Work in progress

Progress is very slow on the Palm Tree project.

I'm painting it section by section, so it's not as difficult as I thought it would be.

I got a few things wrong on the way. I should have kept the white page with no paint for the few bright areas. I have put a yellow wash in parts where I should have had a blue wash (where you can see the blue sky behind the tree).
And I think I'm using far too much masking liquid to block the areas I want to protect from the extra layers of watercolour.

I really thought I would not be able to capture it at all, and it took me a long time to figure out how to go about it. Once I got the structure in place - trunk and branches, I decided to paint the leaves section by section.

The most difficult thing for me is to think before I start painting. And for this picture I really need to think before each section - I need to figure out which branch is in front and which is in the back, I need to measure to make sure I keep things in proportion, I need to decide what colour to apply first - dark or light, what areas to mask, etc. etc.

I think that I'll do a more abstract version after I'm done with this one. Just to see what it looks like.

Here is a picture taken a few days ago, showing my progress. It won't sell in an art gallery, but I hope that one of my nieces and nephews will pick it up after I'm dead and say "Hey, that's not bad. Let's not throw that away with the rest of her things."