What Not To Do

Here is what not to do (or "what I learned while trying to paint a pair of wigeons in watercolor this weekend"):

1.  Pay attention to what paper you picked out -- I just grabbed a sheet from my pile of watercolor papers, assuming that it was, like 95% of them, cold-pressed.  It was not.  It was rough-pressed.  Which I realized about halfway through the painting.  This messed up the log, especially in the shadows.

2.  Don't work from bad photos!  The photo I took of the wigeons had a great pose, but poor lighting, as it was overexposed.  I tried to compensate for this by looking at other, non-overexposed photos, but could still not get the colors/shadows right.

3.  Less is more -- don't overwork it.

It does have its good points -- overall, I like how the heads turned out.

I'm now thinking that watercolor may work best (at least for me) in field/urban sketching, while acrylics may work better for more finished paintings done in my studio.  We shall see -- the Year of Art is a work-in-progress!