Healy Pass, Take 2

My desk is currently taken over with a big acrylics canvas and paints. It's a bit of a mess. And I'm dithering between figurative and abstract. But the main difficulty with it is that I have no room left for watercolour painting - I need a bigger room. Or another tidy-up. And more time.
I've got a couple of watercolours on the go, and I really want to finish them, but I keep finding excuses. And in less than a month, I'll have to have the guest bedroom clear, which means tidying my office and my art-room so I can move things from the guest bedroom into these two small rooms. Busy Busy weeks ahead! Busy busy mind is not good for creativity.
Still, I can't complain. I do manage to fit in a good bit in the time I have.

So this one is going remarkably well, considering the lack of physical and mental space! If you remember I painted a view of the Healy Pass on the Beara Peninsula soon after being there at the end of the summer. I was thinking of exploring the same technique further, but my attempts at watercolouring with a knife were not as exciting as that first painting. So I've gone back to more traditional watercolour techniques: a light wet-in-wet layer, followed by darker and darker layers, with each stroke pulled with a thirsty brush to soften the edges. I need to balance both sides a bit, but I'm getting there. Interesting that I was really relaxed while painting this, and I think it shows. Also, it's one of my favourite papers - Hannemühle Cornwall - a very strong texture - it handles the paint beautifully. I must get myself some more of it, as I'm running low!

Here is a photo of the first layer I painted:

And two earlier attempts that didn't work out quite as well:

This one got too dark and messy. I might lift the paint in the grass centre and have another go, but I think the joy is gone out of it. I might just wash it off and start from scratch.

This one was done on a little square of paper that clearly is not suited for dragging paint, even with an old credit card - the fibre lifted. I haven't yet found what that paper is good for!