Category Archives: Waterford watercolor paper

DAVID BELLAMY: HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Posted on by
6

It feels very un-Christmassy here in rain-drenched Pembrokeshire at the moment while I’m recovering from a fairly mild dose of ‘flu, and I’ll need to be in top form next week when my two over-active grand-daughters arrive. Jenny will be safely ensconced in Hampshire with her ‘little’ ones while I face the full force of furious chaos.

A fall of snow would help of course, with the distraction of building a snowman while I sneak in a quick watercolour sketch if I’m lucky. Plotting it is fairly easy as I can take the girls up handy toboggan slopes at the same time and where the mountains are in full view. The attached watercolour of the Black Mountains gives an idea of what can be done reasonably quickly. In cases like this where speed is vital then watercolour pencils are truly effective.

Note how the track on the right-hand side has been defined in the snow with intermittent stabs of the brush to suggest a winding effect. For this I used transparent red oxide, and also floated it into the dark mass under the trees while this was still wet. The background at this point has been kept simple with just a stroke or two of a wash brush, and the mountain ridge at the top has been lost in cloud in places. These are all really simple techniques which use the watercolour medium to advantage. This has been painted in the studio on Saunders Waterford 140lb NOT paper, but in a sketch these effects can be achieved in two or three minutes with watercolour pencils, working freely without any need to create a complete landscape composition.

Enjoy your Christmas and have a great time. I wish you every happiness for Christmas and 2026 and evry success with your painting.

DAVID BELLAMY: THE MAGIC OF WINTER TREES

Posted on by
4

The sight of a beautiful mature winter tree can bring such joy, and spending a little time ensuring your trees bring out those magical feelings is well worthwhile. When I come across a fine example I sketch and photograph the tree from different angles, and in the studio I keep these in a support file which is a reservoir of landscape features that I can add to a scene I am working on, or substitute for some blasted and tattered beanpole of an excuse for a tree that might be present in a scene.

These trees are part of a composition, and as you can see the supporting tree on the left has been left almost as a monochrome, while fading it out at the bottom, two effective methods of pushing it into the background. More colour has been brought into the trunk of the main tree, and this is something important to observe in a mature winter tree. The green apatite genuine in the middle section of the trunk gives way to light red near the bottom, while higher up against the light background the trunk and branches become silhouettes. The dark background bushes define the lower trunk and some of the thin branches have been created by scratching with a scalpel when the paper had dried. Watch for the character of the branches in your trees, and here you see how they have been drawn with a sinuous downward looping, apart from the topmost branches. The finer ones were achieved with a no. 1 rigger brush. I used Daniel Smith watercolours and Saunders Waterford not high-white paper.

Seek out these lovely examples and study the trunks in particular. I sometimes work more detail into really exciting trunks, and in Radnorshire we have some fabulous trees, so deliciously twisted and gnarled that you expect some witch to fly out of the branches. There are many examples of trees in my books: my Complete Guide to Landscapes is packed with them, and you can easily obtain them from Search Press.

I shall be giving a demonstration of winter trees in watercolour at Erwood Station Craft Centre on Saturday 1st November. This will include showing how to use a tree as a focal point, adding in supporting trees, suggesting distant trees, enhancing trees with colour, avoiding the silhouette effect, and so much more. Tickets are available at www.evenbrite.co.uk and if you need further information Erwood Station can be contacted on 01982 560555 Proceeds from the event will be donated to MidWales Mind charity. Bring a notebook, camera and any questions you may have.

Another demonstration that is open to all will be at the International Watercolour Masters 2026 at Lilleshall Hall in Shropshire on 18th May 2026. You can book my session there now at www.iwm2026.com

David Bellamy – Quick sketching in watercolour

Posted on by
4

Don’t you wish sometimes that life could be really dull, drab and boring? It can get a little too exciting for much of the time, leaving you breathless and with no time to sit back and recall all the fun you’ve had. Being out on the hills tends to energise me and is far more pleasant than sitting in the studio, especially when you have to listen to the racket of builders across the road with their loud radios and screaming stone-cutters. And I usually take a cappuccino and Danish pastry out with me anyway – it’s amazing how it helps the washes flow across the paper!

When I went out recently on the Brecon Beacons, I took with me some small sample sheets of the new Saunders Waterford High-White hot-pressed paper from St Cuthberts Mill. It really is delightfully smooth and as one would expect with St Cuthberts, it takes the washes well. As you can see in the rough sketch, the snow really does stand out on this paper. Note how the terracing of the rock outcrops appears in broken horizontal lines, with a few gullies sweeping down here and there. It’s important to spend a few moments observing these aspects as they give a marvellous sense of place in your work. This paper also works well for wash and line work, and should be in the art shops fairly soon. I can’t wait to work on some big sheets.

I shall be demonstrating at  Patchings Art Festival next month in the St Cuthberts Mill marquee, on the 9th, 10th and 11th June, so I hope you can come along and enjoy the event. It’s always a great pleasure to be there, with so many artists and crafts-people, and of course, all the materials to check out. And make sure you try out some of the Waterford HP paper!

David Bellamy – Painting on the Pembrokeshire Coast

Posted on by
1

Jenny and I have just returned from running a painting course in St Davids in Pembrokeshire, where we were blessed with some wonderful autumn sunshine for most of the week. Solva looked especially appealing in the clear light. The picture at the bottom shows me demonstrating with a ‘lay-flat sketchbook’.

  The lay-flat sketchbook is made up of the superb Saunders Waterford NOT paper backed with strong card, and designed so that each double page lays flat, so that it is easy to create a painting across both sides as shown in the illustration opposite. As the paper is flat and taut it is the watercolourists’ dream surface to work on, and I enjoyed producing the alfresco watercolour. Although this is not quite the finished painting it does show how I altered the strident background ridge above the buildings to become a misty, indefinite background which throws the emphasis onto the cottages. Changing elements of a composition to suit your creative ideas is fine. We did however, find one or two of our old favourite subjects very much changed by nature, though. The storms of last winter did much damage – by comparison a few artistic changes hardly seem significant! The line down the centre is the centre-fold. The lay-flat sketchbook is available from the Society for All Artists (SAA). Check out their site on

David Bellamy – Creating the effect of old stone walls

Posted on by
8

Writing blogs on a steam-driven laptop is an extremely slow process, and with extremely poor internet connections it can take me hours, which is the reason I’ve slowed down the number of blogs I do. Technology in Wales seems to be in some sort of reverse decline, and once the black-outs start hitting us it will be even worse. Progress is a funny thing!

Jenny and I enjoyed Patchings Art Festival, where I did two demonstrations in the St Cuthberts marquee to large, enthusiastic audiences. It’s always a joy to work with St Cuthberts Mill, and the Saunders Waterford High-White paper is superb for getting the best out of your watercolours.

I’ve just taken some new watercolours to Art Matters in White Lion Street in Tenby (Tel. 01834 843375) and this is one, showing a quiet corner of Tenby harbour. The lovely old stone walls provide an interesting backdrop, and these were done by laying an initial wash of Naples yellow over the entire area, and once this was dry painting in the stonework with cobalt blue plus cadmium red, to which I added a few drops of yellow ochre while the stones were still wet. I left some of the Naples yellow showing as light-coloured mortar between the stones. Once again I waited until the whole area had dried and then glazed it all with a weaker wash of cobalt blue and cadmium red. This both imparted a greater sense of unity and slightly softened off the edges of the stonework.

The background has been considerably simplified so that the emphasis is thrown onto the figures in conversation, and the surface was Waterford 140lb NOT, which is excellent for taking repeated washes if necessary.