Studio blog: mini watercolour landscapes

I was lucky enough to be gifted a tiny wooden watercolour palettes from a friend, who had filled it with Daniel Smith watercolours. I already had a page in an A5 Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook taped out into sections to do something with, so I decided to do some tiny paintings with the tiny palette!

I swatched the colours out, then painted the leftover paint randomly into three little backgrounds.

I then drew three different scenes on top: apples growing in our garden, Nelly’s Lake at Cragside, Northumberland, England, and the view from Hexham bowling green, towards the abbey, also in Northumberlandand. I didn’t think about the background colours, just drew as I normally would on a blank piece of paper.

After the drawing stage, I added more paint to complete the pieces. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the background colours merged into the scenes, and created some really lovely effects. Some of the background paints create shadows in perfect areas, like under the trees in the lake scene. I’m so pleased with how these came out, I will definitely be experimenting more with this technique.