Bank of the Seine

Here is another little vignette from my sketch book I did last week. In itself it is nothing just a passing moment as we went down the River Seine. The picture will eventually be disregarded but it was not a waste of time. It interested me and hones your skills to draw and paint very quickly.

I entered into a discussion the other day about the need to learn the fundamentals about any art or craft. Specifically I was talking about watercolours.

The discussion arose because we had been looking at a nice piece of work that was spoilt (in my opinion) because the artist had not stretched the paper and the result in the frame was a cockled surface like the North Atlantic. I couldn't sell anything in that condition. It was a pure waste in my eyes as obviously the artist had a great deal of talent and had spent a good amount of time on the work which was truthfully unfit to sell. Learning the basics may be boring and it understandable that people want to just get on with...painting, playing music, turning wood or whatever but there are basic technical points that underpin all these skills that should be learnt from the beginning. It rarely pays to cut corners you end up cheating yourself.