For the love of watercolour

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Know your materials

■ Practise essential techniques, including scratching out, wet in wet and wet on dry, salt and splattering

Although I spent most of my working life as an illustrator, my journey into watercolour came relatively late in my career. I had always been a great admirer of the artists, Edward Seago, John Blockley and Rowland Hilder. I can clearly remember marvelling at a giant print of a Kentish oast house by Rowland Hilder that used to hang over the fireplace of my childhood home in Kent.

I always thought that watercolour was far too difficult and it would take me years to learn but, at the age of 30, I took the plunge and enrolled in a watercolour evening class at my local college. After one session, I was hooked, possibly even obsessed, as the tutor showed us how to paint a beautiful cloudy wet-in-wet sky in