Back to watercolour painting

After one week of drawing the human body, two weeks of SketchingNow Edges, I'm now back to watercolour. The weather is pretty miserable so I'm working from photos I've taken with my phone (I have so many photos that were taken with the intention of painting that I probably have a backlog of a few thousands by now!). But it's strange how not painting for three weeks makes me feel so rusty! But I trust that the work I have put in over the last three weeks will pay off in terms of what I've learned, even if it's not directly applicable to painting in watercolours.

And also, I have been watching videos by Gary Tucker on YouTube. Some useful tips in there.

So here are the first two paintings.

A view of our estate when coming back from walking the dog, and the sun was streaming under the clouds in the west. Painted fairly small - I should have used a smaller brush for the tree branches, but I like the colours and the sky! What I was trying to convey was the contrast between the dark clouds and the light streaming through.

This one is a bigger painting (I should really learn watercolour paper sizes). It's based on that frustrating morning in Powerscourt when it was windy and drizzly at the same time! But there were lovely colours in the trees in the distance. And my eye was caught by the softness of the light and how stark the tree was against the blur of the mountains behind.