My First Watercolor

Well...it's technically not my first watercolor. That's kind of a lie - I've dabbled in watercolor before. But never like this. Not with an illustration. I purchased a Winsor & Newton Pocket Plus watercolor  set, a few brushes, and a couple new sketchbooks a couple weeks back. I was excited to try another new art medium. My first task though was to make a grid of 50-50 swatches. 144 colors later, I was satisfied. My go-to medium is acrylic paint so I typically buy multiple colors instead of creating them. So seeing a 12-pan palette turn into 144 colors (and more since these are just 50-50 swatches) was amazing, albeit time consuming.

I was ready to do my first watercolor though. I sketched out a little Chuu-Totoro and inked it. That was probably my first mistake. I just ended up wasting ink because as you can see, when I started painting, the black ink was lightened and I would need to go over it again. I loved the medium and enjoy mixing colors and how it turned out. But alas, I ruined the watercolor. I also recently purchased a pack of Uni-Ball Signo Gel Pens in white for highlighting. The pens do really well going over watercolor, but as I am incredibly clumsy, I ended up smudging the pen and that smudged the watercolor. So sadly, there is a big white and green smudge at the big leaf and it's quite unsightly, so will not be shared online. I'm always learning something new!