I have just returned from my holiday, I take a midori notebook as my holiday diary and to switch my brain off I paint swimming pools.
This year we returned to our friends Andrew and Hugue’s and their wonderful converted farmhouse in Umbria, Casale Monticchio, which sadly for us they are hoping to sell, so it may be our last visit. But whilst the girls were splashing around in the pool I took the time to do some watercolour sketches.
I find it the most relaxing flow process, just observing and trying to record and balance composition and colour ideas in the moment.
I may have got slightly carried away and cooked up some flour glue and mulched some tissue paper as I tried to mimic David Hockneys Paper Pools but on a much smaller scale. Staining tissue papier mache seemed like a good idea at the time. It was the first time I’ve ever made a flour based glue, you just boil flour and water and it forms a translucent roux and dries to be rock solid. But you can stain it with watercolours as it dries to mimic the water.
If you want to learn more about the paper pools and Hockney’s experiments at printer Kenneth Tyler’s studio in August and October 1978 in this article on Artsy explains it all.
Casale Monticchio is nestled on a slope on one side of a river valley and so is surrounded on all sides by wooded slopes which creates a verdant backdrop to the infinity pool, and the perfect tranquil spot to do nothing but paint. As a family we spent a very happy week doing as little as possible, just swimming and painting.