Watercolour by William Turner,the great English painter

 I have mislaid the author’s name but  click on the link “Back to contents”and you will be taken to his excellent  site

General Needs

To take up watercolour painting you will need Paints, Brushes, a water container, Mixing palette, a board, a pencil, watercolour paper and a putty eraser. The general rule is to buy the best you can afford as you will get better results with higher quality equipment and materials. Back to contents

Paints

Watercolour paints are manufactured in Student Quality and Artists Quality. They are available in either pans (cakes of colour) or in tubes, both in various sizes. They are manufactured specifically for ‘watercolour’ painting and are fundamentally transparent. There are other water based paints which are designed to be opaque i.e. Gouache (sometimes called Designers’ colours) and Chinese watercolours which are generally unsuitable for traditional English watercolours.
Tubes are more convenient when painting large areas, they cause less wear on brushes and save time. They allow fresh, uncontaminated colour to be used at the start of each painting.
Pans are more compact and easily transportable.
My preference: TUBES
Student quality paints are OK for beginners and improvers (some professional artists use them). They are relatively inexpensive and can produce good glowing watercolour paintings. The cost is standard throughout the range. Student quality paints usually use substitute pigments for the more expensive pigments used in Artist Quality paints (The description ‘Hue’ after the colour normally indicates this). Student quality paints may not be as transparent and/or light fast as artist quality. Winsor and Newton call their student quality ‘ Cotman’, and Daler Rowney’s are called ‘Georgian’
Artist quality paints are normally grouped into categories which designates a cost band as the pigments used to produce different colours vary considerably in price. e.g. Series 1 to series 5 for Winsor and Newton. There are many other brands available such as St. Petersburg, Michael Wilcox, etc.
Paints are packaged in boxed sets of pans or tubes or sold as separate colours.
Start with at least Student Quality – don’t use lower quality than this i.e. watercolour boxes intended for children’ as it will be difficult, if not impossible, to produce glowing pictures.
It’s better to start with a few colours and mix others rather than have a large number of ready made colours.
Buy separate colours, this way you will be able to select the colours that you want. (Colour is part of an artists style)
A good starting palette of student quality paints is:
Essentials: Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue Hue, Cadmium Red Hue, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Lemon yellow.
These six colours, Warm Blue / Cold Blue, Warm Red / Cold Red & Warm Yellow / Cold Yellow, enable the mixing of a wide range of colours.
Useful additional colours are:
Light Red, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Payne’s Gray, Cobalt blue, Winsor blue, New Gamboge Hue.
Ready made greens are not essential for landscape and flower paintings as a wide range of greens can be mixed from the colours

the poet’s glance « the awakened eye

I once had a doctor called Parkin

 who was given to humour and larkin’.

When I took of my coat

He made a swift note

Until my old dog started barkin’.

I said,doctor you are very precise

But is taking notes always wise?

I don’t want to forget

The first time we met.

I always felt you were so nice!

But I’m here because I am in pain.

He shouted out,No,not again!

I said,keep your voice down

It’ll be alround the town.

And I don’t want to harm your old brain.

I tried self hypnosis and calm,

I tried pain pills and unguents and balm.

I had chinese massage,

And was assessed for triage.

At least hypnosis doesn’t harm

Stan and a funny stranger’s story

Seasonal Depression Affects Financial Markets, Too | Psych Central News

Flavour 1: Perception – What is Perception; How Do You Perceive?

• 
  [Collage for beginners.]
  Some evenings,the sky turned pink.
  We were happy,lying in the grass,
  Watching the sun set.
  Arms around each other.
  Seemed like eternal life had come
  Earlier than forecast.
  Those weathermen are always wrong!
  They need new training
  About the timeless moment
  In between two raindrops,
  Or in between two tears, when
  The sky turns pink again.
  .

Edward Byrne: “Examining the Poetry of Confession and Autobiography: ‘After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography'”