David Bellamy – Painting different sorts of snow

My snow theme continues from the last blog as we’ve had a considerable amount of snow in Mid-Wales in the last few days – about 12 to 15 inches and it is incredibly beautiful. Before the great snowfall, though we had a dusting of snow and it is this I will concentrate on now as it will hopefully give you new ideas and help hone observation skills.

This is part of the view from my bedroom window, and may appear unremarkable. It does have a number of lessons for us, though. Starting from the top, you will see that on the left the white moorland top is caught white against a medium grey sky, but as the eye travels to the right this changes gradually as cloud shadow falls across the moor. At the far right the moor is now darker than the sky. This counterchange effect is extremely useful to add interest to our work, especially in the less exciting parts of the composition.

Below that top band lies rough ground with dead vegetation. The dusting of snow has all but disappeared here but you can detect a slight warming of the colour. One way of achieving this in a watercolour is to rub a candle horizontally across the paper, then lay a wash which perhaps includes some light red to suggest the warm colour. Rough paper will accentuate this technique, and you can create the white pathways visible in places by combining this with masking fluid.

Beneath the band of warmer, broken colour the snow lies on a smoother field and so is more continuous. Grey cast tree shadows fall across it in places and there is an occasional patch of rough ground here and there.

As you are no doubt aware, snow does not always look a pristine white. Observe and analyse the scene before choosing your paper, methods and approach; alter your cloud shadows and move these various parts around to suit yourself. It’s great, creative fun, so enjoy it!

My Winter Landscapes in Watercolour has a lot more on the subject of tackling snow scenes

David Bellamy – Painting rough ground in watercolour

My work tends to gravitate to those places I love most – the mountains, the wild coast and remote places where nature is supreme, where the ground is generally pretty rough. Capturing this roughness in a painting can be very rewarding, and as rough ground is not found only in the wild areas it pays to be able to render this effectively.

In this watercolour of a barn on the Isle of Skye rough terrain dominates the scene. I chose Saunders Waterford rough 140-lb paper which works so beautifully when you wish to create these fascinating rough textures, and effectively does half the work for you. With the highest mountain I began with an overall wash of Cobalt blue, bringing in some yellow ochre near the bottom in a soft graduation. When all this was dry I then used a stronger mixture of the blue with little water on the brush, dragging it down in the direction of the slope to produce an overlaid wash of broken colour which allowed some of the previous wash to show through, thus creating the appearance of rough ground on the mountainside. I employed the same technique on the warm-coloured left-hand hill, making the contrast between the first and second applications much stronger than those on the mountain because the hill is so much closer. In front of the barn I’ve used a combination of drybrush and dabbing on a warm colour to suggest the rough grasses, over an initial wash of Naples yellow. You can apply this broken colour technique in many situations, but for rough terrain it is ideal.

This painting will be displayed in my forthcoming exhibition at the Windrush Gallery in Windrush, Gloucestershire OX18 4TU  Tel. 01451 844425 from Sunday 3rd to Sunday 10th May. Please note it will be limited opening on 7th and 8th May during a workshop. Opening hours are from 11am to 5pm The exhibition covers a wide range of subjects, including mountain, marine, pastoral and several overseas paintings.