Bigger Watercolor

A friend said I should consider painting something a bit larger than 4.5" x 6" cards. I feel safe painting little cards. If one is horrible, I can drop it in the trash and feel not a pang of waste. But my friend is right. It's time to expand.

My son and daughter-in-law and daughter gave me a big 5 square yard roll of gorgeous watercolor paper for my birthday. How exciting! What should I do with it? That much pretty paper is kind of scary.

Little cards can be sold for $5 and don't accumulate around the house. But big watercolors? The only option for them is framing and hanging on the wall. Before I began this new project, I had to find a place for it. So I took this watercolor off the wall:

This was painted by Carroll Karlak, my mother's very best friend who has been in heaven for many years. She is very, very missed. I wish so much I could watch her work and pick her brain! This is my least favorite of Carroll's paintings that I have, but it was fascinating to remove it from the frame, hold the thick, cloth-like paper, and study it close up.

 Do you see the vase, below?

 Lots of pencil

 There's a window, and outside it a house in the distance and a tree.

Carroll left pencil marks in the white areas, and the loose, drapey watercolor effect is so fun to examine. I love being the first one to touch it, probably, since her fingers placed it behind the glass.

It's 14.75" by 22", so I cut a piece of my new paper that size. I'd already decided to give another try at the sunflowers that I've done 3 times before, but on very small paper.

The last sunflowers I painted, maybe 5" x 8":

I have so many brushes perfect for small dimension work. I don't own brushes for large work, esp. round or dagger brushes. Ah well. I taped the paper on my desk and went through the stages and layers, occasionally looking at the Youtube video I shared before of the man with his sunflowers. Here are the steps of my sunflowers.

 Of course, you sketch lightly first, and then lay in layers, although watercolor's challenge is always not to overwork the paint.

 At this stage, this (below) was my favorite flower. Just enough dark contrast, not overdone.

 The cobalt blue in the upper left corner is too much. Adam says I should read up on composition. I need a better single focal point.

It still doesn't seem "done." Perhaps it's merely not good. This is the expense of painting well: the practice needed to produce one excellent painting uses up so much paper/canvas/paint/time. When you pay a lot for a painting, remember that you're paying for all the practice paintings too, that made that final iteration possible.

My sunflowers are not better than Carroll's painting, but it will be fun to have my sunflowers on my bedroom wall, don't you think?

Carroll's lovely painting will be kept carefully and put back in there at a later date. But for now, I'll enjoy my sunflowers.