Today’s warmup exercise:

The title of today’s exercise in the book I have been following, the Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the Great Masters by Tony Smibert and Joyce Townsend, is Creative Blotting.

The idea was to drop grainy pigments, such as raw umber and burnt umber onto pre-wetted watercolor paper. From there, the instructions said, to wipe the pigments around, while drying and lift out pigments after re-wetting.

I tried this, even crumpling my paper towel to create a pattern.

Here is my first attempt at creative blotting, with the emphasis on ‘blah’. As with all these warmup exercises, one instance is not sufficient. I will revisit this technique with higher quality paper that has texture in which the grain of the pigment can settle.

Before I started today’s warmup exercise, I repeated yesterday’s to try to explore different ways to use my brush. However I didn’t think it post-worthy.  However, they are certainly more interesting than the blotting warmup exercise above.

Here are my brushstroke exercises: