Category Archives: South Devon
The joy of Pen and Wash watercolours!
San Gimignano in Tuscany from one of my sketchbooks
Hi Everybody
I love to paint watercolours, and I have always been fascinated by this medium.
Whilst I get great pleasure trying to paint big and bold watercolours I often find myself returning to where I started , using a pen and wash technique.
The sheer pleasure of the pen marks casually laid on the paper which may or may not be important later on is such fun and then applying washes of watercolour over it in a not too rigorous edgy manner is very exhilarating.
Maybe I am easily pleased but this process, which has to be pretty speedy, has been the backbone of my watercolours for many years and I hope will continue to be so.
Pen and wash can be in my sketch books, or slightly more formally on Watercolour paper, I particularly like Arches watercolour blocks which are so great for use when travelling!
Let’s hope we can travel again soon though!
So here are some older and more recent Pen and Wash watercolours which I hope you will enjoy.
These first three were painted just this week from photos of previous visits and that is often how they happen. When I can in love to sketch on the spot but that is a luxury which I can’t do at present of course.
Two scenes for Yorkshire first
Staithes on the Yorkshire Coast
The village of Robin Hood’s Bay
And now a recent painting of Mousehole in Cornall and one of the River dart in Devon
Mosehole in Cornwall
Greenway Quay on the River Dart in Devon
A few on place in Provence
In St Paul de Vence
At The heart of Vence
Fayence
Seillans
And a quick trip into Spain and Portugal
Sintra
The Hotel Courtyard in Sevilla
Sevilla Cathedral
Salamanca
An finally , for now at least, a few of both Canterbury and York
Canterbury Cathedral from Mercery Lane
York Minster from the City Wall
The Shambles in York
I hope from these you can see the reason why I enjoy Pen and Wash so much. Immediate , Colourfull and fun to do!
Stay safe and well and maybe this year we may all get to travel again.
Brian
Season’s Greetings
Winter at Horsmonden in Kent Watercolour 14 inches by 10 on Arches 300 gsm watercolour paper.
If you are regular viewer of this site then my thanks for your continued visits, comments and likes.
If you are new here then you are most welcome and I hope you will find some watercolours that interest you.
It has been a busy year with a fair amount of travel to many lovely places and I hope that the Posts that have resulted from these travels have been of interest to you all.
Our visits to South Africa, Tenerife, France, Portugal, Devon and around our lovely County of Kent have given me many opportunities to paint and sketch, and to meet other artists too.
We hope to travel quite widely in the New Year and especially our planned Rhine river cruise at the end of the summer will take us to many new places in Europe and the opportunity to paint some watercolours as I go.
To end the Year I have included above this winter scene of Horsmonden in Kent, which I have just finished painting today. Although we haven’t had any snow as yet, it seems seasonal to paint a winters scene and to use it to wish everyone my Best Wishes for the Christmas holidays and the New Year.
I have a few ideas for posts in the New Year and so I hope before long to be posting again.
In the mean time, Happy Travelling!
Brian
A Sketchbook weekend in South Devon
If you are interested in any of these painting please email me at
brian@brianswatercolours.com
We have just spent a really nice long weekend in South Devon, based in Babbacombe where we stayed in the delightful Cary Arms Hotel, right down almost on the shore line at Babbacombe.
The Cary Arms Hotel in Babbacombe Bay
The view from our Balcony at The Cary Arms of a the Brixham Trawler “Pilgrim” built in 1895 and a Crabber sailing boat.
Its a good and interesting hotel with very friendly staff and good reasonably priced food too. From our balcony and room we could watch a pair of seals entertaining people on the jetty and the boats coming and going from the bay.
So we had some time for touring around and sketching too. Maybe some of these paintings will become larger works in the studio but I increasingly like to paint these little 9 by 7 inches watercolours that are so quick to do and which I hope capture the lovely places around South Devon.
We found two other very good restaurants too in Torquay and both are well worth a visit. They were The Orange Tree, and The Waddling Duck, where the dinner was really superb.
We used the ferry to go across to Brixham with it colourful houses and harbour.
Brixham.
A trip using the River Dart ferry to get into Dartmouth was great and sitting on the quay there was a great place for another sketch of the river and entrance to the Town.
Dartmouth Estuary and castle
Kingswear from Dartmouth
Straight across from Dartmouth in Kingswear there are more lovely colourful houses so they became a sketch too.
Greenway Quay seen from Dittersham
Just down the river is the little town of Dittersham and across from it is the Landing Quay for Greenway, the home until her death of Agatha Christie. We went to see it and the grounds and that was very interesting too.
We also visited Coleton Fishacre, a beautiful Art Deco period house on the coast near Kingswear. No sketches yet but a really lovely place to visit., and we spent a lovely few hours up in Dartmoor with its wild and beautiful scenery, so different for the Devon coast.
So now we are back in Kent with lots of good memories and photos of our time in Devon.
With so many great places to visit in the UK we hope to get to more in the near future
Thanks for looking at this blog post
Happy Travelling
Brian
PS There are many more of my paintings for sale at
