yes Deborah, I'm finding simple is better and messing around loses the freshness, but I do see artists like Harris-Ching do photo detail realism with it, have no idea how. For now Tim's work is my mentor, I'm trying to do it like he does...also wc is the only media I haven't mastered yet, so I'd like to add it to my tool bag. I'm now at home with pastel and oil I used to do acrylic, but prefer oil, so seldom use it.
I used to do a very esoteric painting theory called Illumimism, whereby adhering to certain principals of color application that are dervived from how color works in the atmosphere, you create a color field that at the end is subtly tranformed into some subject matter. I did this work for 7 years, it uses watercolor glazes only and a painting might have 300-400 layers of pure transparent color ( yes it can be done if you are crazy enough to work for at least a year every day to get the technical skill before you can manage your first real painting) So the only way I know to do wc is the glaze. Working with a full brush and making it fit a subject you've already drawn is new, so is mixing colors, as in Illuminism all colors are mixed optically by the transparent layers on the paper. I'll post one if you're interested.
Today at the tree I tried something different, I didn't draw I went direct to the wc and did direct painting only. This was fun and challenging, no way to correct, and going back over to add something only spoiled it, so you have one shot, it sure is good training.
various egrets, mostly great, and one page of the night heron...
The results are OK, ( my idea of high praise for my work:king
and I think I'll try it again. Best part is, it's teaching me how much water to add to get different values.
I did a few pages then stopped to pick up a young snowy that fell out of the nest and was in the street, we have a local bird rescue group that helps them. I snuck a quick look at its wing structure before I took it in.