Early evening

I often find that the paintings I do as "just a quick sketch" work out the best. For this one, I grabbed a sheet of cheap watercolour paper (I've got a block of 100 pages - no excuses!), didn't even bother to stretch it, and I started working quickly from a photograph I dug up from my collection. The view is just off the main road between Montséret and Saint André de Roquelongue in the Corbières.

I'm still exploring a technique I learned on Marc Taro Holmes's class on Craftsy.

And on this occasion, the brush pen I used for my darks is a gorgeous pen I bought in Japan. The only branding I found on it is "akashiya", and all I knew when I bought it was that it was a brush pen, and that I really wanted it because it was so pretty! What I didn't realise of course is that the ink is water-soluble, so it's to be used with caution if applying watercolour on top of it. I thought my little painting was going to be ruined when the black of my trees started to bleed into the pink sky. But we survived. And I'll know for again.