{"id":237,"date":"2016-04-01T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/?p=237"},"modified":"2022-01-29T14:01:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T14:01:29","slug":"weve-never-had-it-so-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/2016\/04\/01\/weve-never-had-it-so-good\/","title":{"rendered":"We’ve never had it so good<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anyone taking up watercolour these days has a bigger choice than ever over what materials to buy and use. With that choice expanding all the time, I can’t help wondering how much of a good thing that really is. I’m a curmudgeonly old devil at the best of times, and despite having what I would consider to be a healthy curiosity about modern advancements, I’m a self-confessed dinosaur when it comes to new materials. I can’t help myself from feeling a nagging sense of cynicism when I read of a new range of colours designed to make your paintings better, or additives designed to make your watercolours wetter (surely, that would be water, then?), and can’t get past the feeling that they prey on the insecurities of the fledgling artist, and that what they’re all really designed for is to part anxious new painters from their money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t get me wrong; we really never have had it so good. Gone are the days when we have to grind down our own pigments to manufacture our own paint, and the vast choice of papers alone is quite staggering. There was, once upon a time, a colour called ‘Mummy’, which was made from ground-down dead bodies… as far as I know, Winsor and Newton don’t make that any more (they might have a secret stash of Soylent Green in the back office somewhere, though…).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core set of six colours that I use are the same colours I’ve been using for the last 30-odd years, with just a handful of extras that I pull in every now and then when the job demands it. For those who are curious, those six colours are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium Red
Prussian Blue
Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine
and
Alizarin Crimson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When someone recommends a new colour to me, I might try it for a painting or two, but pretty soon, I’ll fall back into my old ways, and use the colours that are most comfortable and familiar to me. I know that there are loads of alternative colours out there, and I know that my selection is neither surprising nor particularly original, but it always baffles me slightly when I see ‘new’ colours come onto the market. Instead of encouraging artists to experiment with colour, it worries me that such a barrage of new products are hailed as items designed to improve the painting process, when in fact they might actually be having a detrimental effect. Are those ‘new’ colours not just mixed from existing pigments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And don’t get me started on liquid watercolours…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who use them seem to swear by them, and wouldn’t go back to the more traditional delivery for anything. Because they are ready diluted, but also concentrated, they can produce extremely vibrant colours, and handle large washes with ease. There’s a technique known as ‘Pouring Watercolours’, for which I suspect they would be perfect, but I don’t think I’ll be replacing my Winsor and Newton tubes anytime soon. I told you I was a bit of a dinosaur…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone taking up watercolour these days has a bigger choice than ever over what materials to buy and use. With that choice expanding all the time, I can’t help wondering how much of a good thing that really is. I’m a curmudgeonly old devil at the best of times, and despite having what I would consider to be a healthy...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-materials","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}