Red Sun
I’ve been experimenting with landscapes this week – not something I’ve seriously attempted before. I wanted to create a painting with drama so I started by layering cling film over some washes of intense acrylic colour with a few garden leaves. I’m working onto a rough watercolour paper and after peeling the plastic film away from the almost dry paint I had some interesting organic patterns. This visual texture seemed like a good background for a landscape. I’d purposely kept the acrylic paint to the lower section of the paper so the textured colour would suggest undergrowth or maybe a rocky foreground in the composition.
When the initial layers were completely dry, I added the winter trees. I used a rigger for this – the long, tapering brush let me make quite narrow lines where I wanted the branches to become more twiglike. Some of the finest twigs were made by dragging the wrong end of the paintbrush out of the wet paint.
To increase the texture, as you can probably see, I scraped a little inktense pencil onto spots of water to make speckles of colour in the indigo watercolour sky.


The setting sun colours everything with a warm glow so I flooded intense colour onto the sides of the trees facing its light. You’ve probbly gathered by now that this is not a real landscape! I usually work from a source of inspiration but I was just playing here and having fun with my imagination. I loaded my brush with luscious paint and let the reds and yellows mix together on the paper. Finally, I popped a white mount onto the painting to see how it would look when framed.
We’ve been having very changeable weather here in the middle of England – I snapped a quick picture of some of our garden trees when the sky was a deep Paynes grey but the setting sun caught all the lime green of the newly opening leaves. It’s a complete change of palette but might be my next subject to paint. Nature always does it best!
Thanks for dropping by. I’ll keep you posted – Linda x




I was thinking about you yesterday (everyday actually) but yesterday I thought about you and watercolors. You have certainly been painting up a storm. They seem to be your visual art of choice. Over the years, I’ve learned so much from you. You work seems to be getting more and more interesting. I’m watching!!!!
Hi Beth – unike you, I do struggle with oil paints but I’m determined to get the better of them! My first love has always been watercolours. Acrylics are so versatile so I love them too. I went to art college at a time when oils were out of favour. In fact painting itself was out of fashion! I’ve been reading up about techniques with oils and glazing mediums and I shall try to put into practice what I’ve learned soon. I have all the gear but little idea what to do with it! I’m sure I just need to put the time in to see an improvement. Keep watching!!
Is this acrylic and watercolor? When I saw it on IG I thought it was watercolor.
No matter the media I still love the drama.
Hi Suzanne – Thanks for your question – it’s a combination of both but mostly watercolour. I use artist quality paint and use watercolour very liberally in several layers of washes. That way I can get very intense colours. The cling film effect works just as well on watercolour as on acrylic as long as the colours are strong and highly contrasting with the support.