Breakthrough

 

Victorian Vignette #2 ala Shari Blaukopf
watercolor and pencil
8" x *8 cold press watercolor paper

I love that I feel on a roll with w/c painting. Who knows how long it'll last, but it's a great artist's high in the meanwhile. 

This painting I produced with the help of Canadian watercolor artist Shari Blaukopf's course called "Victorian Vignettes." It doesn't feel a "real" painting of my own since it's a copy I made from watching Shari's demos. Still, I learned so much with this one--primarily the importance of making the initial washes very light and watery. As we all know, I have a tendency to overwork my paintings and (whoops!) lose the transparency. 

I also grasped the importance of saving the darker, more saturated colors for just the final touches/details. See below for my painting before those dark layers. What a difference, eh? As Shari herself said, her own paintings look flat before she adds those final touches. This one did to me, too.

Really, who knew this learning process could be so dang much fun? 

Now. The trick, of course, is being able to apply this kind of learning to one's own compositions. As you can see below, the learning didn't quite translate with this painting of my sister's gazebo in the snow. But hopefully something's getting through to my muscle memory. One of these days, surely I'll feel like I can fly as a watercolorist.

Right?