One of the best pieces of advice I got when I started learning watercolour, alongside “Be patient,” was “Plan to print everything twice.” This painting ended up going three times, but I got there, more or less, in the end.

One thing that I enjoyed in this project was painting the fog, which I tried to make a bit more spontaneous, with the colours of the mist being decided by the contours of the paper, and let that guide to composition. I also spent a lot of time using indigo, in this and a few other projects;

 

My first attempt had a couple of issues; first was that the composition was too crowded with trees that didn’t look like trees, and the blending leant too much dark to the picture. However, I did get the feeling of mist between the valleys, which was a goal.

 

The next attempt was less crowded but also had fewer layers. The trees were more realistic, but the crowded composition made it difficult to focus on anything, and the base colour was too strong to look like a convincing mist. I was too focused on getting the trees right and lost sight of the forest.

 

The third, and final picture had one crucial difference; it was painted on a 380x260 (the previous paintings were 310x210; I made the choice to go with a bigger painting to ensure that I had a bit more space to paint bigger, more realistic trees and keep open space in the composition. I worked on blending the background trees into the mist and getting a mix of foreground trees, with misted parts, though I overdid this at times. I’m also still struggling to get a nice smooth blend, but that might have been due to the lack of undercoat in some areas.

 

I’ve been trying to push myself in my projects, so I might well return to this subject and use duo-colour, maybe including a sun/moon and some yellow/orange catching the tops of some of the trees.