A pinch of salt and the sublime Monet

At the moment I am into a 3 week art class project using textures. In the past I have tried many texture techniques, but with acrylic paint; I have not considered using textures with watercolour.

Our first exercise was to try several different textures, and this is the result.

If you click on the picture you can enlarge it. Starting at top left and moving down the columns -

Pieces of tissue paper with starch based glue (e.g. wallpaper paste).

Pieces of tissue paper with PVA glue (acts as a bit of a resist compared with starch based glue).

PVA glue dribbled in a pattern and left to dry before covering with paint.

Resin sand - a gel medium with sand.

Glass beads - a gel medium with glass beads; a strong resist.

Salt sprinkled into wet paint, and let dry before brushing the salt away (rice will also work).

Clingfilm - in two layers. Let the first layer dry before removing the cling film, then apply more paint and cover with film again.

Using watercolour paint mixed with wallpaper paste, which enables patterns to be drawn into it whilst it is wet (also known as glue painting).

So now we are working on a painting using texture and watercolour with other media, but there are 2 more weeks to go before I finish it.

This year I have a National Art Pass which allows free entry to many museums, galleries, stately homes and castles, or a reduced price entry to special exhibitions.

Used it for the first time this week, when we visited The Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House (on The Strand in London). The Gallery has a fabulous collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, as well as from the Renaissance.

These are some of my favourites:

Frank Auerbach
Carreras Factory, Mornington Crescent 1961

Loved the very thick textured oil paint and monotone.

Paul Cezanne
The Lac d'Annecy 1896

Limited colour palette and the lines drew me to this. Very atmospheric.

Claude Monet
Antibes, 1898

Still my most favourite Impressionist! His work is instantly recognizable and they way he paints light is breathtaking.

There were some very small sketches by Georges Seurat, known for his development of pointillism. I was very struck by how good they looked grouped together.




So I'm going to collect some small ornate frames for my own (yet to create!) paintings, which I can hang on my wall.  Probably a very long term project!

We just had to visit the shop (well it would be rude not to!) - lots of lovely stuff; could have spent a fortune but restrained myself, and bought this fabulous book ...

well, it was on special offer!

I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible.
Claude Monet