by Jacky Pett

Kerry Bennett paints abstracts of landscapes using blobs of paint and a straight edge, like a credit card. She showed us how this works, taking the paint from a dish onto the card, then scraping along lifting at times. Then she took a large brush, slightly damp to move it around a bit.

For those who work in watercolour, I think this was mainly a chance to try a different technique. I don’t, so it was fascinating to see not only the way Kerry approaches the abstract element, but also the tips and tricks she gave to solve problems watercolorists tackle routinely.

She showed lots of examples, most of which I thought were gorgeous. Especially the more monochrome and the one that looked like a highland loch

Not just watercolour paints

Use anything you like, including salt, clingfilm, ink, pen. It will depend what you see on how you want to develop and what tools to use.

You need a dark colour in the middle, so start with cobalt and burnt sienna. Also a cerulean and magenta. Take some of all together on your card and make the first marks.

Fill the bottom with some water and tilt to help the paint spread. This takes time. Use a normal brush to bring some of the other colours in, and move the paper around (tilt) till it’s dry enough to stay there.  Don’t let it puddle when flat or you get cauliflowers.(hard edges)

Paper has three stages of wetness:

• Very wet smooth and glossy
• Sheen, you can do wet into wet
• Matt… too late. Dry completely and reset to add new wet in wet.

Putting salt on, grain by grain, gets a little bloom.

Alcohol gives a dandelion or lichen effect!

When dry enough, turn and wet the other half, and repeat tilting and playing with the paint effect. Decided she wanted a waterfall effect, so held board vertical and spray with water to make a gap in the colours that runs down the paper.

Use the edge of the card to create marks from any blobs of paint. If the paper is still wet you can do white marks, but judging the wetness is tricky.

I found it fascinating to watch how the colour spreads itself on wet paper. Kerry showed one example of ink on watercolour where the ink on water had made very realistic(if dense) foliage. A small spray bottle is essential equipment! Quink ink, or the one she uses has a white an purple vertical label and Japanese characters (or Chinese)

Quite often she ends up choosing the other way up for the sky from what she first thought!

The Paintalong

There were lots of people who showed their efforts on the screen, but I only managed to ‘collect’ one. I imagine those painting along had a lot of fun!

Kerry asked if we had a lot of water colourists. I’m not one, but seeing her paint like this, instead of the mostly neat and controlled watercolours that I’ve always thought ‘proper’, this approach I’d like to try.

Some more tips

• Size 10 zero black velvet has a lovely tip. Use older brushes to wet your palette box, and the nice ones to take the paint from there.
• Getting rid of cauliflowers: dampen, scrub and dab!
• Use a hake brush to throughly wet the whole paper. Use long brush strokes.
• Note that some colours e.g.  Paynes Grey dry a lot lighter than you expect.
• Ink on dry paper you can’t lift off. On wet paper you can get rid of most, but it leaves a patch.

all images taken as screenshots, copyright remains with Kerry Bennett