Rain on Water Street, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Brushes: five in the bag, plenty on the paper
Capacity, spring, a useful point and the pleasure of a brush that does what your hand expected. A practical guide, starting with Mark’s travel kit.
The gallery edition · Look further
A little less fuss.
A little more painting.
Good paintings, useful advice and a healthy disrespect for the idea that one more brush will sort it.
Start with Turner’s light →
What is on the table?
Mix the colours. Paint the city →Brushes, paper, paint and the twelve colours in Mark’s box. Practical guides to making the kit work for the painting.
Winter Stream · Mark C Grant
Paper: the other half of the wash
Fibre, sizing, surface and weight—and why Mark’s Baohong rough 300 gsm belongs in the conversation before another tube of colour.
Market Stalls, Ormskirk · Mark C Grant
Paint: read the small print, then make a puddle
Pigment codes, transparency, granulation, staining and the useful difference between a colour name and the paint inside the tube.
Waterstones, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Budget, student, artist: what changes when you move up?
Every stage can give you something useful. The worthwhile upgrade is the one you can feel in the painting, not merely admire on the receipt.
Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Mark’s twelve colours: a palette with jobs to do
Three rows, four colour families and three optional extras. Why this particular box makes sense for transparent colour, structure and a well-placed interruption.
Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Twelve pigments. A whole Liverpool to paint.
A working mixing guide for Mark’s palette: sixteen starting mixtures, illustrated colour charts and practical challenges for Liverpool skies, brickwork, shadows and greens.
A world worth looking at.
Enter the international gallery →Paintings with a past, ideas with a future. Look closely, argue kindly, then take something back to the table.
Berthe Morisot · About 1885
Morisot: give an ordinary moment room
A woman absorbed in work, a bright window and the spaces Morisot leaves alone. A small watercolour with a serious place in the history of looking.
France
Watercolour and graphite on paper
Unidentified Ethiopian artist · c. 1440–80
Saint Luke in Tigray: a page held together by colour and line
An Ethiopian Gospel portrait makes a seated figure vivid through patterned cloth, decisive outlines and a carefully organised page.
Tigray region, Empire of Ethiopia
Ink and tempera on vellum; manuscript illumination
José María Velasco · 1875
José María Velasco: a landscape with a long memory
An expansive Mexican landscape asks us to look beyond the pretty distance: what makes a view belong to a particular place?
Valley of Mexico, painted by a Mexican artist
Oil on canvas — a wider influence for watercolour composition
Art has a past. Pull up a chair.
All 15 illustrated history essays →Painted books, artists’ lives, landscape and the ideas that changed how pictures work. Read the history, look closely, then try an idea on your own paper.
John Singer Sargent · In the Generalife, 1912
Sargent: a life in paint, a lesson in looking
From Paris portraits to a chair in a Spanish garden: John Singer Sargent’s life, the importance of his watercolours, and what we can borrow without trying to become an Edwardian celebrity before lunch.
Unidentified Ethiopian artist; Empire of Ethiopia, Tigray region · Single Leaf from a Gospel Book with a Portrait of Saint Luke, c. 1440–80
A painting you turn: Ethiopian books, reading and prayer
Two Ethiopian manuscripts, separated by more than two centuries, show why a painted page needs its book, its language and its devotional life.
Berthe Morisot · Sewing near the Window, about 1885
Who gets to become an artist? Morisot and Gyokuran
Private tuition, exhibition groups, poetry and family networks: two distinct careers help us look beyond the myth of talent succeeding entirely alone.
At the painting table
All practical guides →Winter Stream · Mark C Grant
Paint around the light
Negative painting: a useful skill with an unnecessarily gloomy name.
Treeline at Dusk · Mark C Grant
A sky worth stopping for
Cloud studies that remember the weather, rather than producing another row of decorative cauliflowers.
Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Reflections without the barcode
Paint the relationships in the water before reaching for forty-seven horizontal lines.
Artists worth your time
The profiles →Joseph Mallord William Turner · The Lake of Zug, 1843
Turner: let the light do the heavy lifting
A lake, a little haze and a very useful reminder that the sky needn't explain itself. What Turner's atmosphere can teach your next small study.
Rain on Water Street, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
Joseph Zbukvic: mood before the municipal details
Before another window, decide what the whole scene is doing. A practical way into atmosphere, tonal structure and a calmer relationship with street furniture.
John Singer Sargent · Abriès, ca. 1912
Sargent: paint the shape, spare us the brickwork
The pleasure of a decisive mark starts before it touches the paper. Look at Abriès for a lesson in cropping, connected shapes and knowing where to spend your attention.
Winslow Homer · Fishing Boats, Key West, 1903
Winslow Homer: the white paper is doing a shift
Fishing Boats, Key West is a marvellous excuse to leave something alone. Plan your light, connect your darks and stop explaining every ripple.
Paul Cézanne · Still-Life with a Watermelon and Pomegranates, 1900–1906
Cézanne: build an apple, one patch at a time
A fruit bowl becomes a small architectural problem. Learn to see colour relationships, leave breathing space and stop polishing every brushmark into submission.
John Sell Cotman · Farm Building by a Pond, 1808–11(?)
John Sell Cotman: get the big shapes talking
A modest farm building, a stormy sea and the same useful question: what holds this picture together before the small brush gets involved?
The ordinary painting life
From the studio →
Long Shadows, Southport · Mark C Grant
The painting starts before the easel comes out
Choosing an outdoor subject by what the picture needs, rather than what has the biggest visitor sign.
Waterstones, Liverpool · Mark C Grant
The twenty-minute sketchbook
A small working habit for days when becoming a great artist has to fit around the washing.
Outside the Golden Lion, Ormskirk · Mark C Grant
Put the brush down. The painting has a point.
How to diagnose an awkward passage before your rescue operation becomes the main event.
Wet paint. Open conversation.
A painting you can’t quite resolve. A small discovery. That one grey that keeps turning into pond water. Bring it to the table.
Pull up a chair. Bring a brush.
The whole watercolour class →24 curated YouTube lessons, a clear learning path and something to paint after every film.
WATERCOLOUR WEEK Episode 1: Getting To Know Your Supplies / Basic Strokes
An introduction to supplies and basic strokes from Emma’s Watercolour Week. A sensible place to begin with the kit already on your table.
The answer to water control problems when using watercolor.
A focused practice lesson on pigment-to-water ratios. Jenna credits Brienne M. Brown for the Tea–Butter exercise discussed in the video.
Color Mixing Lesson and Painting with ONLY THREE PAINTS!
A colour-mixing lesson and painting demonstration using just three paints. Small palette, plenty to investigate.
What happened on your paper?
A study, a discovery, or a wash with a mind of its own. Share your painting, ask a question or show what happened when you tried an exercise. Tell us if you would like critique.
Sign in or join to post under your username. Your contribution appears in the studio discussion. See what other painters are discussing →
Out there.
On paper.
Street corners, bookshops, weather and the places we walk past. A few paintings made by the person behind the zine.
Look through Mark’s paintings →