How to paint a watercolour landscape - castle ruin -with Vin Jelly

In this video I demonstrate a watercolour of a landscape with a ruined castle which is part of a series I have been working on lately. It began with a demonstration for my watercolour class in which I used quite dull, colourless reference and aimed to introduce atmosphere through adding colour that wasn’t there and using exciting watercolour techniques and textures. The colour scheme is limited in scope to keep things simple but becomes richer by varying the individual colours. ie I used a lot of blue to create form and shadow at first but I varied the blues I used so they were not all the same. This is a theme I adopt for most of the colours I use within a scheme. I use salt and wiping out as well as glazing techniques where I allow the underpaint to dry before glazing. I also mix wet in wet on the paper. The pigments are Winsor and Newton artist’s watercolours and the paper is WH Smith spiral bound 300gsm not surface paper which I bought in a sale. It’s actually quite good and handles the paint well. I did stretch it before painting because I anticipated using quite a lot of water and didn’t want the paper to warp because this can cause troughs into which the paint will run and gather and that can prevent you controlling the washes as well.
The video is shot largely in real time but edited so that thinking times, drying times and salt applications, as well as hair dryer use are all edited out. In some of the more abstract areas I have sped up the footage slightly as I don’t think that much detail is lost in doing this. The video is intended for all but aimed at people who wish to see the processes involved in making a painting like this in real time. Seeing these processes, and with narrative, should help to illustrate how long these processes can take and how they look in real time.
I hope you find the video useful and informative and will try to answer any questions you might post below. Please like and subscribe to help the channel grow and develop.