Having been given the opportunity and time to re-find my artistic side and creativity, I’ve attended several watercolour courses and classes recently. Watercolours are a medium I have always found difficult to manipulate successfully and I am really enjoying learning how to use them from successful professionals.

At my last class we were shown how to use clingfilm over wet watercolours to create unexpected and interesting textures in our backgrounds. This was great fun and I enjoyed playing with the idea once I got home, to see what would happen. I even tried putting objects such as leaves under the clingfilm to see what shapes and textures I could get. I was quite excited by the results and the subtlety of textures created.

I am, at heart, a lover of colour: all colours, bright and subtle, light and dark. So I naturally began to wonder how these techniques would work with the more intense acrylic pigments. I had a feeling that they would ‘glue’ the clingfilm to the canvas, but I decided to give it a go anyway. I was right: the clingfilm was almost welded to the surface of the canvas!

However, after I’d picked as much as I could off, I was really pleased with the effects. In fact, the tiny pieces of remaining clingfilm actually added another dimension to the piece. It also gave me an opportunity to play with the idea of negative space that I began to explore in #Inktober as there were some areas of blurred paint that had spread out from under the clingfilm and made random blobs.

The finished piece is an interesting combination of the colours I associate with the heathers of the Pembrokeshire coast; the random patterns created by nature, and the teasels that grow so abundantly in our hedgerows.

Next time, I’ll remove the clingfilm before the paint is completely dry and see what happens. The journey continues!