This was fun and took me 5 times longer and I probably used way more water in my new waterbrush pens than Kim did! The biggest challenge for me is using the new waterbrush pens. I got the same set, but I think the flat brush I bought leaks more water than it should without squeezing it. I'm sure they are not all made equal so I switched to a regular flat brush. I did keep using the small round one determined to learn the new waterbrush. I also switched papers at the beginning from a Canson watercolor paper to a very smooth bristol paper and had better results with the 1st layer on the ball. I love mixing colors so that was familiar to me, but I did learn something new...adding yellow oxide to the phthalo/benny mix turned it into an olive green! I would normally add the compliment of green (red) to desaturate it into an olive.  Thank you Kim!

This was more challenging than I thought it would be, especially controlling the washes and creating even and consistent light hatches. I enjoyed it though.

Two birds in a ball! This was way harder than it looked. Very smart exercise. The left one is a European Robin. There are so many things I can practise here; controlling the brush strokes, the water/paint ratio, transparency and layering... A takes a lot of thought and  focus. I'll be doing an another one before moving on:)

This was a challenging excercise! Again the right amount of water on the brush in order to keep the lines very fine, and keep clean. Mixing the colours, my palette was quite moist , so the mixtures were a bit runny. Trying to keep the Colors light, seems I was always too dark. But a great learning. This photo is Birdball # 4. Practise practise. Will need to do a couple more. 

That was like getting thrown into the deep end!

We have been seeing lots of kinglets this week.

I had a lot of problems with this exercise since the begining. I did not follow well the firtst instruction so the foundational color was not as transparent as it should. After that when I was trying to do the lines the color won't come up, and I had issues with the amount of water, the lines would not come skinny as I would like them to be, when I was trying to only paint with the tip of the brush, the paint would not come out. Dx I might try to redo it later.

The four-step slides helped with nthis one.  My printer wasn't interested in printing in colour today, so I went from screen-reference.  I was surprised how well the layering worked after I let the thing dry!  The lower orb was done in pastel, to see how it would translate to a different medium. I wasn't satisfied until I had a printed reference, though, so I grabbed this Wildlife Fact File...thing... and painted the lower jaw regions on a blue and yellow macaw.

I have trouble controlling the water flow of my brush, too.

Hi.  I paint with watercolors so that is what I used.  Some pigments are similar to acrylics but others not.  To get a yellow oxide I needed to use Buff Titanium and Naples Yellow.  My dark color is from a combination of Cerulean Blue, Hansa Yellow and Perylene Green.  Paper is cold press 140#.  

I tried to do a bird in a ball of the northern cardinal any comments gratefully received

I found that I wasn't mixing enough paint and would run out of the colours I was using and that I was mixing the colours too dark as well. Practice, practice, practice.    

•  Looks more like an ocean with fish.🙃. I can’t get my small brush to make these hash lines. They all get blurred.

I had some major issues with my paint being too wet and thus very faint, especially when I was using the small round. Maybe I was expressing water without realizing it. I also admit that between fighting with my paints and trying to keep up I was rushing a bit. But I think next time I'll slow down the video. I think I will take our instructors advice and try another one before moving on to the barn swallow.