Winsor & Newton Artist Quality Field Box

I've just taken delivery of an Artist Quality watercolour 'Field Box' from the Art Shop at No.5 Pier Street, Aberystwyth.  It's a lovely compact little thing, the Field Box that is, not the Art Shop. 

The Art Shop in Aberystwyth is stuffed with lots of lovely things, run by two lovely people, and Brian is uber knowledgeable. Indeed, it's quite scary what he knows.  And that knowledge and friendliness sort of gives the reason why we should shop local and not online.  Oh, and the price was keen as well.

This particular Winsor & Newton watercolour Field Box opens out to reveal 12 Artist Quality half pans, a natural sponge, two integral fold out mixing palettes, and a small pop out water bottle. The Field Box also comes with a small brush that sits in its housing, but when you take it out its in two parts, that push together to make a longer handled brush.  While the end cap for the Field Box doubles up as a water reservoir that clips back onto the main body.  So the watercolourist is self contained, with a compact and reasonably light portable studio. Oh, did I mention that it was nifty? Because this Field Box is nifty, and this watercolorist is well pleased! 

Photograph: Winsor & Newton Watercolour Field Box

(I opened some of the half pans in excitement before pausing to take the photograph)

I made a few alterations and additions to the set up: I've dumped the Chinese White that came with the Field Box and replaced it with Quinacridone Gold. This colour is a particular favourite of mine when painting Venetian scenes.  I've written out my name, and contact details and placed that under the half pans (just in case the Field Box goes missing or is stolen), and I've put together the names and colours on a small piece of card to remind myself what I'm carrying in this kit, compared to my main studio stuff.  With both the contact details and the watercolour palette colours: I cello-taped one side beyond the card, turned it over and done the same underneath, and then trimmed the surplus clear tape to fit. That should help with water spills and seepage when the Field Box is in use.

Although please note that I took the photograph before doing the taping. It's all so exciting, I just got carried away.  Indeed, I even left out the ArtRba bit and just used Roger Bennett!

Venetian Watercolour

This is today's output so far. The art was started while we were on holiday after I gave away a painting that Pauli liked. Drawing the Venetian scene using Yellow Ochre and a Daler Rowney Aquafine 10/0 'Liner' brush took about one and a quarter hours. It is painted on a 14 x 10 inch 'Lana' cold press 300 gsm fine grain watercolour block.  A block has many sheets of watercolour paper gunned down on all four edges so that you paint on the upper sheet and when dry detach that sheet from the block.  It means hassle free watercolour painting, without the need to tape the paper down onto a larger board. 

On this occasion, I'm using Winsor & Newton Artist Quality watercolours:

Winsor Blue Green Shade

Winsor Lemon

Raw Sienna

Yellow Ochre

If you can't see the whole photograph, click on the image and it should open full in your browser.  Blogger often crops photographs unless you resize them (small) in the full Windows online version of the page.  The photograph shows the three distinct stages of this artwork to get where I am now.

I've imaged the boat using a WH Smith watercolour pencil of no distinct labelled colour (when producing cheap pencils, they have to cut down on production costs, so they don't label them).  

The plan when dry is to detail the sea with the Winsor Blue G/S and the boat in green (mixed with the Winsor Blue G/S and the Winsor Lemon) and Blue Black.  The watercolour pencil outline of the boat, should in the main, wash out.  That's the joy of using watercolour pencils to map out the whole or part of a watercolour image.  

The shadowing on the buildings etc., will be my usual mixture of Prussian Blue and Venetian Red. Well, with a scene of Venice, Venetian Red just sort of has to be used, doesn't it?