Nancy

I have tried all the watercolor techniques in the past but I rely heavily on wet on dry because of the control it gives. I have used wet on wet for sky or water and I have used dry on dry for grasses. In the watercolor sketch of the sky and water below I was practicing my color-mixing but also used wet on wet for the sky. I realize now that I used wet on wet for the water too. After I laid down the initial layer of the water I went back and added some more color (wet on wet) to show the ripples in the water. In the watercolor sketch of the trees below I used mostly the wet on dry technique. But I used wet on wet for the sky at the top and the water on the bottom. I used wet on dry for the sky near the trees because I didn't want the colors to run into each other. I'm going to go back to the same spot and try and improve my techniques. Here's what I plan to try next time: 1) use more water (wet on wet) in the water so that there is no white; 2) do a wash of the sky and then paint the trees and leaves over the wash; 3) practice some techniques to show the texture of the leaves of the deciduous trees better;  4) continue to use dry on dry for the tree trunks and branches but include more of them in the sketch and 5) spend more time to keep a record of the colors I mixed. My plan is to go to the same spot periodically to practice various techniques. Also, I'm going to go back in the various seasons to capture those differences. That will also allow me to practice the techniques I will need for the different seasons.

1. Just  by chance over the last few days, before I joined the course, I had tried to draw a couple warblers from photos so I was thinking, okay, I've done this a couple times already; I can do this. However, I tried to draw without too much erasing because I felt in the field you may have to draw faster before the bird flies away. This made it challenging to get the proportions right. I wanted to include the branch because I feel that adds interest to the drawing but when I looked at my finished drawing I realized the bird was proportionally much larger than the branch. And the proportions of the bird are a little off. Since I have been paying attention to the warblers and the parts of songbirds recently I feel it came a little easier to figure out the details of the feathers. 2. There are several things I might not have noticed from the photo if I didn't draw it:

• the black color in the wings;
• the gray shading on the head and back,
• the different colors in the bill; and
• the different colors and moss (?) on the branch