'Controlled Wash' demo

Here's a demonstration painting from the last day of my most recent course at Art Holidays in Dorset. When I can, I like to use the ,controlled wash, watercolour technique, as described by Jack Merriott in his book 'Discovering Watercolour'. The first wash is applied to wet paper, the colours being allowed to blend wet-in-wet on the surface. While the wash is wet, the paint can be moved around and allowed to create a soft, foundation wash. Once it has dried, a further wash or two can then be applied to dry paper.
This method of painting creates an atmospheric feel to the whole painting, and that first wash influences whatever transparent washes you place afterwards. It's a really good technique for depicting sunny scenes, as here.
I usually stretch the paper beforehand but here I simply used masking tape around the edges of a quarter sheet of 200lb Bockingford.