In his contribution to the book ‘Mastering Watercolour’ Raymond wrote that more often than not our appreciation of landscape comes to us indirectly through paintings and photographs and that the manner in which watercolours were made in the eighteenth century is thought of today as being traditional. In a series of six articles that were originally published in The Artist magazine in 1988 he took a fresh look at the traditional English medium of watercolour to demonstrate its evolution to meet changing circumstances as he presented the wide range of options that are now available to the present-day painter.
In the first two parts, which are reproduced here, he began with a look at the basic principles of putting paint on paper and the use of colour. The first article provides a practical context to the essentials of watercolour art as he describes the fundamental methods of applying the paint to the paper and issues a reminder of the obvious characteristics of watercolour, namely simplicity, transparency and lightness of touch.
In the second article Raymond takes a closer look at colour and evaluates some of the characteristics and working properties of different pigments and what happens when they are mixed. For example, some pigments are more transparent than others which affects their behaviour as well as the finished result. Raymond advocates the initial use of a limited range of pigments until some degree of control over their use has been achieved through experimentation. Today there is an overwhelming choice of pigment availability in art supply shops but a restricted palette was often used by Turner, Cozens, Cotman and many other painters during that great century of English watercolour tradition between 1750 and 1850.
Alongside familiarity with the paints themselves Raymond also encourages a good sense of observation so that the observed colours can be split into their components and then matched using the pigments at the artist’s disposal. Once the rudiments of colour mixing have been learnt they can be used to produce whatever combinations are desired to suit personal artistic intention and style. Raymond gives examples of how he has used aspects of colour to translate subject matter into a personal vision of his own.
The evolution of the watercolour medium to encompass changing ideas is examined in more detail in the remaining four articles in the series which will be featured here in the New Year.