A fairly quick (for me) study of a water lotus. Still working on keeping the white space while I paint... still a struggle. I get carried away with the lovely paint colors and forget about the white space ... must learn some self-restraint!
When I do a piece of art I like to ask myself what I learned from this piece. The big revelation with this one is - no surprise here for you veteran watercolorists - Arches watercolor paper is wonderful! I admit, a little sheepishly, that I've had Arches paper in my possession for, oh, about 15 years (yeah, I know) and for some reason, just never got around to actually using it. A few days ago I found the Arches 9x12 pads in Michaels craft store on clearance sale... and bought another Arches pad... just like the first one I had .... that I'd never used! So, it seemed like a good time to try out the famous, oh-so-talked-about Arches. It surpassed my expectations. I had thought it made good sense to practice on the less expensive paper before graduating to Arches. But it paints so much better that I realize now what I was missing. Hmmm.... now that I'm spoiled on Arches I guess I could use my supply of less expensive paper for trying out experiments with new colors and brushstrokes ;-)
