Working from Sketches in Watercolour – Annee Kelly Demo

Annee Kelly

Working from Sketches in Watercolour

Well known watercolour artist Annee Kelly loves plein air sketching. On her many travels she has filled a cupboard full of sketch books with charming expressive sketches of the landscapes, towns and people she has encountered. Generally she goes out sketching in the early morning or late afternoon when the light is softer and shadows sculpt shapes and details that get washed out when the sun is high in the sky.

Mostly her sketches take anywhere from 20 minutes to one hour to complete. One afternoon Annee told us, she was sitting at the base of a large wall, I think in France, totally absorbed in her sketch. When she finished she was shocked to hear a small gathering of people above her clapping!

Sample travel sketches

Annee Kelly showing us her watercolour travel kit.

Travel kit

Annee showed us her travel tool kit. She uses bound sketch books with pages that are designed for wet media. A butterfly clip can help keep your page still in windy conditions.

Annee paints using a small watercolour palette with cool and warm variants of the primary colours: cobalt, ultramarine and cerulean blue; a neutral lemon, a cool yellow and the warmer raw sienna and yellow ochre; a cool red such as rose madder and a warm – either cadmium red or vermilion. Burn sienna/burnt umber mixed with Winsor green create great darks eg for pine trees. She often uses lavender too and white gouache for adding lost highlights. Annee finds water pens – hollow plastic tubes with a brush on top – ideal for creating watercolour washes. A key tip from Annee is to always use artist quality paints. As these contain stronger pigment, buying student quality paint is a false economy.

As well as watercolour Annee likes using waterproof ink pens in sienna, black or brown for quick sketches, and water soluble ink pens that allow you to brush out wash effects from within the drawing.

Reference sketches

Apart from creating a wonderful record of her travels, Annee’s sketches serve as a rich source of reference material for her finished watercolour paintings. She does also use photographic references, sometimes in combination with her sketches. The advantage of sketches is that they enable you to make key decisions about composition, tonal range and colour while you are looking at the real thing. Photos often contain too much detail, often not arranged in the most pleasing way.

Field sketch of people seated at a table with unbrella, annotations written underneath.

Field sketch with annotations.

Annee Kelly - watercolour painting of people seated at a table on a sunny patio, based on a sketch.

Annee Kelly – watercolour painting from sketch.

Photo and sketch references.

Demo painting

Annee chose to paint a lovely scene featuring boathouses nestled amongst foreshore vegetation. She used both a plein air sketch and a photograph as her references and had created a rough sketch of the scene on Saunders 300 gsm paper, with some masking fluid applied to the corner of the distant building to preserve the white paper. Annee explained that this bright highlight would emphasize the sunniness of the scene. She also stressed it’s important to plan where you want the darkest tones to be within the composition.

Sketch or a beach shed on the foreshore, with masking fluid applied.

Sketch with masking fluid applied.

Initial washes

First washes

Annee recommended wetting the back of your paper if you want to create a soft painting eg a winter scene, but this was a summery sunlit scene so harder edges were more appropriate. She planned to wet each section when and where needed.

Annee started by covering as much of the paper’s white as possible with her first broad washes. Although Annee had stapled her paper to the board, the wet paper buckled, which she said didn’t usually happen with that paper. She surmised it was because of the additional masking tape border she’d applied to create clean white borders for the purpose of the demonstration.

Annee’s full palette

Broad washes in place.

Colour palette

With a mix of cool green and burnt umber Annee added the background tree trunk, branches and foliage, taking care to recover some highlights in the foliage. The foreground salt bush was a mix of cerulean with raw sienna. A mix of cobalt, cerulean and a little cobalt turquoise created a convincing sea colour. The foreground beach box is naples yellow – essentially yellow ochre mixed with white gouache. A small figure in red created a centre of interest amongst the more subtle colours.

Adding details – note bright highlight on building created with masking fluid.

Annee Kelly with her partially completed painting.

We thank Annee for her informative and inspiring demo. She has agreed to do a watercolour workshop for us in 2025 in between her continuing overseas trips and workshops.

Finished demo painting

Annee Kelly