Tia Lambert - Flowers in watercolour

Tia worked with watercolour and with acrylic inks, The image to the left shows a partially completed painting of bluebells on the Malvern Hills. The image was based on one she had used for April 2012 on her first calendar.

For more information about Tia and her work you can visit her website http://www.tia-lambert.com/ 

This particular painting was on stretched 140lb NOT watercolour paper. She had drawn the trees before coming to demonstrate but drew the foreground bluebells at the start of the demonstration using a dip pen and sepia ink. She uses Daler Rowney FW artists acrylic ink as it is lightfast.

Drawing the bluebells
using reference photos

After drawing the bluebells she put the painting aside to dry and then showed us some of her sketch books and her very portable outdoor painting kit.

She then demonstrated various techniques for working with watercolour and inks. The images that follow show some of this and the application of washes to the bluebell picture.

Paper was divided into four quadrants
Washes of ultramarine in top two with darker paint dropped in.
The outline of the honesty was done in sepia ink.

The sepia lines blurred by using a water spray
White ink was added to the top right after the washes dried
Darker watercolour tones added to give 3D effect

Mottling added while paint wet
White lines in upper left image added with a reed pen

A final look at these three little paintings

Two more approaches.
The blue painting has tissue paper stuck down with
matt acrylic medium

Back to the bluebells
Note the premixed washes

Washes added wet in wet

One tree trunk painted

Several stages missed because of time limit
Some small pastel pencil marks were added
but they don't show up in the photo

This was an excellent demonstration of her techniques. It was good to see how she worked.