After my frustrating experience with complementary colors and sunsets, I made some gradients to try to better understand my color options.

I have no pink. Alizarin Crimson can work as pink when diluted or mixed with Purple Lake.

I decided I do not like Cadmium Orange and will avoid it in the future.

Today the teacher gave a dog portrait painting demo (something she earns money doing) and then everyone worked on whatever they wanted. I decided to go back to my rail trail painting and see if I can make it better by adding more layers. A woman loaned me a sea sponge for applying paint to get a certain effect (like fall leaves), so that was fun. I hope to finish that painting by the last class next week. I also want to try one more portrait before the end of the session.

Although there are definitely some shared techniques in watercolor painting (like lifting paint to lighten areas), a lot of the learning seems to come from trial and error. Our teacher is self-taught and she swears she learned everything she knows (and she knows a lot) by just trying it. As she says, “it’s just a piece of paper.”

These are her top tips:

Painting Progressions

Light to Dark

Loose to detailed

Big to small brushes

Tealike to Creamy

90% to 10% of surface active painting to observing

**************************************

Update:

Here’s my “Rail Trail” with the additional layers. I do like it better now.