Aquarel Present...

I know I said I don’t like watercolour painting and haven’t got the hang of it. Still, I’ve gone and taken a few more private lessons in it. Not that I’m actually learning much from them, because, as I wrote before, my teacher talks non-stop, just to get things off her chest; so I’ve got no choice but to calmly set to work and figure it out for myself. Every now and then I’ll say, ‘Have a look, what do you think?’, and she’ll nod and say, ‘You’ve got the knack. You know how to do it.’ But that doesn’t really get me any further. So I decided to make a gift using watercolours. It’s a set I bought months ago, and it’s no longer available in the shop. After sketching with watercolour pencils, I set to work with a wet brush. The white cat quickly turned a reddish-brown, so I had to fix that. I realised a bit later that removing it from the paper was the solution in this case, and the white in the watercolour set didn’t do much good either, so I got in touch with my teacher, who said I could borrow some paint from her; the tubes of white would provide better coverage.

I don’t enjoy colouring in a drawing, even if it’s one of my own, and when something doesn’t turn out right, touching it up is even worse. As I go along, I do feel that it doesn’t look like the watercolour I had in mind; on the other hand, these days ‘watercolour’ is simply used to mean acrylic paint, and it’s often not wet-on-wet at all.

I first stuck the paper onto a board, wet it down, and then left it to dry. That takes me at least a week or longer, because I’ve simply not got round to watercolour painting any sooner, there’s still too much unfinished work. And to be honest, I must also say that as soon as an idea pops into my head, I want to try it out straight away. So the work just piles up.

In this case, I didn’t paint wet-on-wet but simply wet-on-dry, so I diluted the watercolour with a wet brush and then applied it to the canvas. It’s already been two days since I took the top photo and the ones below; now the question is just how white the white actually dries. When I look into the small glasses where I’m trying to soak open the tubes and rinse the brush, it looks quite white, but on the paper it looks very different.

That’s enough for today. I’m going to varnish a frame first, and tomorrow or the day after I’ll carry on with this cat. It still needs a bit (or more) of touch-up here and there.

_{Materials: aquarel pencil (Van Bleiswijck), aquarel paper, aquarel paint (cubes Action + tubes Van Gogh), round brush (Van Bleiswijck) which isn't the best one, but Inam stubborn and continue using it.
21-8-2026}