Painting of Sunnerås 21 November 2019

On Thursday evening, 21 November, we had a gathering at the aquarelle club. The theme for the evening was buildings.

Before I arrived at the club, I thought it was going to be a theme-free evening, so I was thinking of painting a portrait. When I came there, it turned out to be that we should paint a building. The others had already started drawing lines.

Usually, I am not talking about the others in the aquarelle club, but I will make a little exception to this today. Almost all others in the group had grand plans for what to paint. Many of them had chosen to paint street views with literally hundreds of windows. So how do you paint a painting of a street with hundreds of windows? First, you sketch hundreds of windows. Then when that is done, you paint them one by one.

I was a little late this evening and had not decided what to paint. So I sat looking for a good foto. I decided to make a painting of my house in Sweden. This is because it is relatively easy to paint. There are many windows on this house as well, but it is a doable motive. I decided on not sketching the house with a pencil first but start with a paintbrush. A pencil, you can erase the lines if you draw them lightly. With a paintbrush that is not possible for aquarelle.

For some artists, the material they use to paint a motive is irrelevant. That is different for me, I see the material as a tool, and for some situations, one tool is better than another. It is better to use opaque painting methods for technically complex motives. If you use acrylic or oil paint, it is easier to correct things afterward compared to aquarelle.

It is, of course, possible to paint a complex motive also with aquarelle. When doing that, I would recommend using a cellulose paper for the more exact motives, and cotton can be used for more impressionistic motives and techniques.

We talk about these things in the club, I talk about this, but it is not so that anyone is listening. That does not matter. We have a good group, and that is nice.

I painted Swedish houses several times in different techniques. I painted this house also several times. This time I did not use a pencil. You can actually see some of the sketch strokes from the first pencil sketch on the front porch. By not using a pencil, I forced myself to place the first strokes carefully. I had to plan the strokes. Because I wanted the white parts of the house to stay untouched white paper, I had to make a plan for how to paint.

When I finished making this painting of the house, I looked up, then some of the others were still drawing lines.