Nitro world games

We went to the Nitro World games last year and it was a good opportunity to test out my Plein air painting kit. It was quite a long show and was very exciting to see all the tricks there but often between there’s a lot of waiting and preliminary entries so you are already sitting for a long period of time.

I enjoyed practising to paint quickly and trying to capture the essence quickly.

Sometimes my husband would say why don’t you just watch and enjoy it? But I found painting helped me to observe more closely and pay more attention to what was going on and I find that I can appreciate it more. Towards the end everyone else was keen to go early before the finals had finished so they could beat the traffic. But I was happy to keep going. I only put the paints away for the very last of the finals so that I could capture on video the amazing stunts so that I wouldn’t miss it even if I blinked.

This was painted using Daniel smith and DaVinci paints in my Hahnemuhle Watercolour book. Out of all the watercolour journals I’ve tried I would have to say this is my favourite. It handles wet on wet very well and even though it is only 200 gsm it handles lifting well and dries flat just like a 300gsm paper. I like using the A6 size as smaller pictures allow me to practise more. It is also faster and uses less paint than a larger painting.

I started first by sketching the picture using a grey watercolour pencil and then painted over it. I find this saves time over using a graphite pencil because I don’t have to rub it out.

Looking for ways to paint faster I started to simply paint directly without sketching looking at some of the pictures I need to practise getting the perspective right.

I also experimented with leaving space for the words and painting around the it so that the white of the paper shows words. In some of the photos I tried using a white gel pen to make highlights or to write the words – this is definitely faster but doesn’t stand out as well.

At the end the paint I couldn’t wait for the paint to dry so I just put a tissue in-between the pages to protect the next page. When I got home, the tissue had lifted some of the paint out leaving a beautiful pattern from the embossing on the tissue. I think it added to it so left it.

Overall, I really enjoyed capturing the moment and recording my memories in this way.