Season’s Greetings

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another week with me here at Loose Watercolours HQ. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful time, and managed to spend a little while painting this week, but no worries if not! After all, it’s Monday again, so time to start afresh and get those paints out! And this week is an especially good time to start with the loose watercolours – but I don’t want to spoil the surprise. More on that later.

It was so lovely to see so many of you tuning in for last week’s Halloween-themed live broadcast, ‘Halloween Cat.’ Hopefully you all felt suitably spooky and had some fun with the atmospheric colours and dramatic shadows we created in this one! I’ve seen a couple of your versions on the Beginner’ Facebook Group, and they’re all so good that I can almost hear the cats meowing from on top of the walls from here! If you had fun and would like to join in with this week’s live broadcast, it’s on tonight at the usual time of 8pm GMT, and tonight’s subject is ‘Glowing Candles.’ After all, with Halloween over, that can only mean one thing – Christmas is round the corner! And so it’s time to paint all things merry and bright. Here’s the link should you want to join in: https://loosewatercolours.com/live-broadcast/

This week, I thought we’d take a closer look at some of the tips and techniques that we use in the live broadcast – after all, we’re all here to learn, and what better way than to break it down in to manageable chunks?

Beginners often say to me, ‘I’m petrified to paint loose. What if I get it wrong? What if I can’t do it, and it’s rubbish?’

Around this time of year, you’ll often find me running several demonstrations and workshops all around the country, where I teach people how to get loose with their paintings. I’ve been doing this for a while, and it’s something I really love to do – travelling all around, meeting all sorts of new people, and sharing my skills in a way that people can understand – producing beautiful paintings along the way!

In this line of work, I meet a lot of beginners to the loose watercolour style, and more often than not, it’s the same few questions that come up time and time again. And whilst doing a workshop this week, that same old concern was raised.

Beginners often say to me, ‘I’m petrified to paint loose. What if I get it wrong? What if I can’t do it, and it’s rubbish?’

If you’re prepared to dip your toe into the water and explore the wonderful world of loose watercolour paintings, you only need some basic techniques to change that ‘what if?’ into a budding watercolour journey!

The good news with this style there isn’t a right or wrong way to do things – it’s completely intuitive, and you can shape things as you’d like in whatever you try to paint. And so my answer to those ‘What if?’ questions remain the same.

Anyone can do it – it’s just a matter of knowing where to start.

So let’s start together! Are you ready? Then let’s begin.

Watercolour Basics #1: Simple Drawings

To start off this week, I thought we’d take a look at the line drawing, which is, quite literally, the backbone of your painting. How else will you know how big you want that leaf to be, or how many trees are growing in that field? It’s always good to plan a little, even in the loose style, as a quick five minute sketch to begin can save a lot of problems in the long run. Now don’t get me wrong – you don’t have to do a line drawing – after all, the loose style means you really can freestyle if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. What is it that they in the Scouts? Ah, that’s right. Be prepared.

Traditional drawing, by its very nature, is detailed, which can limit our options for painting loose. And we want to get on to the fun bit, don’t we? Splashing paint down onto the paper? So we don’t have time for tight, detailed masterpieces – well, we do, but save that fun for another day.

So what do we do instead? A little something I call the dot-dash method. There’s not lots of lines, or rubbing out of lines involved – after all, these can lead to mistakes when painting loose. Instead, we really cut down on the amount of lines we use in the first place, which lets you create large shapes, simple drawn in position on the paper.

So watch the video below, and then draw the circle out at least five times on throwaway bits of paper. It shouldn’t take you too long, so keep practicing this throughout the week so you can really get the hang of the technique.

Don’t underestimate the value of learning exactly how to put the dots down and joining them up on your paper. It’ll create an guiding image for you to use, and the skill needs to be practiced to stop you accidently painting tightly later on in the picture.

So here’s the video – make sure to give it a go, and tune in next week for the next edition of beginner loose watercolour tips and tricks.

If you’d like to put your newly honed line drawing skills to good use, why not look through the back catalogue of tutorials that are available with a loosewatercolours.com membership? With over three hundred videos to choose from, there’s something for every taste. Here’s the link should you want to take a look: loosewatercolours.com/product-category/membership

That’s not all I’ve been up to this week. I’ve been out exploring in the countryside, and I came across this gem in Bottesford Church, which was the local parish for the Dukes of Rutland. Did you know that Rutland is the smallest county in England? I didn’t until now. Go figure. This impressive statue dates back to 1587.

And I even managed a spot of plein air this week in Stamford town centre! Well, as long as I could last without having to put an extra coat on…

That’s all from me, as I’m about to go and scavenge through my cupboard to find a woolly jumper or two. Now the clocks have gone back, you can almost feel the winter chill in the air, which means that the temperature’s really starting to drop. In that spirit, though, I thought that this week’s exclusive tutorial could start to look forward to one of the most exciting times of year – the Christmas holidays!

As always, this is an exclusive tutorial for paid subscribers as an extra special thank you for all of your support on this Substack. After all, I couldn’t run this without your help. So I hope you all enjoy painting along to some seasonal fun with ‘Snowman and Robins!’

Until next time, though, it’s goodbye from Toby and I, and we’ll be back in your inboxes very soon. And in the meantime, have a lovely week, and happy painting!

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