I made this project with a black background because I managed to smear two versions of this study! Using illustration board instead of watercolor paper made my watercolors look a lot like gouache and take three times as long to dry. (I won't make that mistake again.)  Doing it twice, though, was great practice. Second time around it was much easier to create these gradations.  I thought it was very interesting that the deepest grey tone almost looks green on my palette but appears brown on the paper. Thank you for this exercise, Tamas.