It started as an experimental watercolour, following guidance from Nita Engle's How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself. An experiment gone wrong, I have to admit, as I didn't use the right kind of paper (I used heavy, highly-absorbent, watercolour paper, where the author recommended illustration board, which lets the paint and water flow more freely) and the right kind of tools (I used recycled hair colour bottles instead of the recommended "oiler boilers" from Cheap Joes)
But there was something nice about the freedom of it all the same, so I decided to build on it - first by creating a shaft of light hitting the water (with a simple eraser - that's in the picture above already), then creating a horizon on the sea (with a ruler and the same eraser), drawing flowers from pictures I found on Flickr, removing the watercolour from those areas, and finally painting these exotic flowers with acrylics (there was too much pigment left in the paper to paint over with watercolours).
For those of you with a sharp eye or a mystical bend, there is what looks like a white candle in the lower center of the picture. That's a pure accident, or the hand of God, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, it's been erased from the final painting!
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