Chateau? Not!

After my ego had been beaten badly by cross-hatching drawing, I decided to cheer myself up with a drawing I saw in this month's Artist's Sketchbook (It turned out to be the very last issue, just when I went to their website trying to subscribe to it). It was a nice drawing plus cute outside-the-line watercolor painting by Mari Le Glatin Keis.

I know next to nothing about watercolor but love it dearly nevertheless. My ultimate goal is to paint the images in my head with watercolor, which I know will take me years if not decades to get there.

But not color within the lines? That got to be easy, right?

WRONG!

I didn't know how to use brushes (always starting with the biggest one for the task), how to mix colors (having plenty on the palette), or how to create the right shades (how much water is enough?). Even though this is not a hard watercolor piece, I still managed to screw it up.

As I learn about watercolor, every painting can only get better than this God awful one. And this is why I place it here, to have it serve as the starting point of my watercolor painting life.

Media: pencil, colored pencil, watercolor.