The Skaters Waltz

I am still continuing to embrace Winter this year! 

The other week a group of ducks  landed at our pond just behind my garden so I togged up and rushed over with camera and sketch book in hand, plus a bag full of duck friendly seeds, fruits and vegetables. The ducks were very appreciative and keen to eat the food but some areas of the frozen pond were VERY slippery!  I lost count of the amount of times the ducks ended up on their bottoms with legs splayed out beside them in their attempts to rush for the food! My poor camera battery gave up after just a few minutes as it was VERY cold  so I only got a couple of photos but not deterred I sat there with my pencil and sketchbook and quickly sketched the ducks in various positions for about half an hour until the food ran out.

Back at home with hot chocolate in my hands to warm up I started composing this painting using my sketches.  I painted it using the White Nights 36 pan palette I reviewed earlier today. I composed the painting so I could illustrate the vibrancy of colour you can achieve with these paints but at the same time show how you can also achieve smooth subtle soft glazes.

Skaters Waltz: Transparent Watercolour 21 by 9.5 inches

White Nights Paints Review

 At the end of last year I was sent a sample 36 pan palette of the White Nights Paints by Nevskaya Palitra, St Petersburg. I have really enjoyed experimenting with them. In Canada you can purchase them via Amazon.ca. They come from Russia so do take about a month to arrive.

The paints are very creamy in consistency and very rich in pigment. This allows you to get highly saturated colours very easily in your work. It also means that a little paint can go a long way when doing thinner softer glazes. 

Before using any new paints I like to check them for transparency and light fastness as these qualities are very important to me and to the way I work. Overall the light fastness is pretty good. I have done my own testing over the last few months and there is only one colour, the violet, that noticeably changed and this is the one that they stated on their box had a low light fastness. It has been over the winter though and it has been a pretty dull winter so I will continue to keep the colours up in the window for a few more months to see if any others change.  

There are 3 cadmium paints and a white in this set that I have not really used other than to test as they are opaque and I prefer transparent or semi transparent paints. That is just personal preference though. A couple of the semi-transparents are more semi opaque too so if transparency is important to you it is worth using the ones that are listed as pure transparent or applying them as the first glaze. I have included a scan of the back of the box so you can see the transparency and light fastness details of each paint colour. 

The 36 pan palette comes in a plastic box which is excellent, light weight  and easily folds down to transport or pack away. It also has 2 main areas for mixing colour with  dividers so you can keep your colours fresh and clean. 

Overall I really like the set. I will probably swap out the opaques and some of the semi opaques and pop in some other more transparent colours instead but I will certainly use the set again especially if I am out and about painting. 

I am working on a small painting using these colours and will post it later today.

A rose... with love

This was my demo piece yesterday evening at the Toronto Watercolour Society. It is created using just 5 colours: Perylene Green, Perylene Violet, Sap Green, Quin Coral and Quin Gold deep. I have put a new paint Along video on my website of the process. Maybe you would like to follow along and create your own rose to send to someone special this Valentines Day.

https://emotiveexpressions.ca/paint-along-with-ona/free-paint-along-videos-for-everyone-to-enjoy/with-love/