Saucer Sketches: Greens and Blues

Some of my favourite watercolours are in the green and blue range so I had great fun with this week's quick sketch. I was going to draw another scene, but as I sketched the curves that I wanted the hills to take, I realised that I liked the curves as they were. When I added more, they turned into something resembling the swirls in a glass marble. It was a very relaxing sketch and a joy to colour with some of my favourite Roman Szmal paints, to find out which ones please read on.

I was going to do a lengthier post this week, including some of my recent Black Friday purchases, but some utter swines in London appear to have obtained my bank card details and having sorted the card issue I've now got to check everything is virus free and change all my passwords.

Ne'er-do-wells aside, here's the latest sketch:

The background is coloured in the lovely Ultramarine Ash by Winsor and Newton. It has a low tinting strength and so is very handy for washes of pale blue, such as skies or watery backgrounds. Of course, skies and watery backgrounds appear to be one and the same in 2024. The pigments in Ultramarine Ash are PB29 and PG23.

I used three of my favourite Roman Szmal colours for the swirls. The darker blue is Indigo Hue (PB60 and PBk7), The turquoise to the right of most of the swirls is Ocean Blue (PBr24 and PB15:3) and the green in the middle is Cobalt Turquoise (PG36). For a good look at the whole Roman Szmal range, I can recommend visiting Artist Pigments as they have very good swatches that really give a good idea of the hue and how much each paint granulates. They also have a ton of information on other paint brands and pigments in general, so are a great general resource too.

The Roman Szmal paints are always very good value and are sometimes on sale at Jackson's Art, who carry the range. They are available in hand-filled pans that can be quite sticky to unwrap as the paints contain linden honey. Apparently, if you put the paints in the freezer for a few minutes prior to unwrapping, they then won't stick to the wrapper when you remove it.

This week, I've stocked up on some of the Jackson's Art watercolour paper blocks, which I love to use for quick sketches (although today's sketch was painted on Bockingford Paper as seen in last week's post), so it might be worth picking up some of this if you're on Jackson's ordering paint.

For some beautifully relaxing videos about some of the Roman Szmal paints, I can recommend the Lily Moon Art YouTube channel, particularly the Trying Roman Szmal Watercolours for the First Time and Mixing Session Using Romal Szmal Watercolours videos.

Barring any more fraud attempts, I'll be back with a longer blog post next week.

Take care,

Emma