Okay, so it feels like it’s been raining for ever, but that’s not why I’m browned off.

I’m browned off because I keep keep gravitating towards Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber in my watercolour paint box. Brown, brown, brown.

I learned a valuable lesson about water colours at art school. Colin McNaughton
, the Children’s Book Author and Illustrator, used to teach us one day a week. In fact it was he who is responsible for recognising that children’s books is where my talents lay. He looked at my portfolio and asked to see my paint box. He ceremoniously removed the black and the white and threw them away!

I was a little surprised at the time, but thrilled at the effect. Black water colour paint makes water colours look dirty and white ruins the essential water colour effect.

Colour is only the wavelength of light that you see reflected from surfaces. The light from water colours comes from the white of the paper. The paint is a thin translucent layer on top. The light from the paper shines through the paint in the same way that a light shines through a film slide to be projected on the wall.

I traded black for Neutral Tint, a a very dark blue/grey colour that I use for shadows. It works pretty well and can be used without dirtying up a picture.

My other teachers question whether I was colour blind and did tests on me. I was fine. Maybe no one showed me how to use water colour properly. Maybe I just picked up a load of bad habits and no one put me right. We are all a bit loathe to criticise an artists style for seeming stupid ourselves or for injuring the artist’s Ego.

I now realise that I use browns too much. Maybe it’s because I live in the northern hemisphere, where we are surrounded by dull light and dead leaves for more than half the year. Whatever, the browns muddy up my pictures, so I’m going to experiment.

I’m not going throw them away, I’m going to confine myself to the three process colours, Yellow, Cyan and Magenta. I’m going to mix my colours and try to keep them bright. When I’ve played with these colours before, I’ve always been thrilled at the brightness and purity of colour that can be achieved.

I’ve been using premixed colours from a digital palette in my screen for the last few years. Using colours that are ready mixed is, I suppose, a bit lazy. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.