From Frustration to Innovation: Saving a Watercolour Painting Gone Wrong

As artists, we often stumble upon unexpected challenges that lead to creative solutions. I want to share a recent experience that turned a potential disaster into an interesting experiment with old watercolour paper and ground.

Lately, I've been on a mission to use up my old/unused art supplies – particularly my watercolour paper stash. During a recent Wednesday Wanderers session, I pulled out what I thought was my trusty Bockingford paper, a brand I've always appreciated for its forgiving nature. Oh, how wrong I was!

The Problem

As soon as I began applying my usual semi wet-on-wet technique for the background, I knew something was off. Instead of the familiar behavior I expected, the paper acted more like blotting paper – greedily soaking up every drop of pigment. The whole sheet remained stubbornly wet throughout the entire session. Even after drying, the paper was noticeably warped.

I suspected this must have been a forgotten sheet from an ancient pad, likely suffering from deteriorated sizing. But rather than consigning my work to the bin, I saw an opportunity for experimentation.

The Solution

Remember that watercolour ground I'd recently purchased for the VAS 9 by 5 exhibition to paint on wood? That became my saving grace. I decided to apply two very light coats to the troubled paper. While this process did lift some of the original colour (an expected side effect). 

The improvement in the paper's surface was remarkable.

The Result

The experiment proved successful! The watercolour ground not only rescued my painting but also gave the paper a second life. It's fascinating how often our artistic "mistakes" can lead to discovering new techniques and solutions.

Key Takeaways:

• Don't be too quick to discard "failed" paintings

• Old art supplies might surprise you (not always pleasantly!)

• Watercolour ground isn't just for wood – it can rehabilitate problematic paper too

• Sometimes the best discoveries come from trying to fix our mistakes

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with aged watercolor paper? I'd love to hear about your creative solutions to art supply challenges!

Originally shared on Instagram.

Waiting for better colour tools

Photographic software, particularly editing software, has been dominated by adjusting the RGB Red Green Blue numbers. But human perception of colour is slightly more complex in capturing filtered colours on a light sensor under bayer filters or viewing a screen of  LEDs light emittingdiodes, coloured red green and blue-ish . Further  many graphic artist had complained mixing coloursd in graphic software,  doesn’t necessarily create the same colours that you would expect in a mix using pigment paints.

In the end I had to just live with these limitations.

However things are changing a few graphic applications will now more naturally mix pigments for graphic software. What I wish to discuss here is a surprise addition to the update 1.21 to Lumina Neo. It includes a new section called Color Harmony. The two top sliders will be very familiar to ligthroom Photoshop users but with slight different colours on the top slider, which is not called Tint but Brilliance. Instead of starting at green and moving to a magenta it runs for a bluish grey green to a red. I suspect is colour harmony is very much inspired/controlled by the NCS system which still dominates many European countries.

Colour Contrast is something I will also discuss later as it deserves a bit more investigation.

Split colour versions of pigments, as warmer or cooler versions when mixing intermediate colours, have been a long standing practise of how artists have traditionally bought a lot of drama and harmony  into their artisticworks. On a flat surface, like a painting or photograph, cool colours tend to recede warm colours tend to come forward.  

Portrait photographs have known this even back in the film days. Using various filters of coloured lights to enhance their work and bring the sitter to life. In the smartphone world there are “warmify” apps to liven your selfie and deeply buried option on most digital cameras to alter th colour temperature of the photo output. Cannon is renowned for their “warmer” sensors. These digital tools usually apply to the whole image

Why these Split Colour Warmth sliders are different they change warm and cool components of your picture separately. This is a bigger deal than I originally thought. Here is a simple example of a young bougainvillea “bloom”, actually just new leaves that are orange before turning magenta, taken at my studio window. I’m a little amazed how much impact can be achieved when you separately adjust the whoops and cool have on the photo. I’m expecting to have a lot of fun with these sliders.

 

Colour Balance adds nuanced refinements, combining tonal/luminance steps with more detail colour adjustments. It is also an area I wish to explore further.

 Finally I should point out the Film Strip at the bottom of my screen capture above, this has been a long asked for addition to Luminar Neo. It allows you to see several thumbnails of adjacent images in the catalogue and you can rate and compare them directly here