Morning Water Lilies

 

Watercolor, "Morning Water Lilies", after a photo I'd taken in the back yard pond.  This was a beautiful photo that I felt would be well captured by watercolor, and so I put a good amount of effort into this one. It was quite frustrating, though - I continually found after drying that areas were lighter than I'd hoped, and had to keep re-painting.  I'm still getting the hang of watercolors, obviously.  

Obviously the amount of detail was pretty difficult, but the water especially was a struggle.  I felt that the key was going to be an even consistency to provide the illusion of water, and yet it needed to be relatively dark, the right color blue, and gradually fade to a lighter shade as the angle to reflecting the sky becomes more favorable.  

This won a merit award in the watercolor category in a recent show.  Given the heavy hitters in the watercolor group (largest organization in the country), I was pretty happy with that.