Explore watercolour

n this my second article in the series, I’d like to talk about subtlety, in observation as well as in recording, since we must be able to see and recognise before we can paint. (above) shows some ways of bringing a little more finesse into the painting of a scene. After some limited masking of mainly thin slivers of light, I laid down an underpainting (more of this in a later article) of lost-edged colours using a 1in. hake, to establish the mood and major tonal passages and to provide unity before adding all the finite, hard-edged information, including pedestrians, vehicles, buildings and street furniture, in a second stage. There is a feeling of airy, open space in the boulevard in the top left quarter, right), where visibility is reduced by sheets of torrential rain with hazy-edged light illuminating the rain bouncing on vehicle roofs and bending around tree trunks. Low contrast from a series of fairly thin, almost monochrome washes and paint edges softened and worked with a damp brush, achieve the desired effect.