Occasional thoughts and comments on watercolour painting and sketching. You can sign in to this page so your comments will have a username, or just comment as 'Guest'. Names do  help discussions though... :o)

I'm often asked how to paint more loosely - this is what I usually say .

A simple mod to a popular plastic palette to give deeper dishes for mixing larger washes

Summer had been threatening to appear but seems to have disappeared back behind rainy forecasts for July, but when the sun does shine the...

Fill a sketchbook and discover your surroundings.

As it turns wintery, plein air painting gets a bit harder to dress for and hands start to feel the sharp end of the chill. Not everyone...

Light, cheap practical plein air set up for watercolour blocks.

Skies are such a big part of landscapes and obviously turn up in most plein air paintings. This post records the result of an afternoon just painting skies for the fun of it. They're all 16x12" on Bockingford 140lb paper and mostly using just two colours - French Ultramarine Blue and a touch of Light Red to produce the greys. With two of paintings I added a bit of a foreground just to see what impact it had on how the sky looked, these appear immediately after the bare sky v

Painting demonstrations sometimes need different tactics so people can see -which brings some interesting puzzles!

While there's no shortage of subjects to paint, painting the same thing a few times can be fascinating.

Paul Dodd, a fellow painter more tech savvy than I am, sent me this .gif made of elements from some of my recent paintings. I'm more than...

The colours I use in my paintings

Painting a sailing Clipper from imagination on a Full Imperial sheet.

Stonehaven Art Club invited me to give a talk and demo on plein air watercolour and the puzzle was always going to be how to illustrate...

UPDATE 2: 10 April '24. I've bitten the bullet and started a new Instagram page under the username dannymcshane365 (you can't re-use one...

I'm personally smitten by watercolour to a degree that surprises and delights me every time I paint, so I'm trying to put that into words...

My attention isn't usually held for long by abstract art, but I've been surprised to find I quickly lose interest in hyper-realism as...

Plein air painting might be an acquired taste, but then it becomes an addiction.

A watercolour palette is one of those things that can be taken-for-granted simple or fiendishly fascinating to many painters. The...

Sometimes a plein air painting isn't quite what I wanted when I finish on site and I've no qualms about trying to improve it later. My...

Spent a chilly hour at Balnagask, Aberdeen sketching from the Car Park... Looking over Balnagask Golf Course to the 200m tall legs of the...