Three watercolours of Corfe Castle

I actually made something approaching a New Year's resolution this year: to improve my watercolour skills.

To that end, I have resorted to photographs from the family album of our holiday near Corfe Castle last year. The photogenic ruins of the castle itself are the common theme.

Detail of the second sketch

Dual purpose sketches, they are both for the Twitter happening #buildapril (anything goes as long as there's a building) and, pure and simple, for practice.

1 - from the Station

This one has a few decent passages but it didn't work very well. It's overworked, too dark in places (I added white Conté to remedy some of that, and it has changed the character of the image). There are also a number of wonky bits, notably the station canopy, which I tried to fix and - of course, it being watercolour - only made a mess of.

I do like this source image, and am considering using it again in another media.

2 - from the Common

This one, I think, worked rather better, but I'm not entirely happy with the rendering of distance in the hills.

3 - from the town.

This one is the most conventionally watercoloury, I think - and that was largely the aim. It's also my favourite, although I could have done the foreground buildings better, I think. I used a far larger brush for this one - a lovely big sable that I've had for many years, rather than the small synthetic that came with the basic sketcher's set I was using. 

The practice seems to be paying off - along with the change of brush!