Tampa, FL
Starting a new drawing is always the hardest part for me. Even if I draw a thumbnail to lay out my ideal composition, I struggle to get it right when I try to fill out the whole page. When I started working on this one, I knew that I wanted the two women on the left and the fountain on the right to be in the composition. I wish I had started sketching everything a bit smaller so that the fountain doesn’t get cut off like that, but I had already spent far too much time and was eager to finish the painting before it got stupid hot. Because Florida.
I rather like the splotchy watercolor effect I achieved on the trees in the background. Not sure how I did that. I’m less pleased with how I painted the water in and cascading from the fountain. I’m still relatively inexperienced with using watercolor, and I wish I planned out how to paint the fountain better. Watercolor is too translucent for me to add white highlights to the water drips and ripples, and my white gel pen didn’t do much better either. Perhaps I should start packing white gouache along with my watercolors.
Stairs are the worst. It’s important for me to acknowledge this here, considering how much time I wasted drawing, erasing, and redrawing them.
Date: 7/3/18
Time spent: 3 hours