Watercolors – botanicals

I’ve run into a bit of a problem with my Watercolors Workbook. The book is designed to have you ink the outlines of the various botanicals before painting. I did that with my pen and ink set, but too late discovered that my ink is not waterproof! The ink went everywhere once I hit it with the watercolor paint. I decided to try inking AFTER painting but I don’t love the result:

Long leaf eucalyptus. You can see that the ink was hard to control in some areas.

I then tried one without inking at all. It’s OK, but I decided to go ahead and order some waterproof black artists pens, as the author suggested.

Dahlia

I like some of the techniques I learned doing the eucalyptus and the dahlia: leaving some areas white to highlight; darkening petal bases with wet in wet color (dark into light); and layering over dry paint with a different color for a cool, translucent effect.

Hopefully my new pens arrive today.

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