Final Watercolor Landscape

For my final, I used lemon yellow, cad yellow, cad red, intense blue, cobalt blue, alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna. I made a lot of progress from my first practice to my final painting. In my first practice, I left no white space, and it resulted in a painting that was darker than I wanted. From this I learned to leave space in the ocean and clouds to keep it light and airy. I also learned that the reference photo should only be followed loosely, because when I tried to match the colors exactly it didn’t work with the entire painting. Finally, I learned to be patient. If I messed something up, it was better to dab it with a napkin and restart than leave it and work around it. The practices also required patience, because even though sometimes I thought I was ready there was still more to make sure looked good before starting. One of the biggest challenges I faced was the sky and clouds. In my first practice painting, I made the clouds super dark. In my second practice, I wanted to avoid this, so I painted the sky around the shape of the clouds but this didn’t work either because the edges were too sharp and unnatural. To fix this, in my final I used the wet in wet technique to do a blue wash across the entire sky, and dab with a napkin where the clouds would be. This allowed for a soft edge that looks more natural with the rest of the painting.