Impressionistic Line and Wash paintings

The loose line and wash technique (often drawn with a matchstick instead of a pen) produces paintings with more detail than the pure watercolours, and are preferred by some collectors. In these paintings the ink line is dominant and the watercolour washes play a supporting role.
There are two approaches to line and wash – a pencil drawing overlaid with watercolour washes and then the drawing inked in once the washes are dry or the approach I use which is to draw straight in with an ink line and hatching and then to apply watercolour washes when the ink is dry.

Examples of the two stages of this approach are shown here.