This actually was the first time I have used watercolors, at least that I can remember.  I *must* have used them back in grade school, but all I can remember using then was tempera.  The palette for the painting below was made up of browns (for the chest and shoulder feathers), grays (for the head, wings, tail, legs and the tree stump), pinks (for the belly and the top of the wing) and a light golden yellow (for the bill).  I came pretty close to the colors that I saw, I think, particularly for the belly, head and beak, at least.  This is going to take a *lot* more practice, I see!

A cool and cloudy day today, perfect for staying in the house and painting the exercise.  Thanks to the participant who wrote about a muddy sky I managed to restrain myself sufficiently to avoid that .  The shadow  of the mountain still eludes me.  It was a fun exercise.  I look forward to getting more proficient with this medium.  I had posted another painting I did yesterday.  i thought it was in this lesson but who knows where it ended up.  Sigh!  Computers.

Here is my attempt at the sunrise mountain drawing.  Mixing the colors was wild and so much fun.  Never drew anything like this before. Great thinking about sunrise and new day in this difficult time. -- Trudy  

I painted a light green background square and then did the watercolor of the gray-crowned rosy finch.  I mixed the watercolors to get the browns and grays.  It is true that you notice so much more of the bird or subject when you draw it.  I noticed feather patterns and head shape and beak, etc in a way that I never would have by just taking a photo.  I am enjoying this class so much and wish there would be a second part to it.  --Trudy

I had to try to paint my favorite bird.  They have just changed color from winter to summer bright yellow.

I am truly amazed at how much better I am - looking and seeing so that I can draw.  Painting with watercolors will be a challenge - I can see that by playing with shades and mixing colors.  Too much water on my brush - not enough of one color and making sure I clean the brush after using every color.  More water - lighter shade.  To help me remember what the colors look like I made a painting palate in my book.

Is it reasonable to expect you would do all of your work with the one brush that comes with the kit or are there many different tips for the water brushes that you might buy?

My first ever watercolor effort. His eye looks a bit evil :(

I imagine, if you were doing a formal picture, you might have to make a seperate key for yourself to remember how to go back and remix the colors to continue at a later date? Otherwise, it's fun just to experiment.

I tried drawing a red-breasted merganser, often seen near my home on Lake Ontario, coloring it in with colored pencils.  Yes, I know we're supposed to be practicing watercolor techniques, but my nature journal is made of drawing paper, not watercolor or mixed media paper.  I'm really happy with this result.  I'll try it again on watercolor paper, and maybe glue it into my journal...

My references were yours sugestions. I think my palette of the bird is fairly accurate. Reserve the space for the white on the wings was the most challenging. The landscape was much more difficult to do. I see too much colours and hues that I need to expand the picture too wide, to do it well. Even so, I share some of the most common colours of the picture in the palette I created.   P.S. I noticed that under the wing of the bird colours is diferente than the one I use for the whole belly. PPS: The colours of the pictures uploaded are different from the original one's.

I have tried watercolor before.  I never felt that I could accomplish what I set out to do.   I've purchased many books and have followed instructions as closely as I could but never seemed to get the results I wanted.  I like Liz's teaching method, her demonstrations are clear, and I liked the way she showed how to mix colors and get the colors as close as possible.  Liz's explanation for tints, tones and shades was very helpful for me as well, and I've practiced by making a color wheel with primaries, secondaries, and tertiary colors. I made primary & secondary combination squares, and mixed primary & secondary colors.  This has been a great experience for me.  My bird watercolor was pretty straight forward and I was able to mix the colors that seemed to match the photo reference and added the palette to the border of the picture.  I had trouble with the landscape, the sky ended up muddy, and I didn't feel as good about it as I did with the bird.  I had so many color mixes and ran out of enough color for each section so I kept making a new mixture and finally gave up trying to put the palette down onto paper. It's such a small painting, 1/4 sheet of 9"x12" paper, how do you ever do it on a full sized page?

I drew the American Wigeon duck trying to show how sunlight coming from the right side makes the greenish color on the duck's head seem to almost glow.  I used viridian green and hansa yellow light to make the bluish green and then added payne's gray to darken the green.  I used burnt umber and burnt sienna to create the brown for the rest of the head and the top of the body.  I'll continue working on it, but it was fun to see how to make the lighter color seem to glow by adding more darks around it.  --Trudy

Have not used water colors in over 15 years, always painted indoors using a photo, what was difficult was painting in full sunlight, and focusing on just one or two flowers even though there were several there, had to also deal with the slight movement from the wind.  I was happy with some of the colors but just could not get the flowers that had already lost their color, drying out.  Loved being outside!

Definite room for improvement!  I thought I was starting with a simple, not too difficult group of colours to mix.  But I have a bit of a challenge with purples.  My pallet doesn't have a purple, so I started mixing reds and blues and there were lots of "mud" colours as a result.  I didn't notice the colour of the surf around the rocks until much later in this process, what a great discovery!

I love the water filled brushes.  I've never tried them before.

I did a medium-thick line, interpretation. I put in the sun, to practice lights.

So rusty.  Thanks to Bird Academy for getting me to get my paints out again.

This was not my first time using watercolors and the tips were great. Easier than expected. The color palette I chose was from a photo of a meijiro in cherry blossoms. The colors came out well. I dont think my lightest pink was  light enough, however. Sometimes when mixing a color I found I had to think carefully what other colors were underlying.

This was my first experience with watercolor. I've always shied away from the medium. It was easier in some ways and more difficult in others. I'm used to working with more opaque paints. The transparency of watercolor is intimidating, but I can see where it could be beneficial for some applications. Color mixing went fairly well, but I'm used to mixing colors in other mediums.