In April I was asked to do a watercolour demonstration for a painting/writing club. They were having a weekend away together in Bellingham. On the Saturday I went out with the group to paint various scenes of the local area. I’d read about Hareshaw Linn in the hotel guide book so I decided to make it my first port of call.
I decided to do several watercolour studies of the waterfall at Hareshaw Linn. It’s about 2 miles walk outside of Bellingham. The walk is lovely and the waterfall quite spectacular, especially after the heavy rain we’d had the night before. In total I did two sketchbook studies and two watercolours on Arches blocks.
Sketchbook Watercolours
My improvised studio was a moss covered rock which gave me a standing position to paint from. The watercolour I painted above is one from my sketchbook.
All the paintings were made without any preliminary pencil work which enabled me to paint very directly onto the paper with a size 20 brush. The paintings can be seen at my Studio & Gallery in Ponteland.
Since this weekend away I’ve painted a larger watercolour of Hareshaw Linn using the studies made on location. I’ve kept the palette the same and tried to avoid getting into complicated detail, maintaining the freshness of the “en plein air” watercolours.