Robin Holder

Robin Holder is, by his own description, a River Severn artist. Do take a look at his website http://www.robinholder.co.uk/ to see more of what he does and find out about the tuition he offers.

Kempsey Church in Snow

Today's watercolour demonstration was a view across the Severn to the church at Kempsey and was inspired by an oil painting executed in the field.

You can see from this image that his palette is limited. He used raw sienna, raw umber and cerulian blue. An advantage with using insoluble pigments is they can be lifted out and that's how the white highlights on the near river bank have been achieved.

Robin used a very heavy Arches paper stapled to his board. He stretches paper by wetting both sides of the paper but doesn't leave it to soak in a bath. Instead he lays it wet on the board and leaves it for about 20 minutes or so. He then lifts it and relays it and then staples it down. He prefers this as and found pigment washed over gummed paper tended to creep back into the edges of his painting.

The drawing on the paper is usually minimal and very feint. He used quite bold lines in preparing for today's demonstration so we could see. The first step after drawing was to wash clear water across the paper and then he touched in pigment with a very lightly - letting the brush just touch the water and not pressing down into the paper.

Judging when more paint can be added in a particular area seems to be an essential skill. I noticed Robin frequenly bent down to look across the surface to see how much sheen was evident.

Here are a few more pictures to show the progression of the demonstration.