Fun in five minutes!

Either at the beginning of a painting session, or at the end, I think it is a great idea to have fun with a watercolour sketch that should take you no longer than five minutes to complete.

Take any subject and a small piece of paper and simply paint, fast and loose!

Try not to make the sketch perfect, don’t get fiddly. Look at dark areas, look at light areas and decide before you pick up the brush where you are going to start.

With this ballerina, I wet the tutu area before starting. I wanted this to be diffused and “fuzzy” looking.

Mixing up a grey, I painted the bodice onto the dry paper, allowing the grey to mix into the water on the tutu. With the surplus grey on the brush, I stroked it into the tutu to suggest folds.

I then applied burnt sienna onto dry paper on the hair. Quickly mixing up a skin colour with raw sienna and alizarin crimson, I painted the neck and arms, allowing the paints to mix. As the paint was quite bold in colour, I added a brush clean water to the paper above the arm and allowed it to run down through the skin and bodice.

With mixes of alizarin crimson and Ultramarine blue I painted shadows on the legs and minimal shadows detail on the shoes just to indicate leg position.

PUT BRUSH DOWN!!!!

Fun and only five minutes MAX!!

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