while the mass of trees to the left of the farm were still wet I washed in some light red to warm that area up. Cast shadows, created with French ultramarine with a touch of cadmium red liven up what would otherwise be quite a dull foreground.

   Every autumn I do a watercolour seminar, which is extremely popular, as it involves not just a landscape demonstration, but an illustrated talk and an opportunity to fire any questions at me. This year it takes place at the Pontypool Community Education Centre (The Settlement), in Pontypool, Monmouthshire on Saturday 1st November. The centre has tiered seating and excellent access roads, and the seminar begins at 10.30am and finishes around 2.30pm. The demonstration is projected onto a screen, with techniques highlighted and shown in enlargement, enabling the audience to follow each procedure more clearly, and ask questions as it unfolds.

    The illustrated talk covers many aspects of painting winter and autumn scenes, from initial sketching and how to work comfortably out of doors in the cooler months, what to wear outdoors, to painting back indoors with methods to make the most of low winter light to bring your painting to life; bringing warm and rich colours into a drab scene; making the most of snow in its various forms; describing those graceful bare trees; capturing the magic of autumn; tackling foregrounds, with examples of various types of foreground; and much more. Many watercolour techniques are shown in detail and discussed.

    To find out more about the seminar visit http://www.davidbellamy.co.uk/watercolour-seminar-2014/   Make the most of winter and autumn painting by planning your approach now.

Painting Winter Landscapes

    Winter is a time when most artists feel they should stay indoors, yet in many ways the winter landscape is more colourful, more varied and not covered in overwhelming greenery that also has the habit of hiding many fascinating subjects. Yet there are many days when getting out to sketch, or even just to photograph the landscape is not only rewarding, but pleasurable as well. You just have to choose your days, but to really make the most of it I have produced a package that should really help those who want to make the most of this fascinating season.

    Winter Landscapes in Watercolour is my brand-new 80-page book published this month by Search Press, and I have produced a companion DVD with the same title, filmed by APV Films to accompany it. The combination of book and film really does give you an all-round idea of how to produce a watercolour landscape and the thought processes behind it. The image on the right, for example, appears in both book and film, with the film showing me working on location, then in the studio. It's a farm on the Staffordshire moorlands, a simple subject which I have made even simpler by bringing in mist at the two extreme ends of the ridge and reducing the mass of white snow patches that were present. Sweeps with a large mop brush have created a drybrush sparkle over a lighter, earlier wash that had dried, and this is especially noticeable to the right of the buildings. It's an effective technique for suggesting rough ground without actually having to paint in a lot of detail. In the dark areas on and in front of the buildings I have left flecks of white gouache. This is clearer in the book and DVD, and really livens up the focal point.

    It's important to be well-prepared for working outdoors in winter, and this is covered in the book, together with ways of working quickly. But it's not all about working outside. The book and DVD are crammed with advice on painting the seasons from late autumn to early spring, and even if you don't intend going outside you will find much to help your landscape painting here. At the moment we have a special offer if you buy both book and DVD from my website at http://www.davidbellamy.co.uk/davids-page/  I really enjoyed working on these two projects as for me winter is a marvellous time to be out sketching, so I hope you will make the most of this fascinating season with these useful companions during long winter evenings.

Painting misty mountains in watercolour

    Jenny and I have just returned from Austria where we took a group to paint Alpine scenery. It was a great trip, with many memorable scenes, despite rather a lot of cloud and mist. So we had rather a lot of practice in rendering misty mountains in watercolour!

    Here I'm doing a watercolour demonstration way above the clouds, with marvellous views all round as the mountains rise out of the inversion. Alas, there were even more clouds above us, so we did get a little rain near the end of the demo, but not enough to spoil things. A cappuccino and an apple-strudel quickly restored morale.

    Mist on mountains can, for the artist, sometimes be both magical and a misery. I love the way it can blot out unwanted features, but as we all know, it often blots out the very features we want to see!

    There are a number of ways of creating mist in watercolour. In this scene above the Inn Valley I ran colour into wet areas to create soft edges to the clouds. I had to work quickly as I was painting on a cartridge book. With such a lot of cloud edges, inevitably some dry hard-edged before they can be corrected, but this is not usually a problem as they can later be softened with a damp brush when the paper is completely dry, though the odd hard edge here and there might well enhance the clouds. Alternatively a soft sponge is an excellent tool for softening off, but take care if you use cartridge paper as it won't stand too much surface friction. Enjoy your clouds!