I am back again. Here is a watercolor that I just finished yesterday. No one paints like anyone else in watercolor and, for whatever reason, when I was first learning (I am still learning but that terrible phase of "first learning" is over) for watercolors, I could not make head or tail out of the instructional books that I read. I often wondered if the artists were hiding how they did their amazing works. I came to the conclusion that they weren't, but that, instead, we all paint differently and we all have to paint differently with watercolors if we want to do it creatively. It is an interactive medium, but also a very unforgiving one. If oil paints are the new testament (forgiving), then watercolors are the old testament (judgment and punishment). But also, watercolor paintings are as distinctive to each of us as are finger prints.
Here is the same painting in different stages. It is done from a sketch that I did a long time ago, and from which I did an oil painting. (I changed it from what I did in the original painting. I tend to abstract and re-arrange when I am painting, while still trying to maintain both the likeness and unity in spirit with the subject.) Basically, what I do now, with watercolors is map out a sketch lightly in pencil, and then, with a light coat of paint, differentiate at least some of the midtones and darks with wet on wet (so that I get a variance in intensity with the color). With the outline, I can then get creative by layering on other colors, being ever mindful of what happens if the wrong two colors mix (mud). In the present case, I used violet cobalt and pthalo blue (red shade) for the bases. After those base colors were established, I basically added on whatever colors I thought that the painting called for (rose and red violet for the flower and yellow ochre, hooker's green for the leaves . . . for the sky, I just threw whatever blue tube was closest to me on the day I was painting.)
