This class involved one of my favourite things about watercolour—commitment! My oil painting friend loves that medium because if she makes a mistake, she can just scrape it off or paint over it, whereas with watercolour, everything is on display and unchangeable. Given that watercolour paper doesn’t come cheap, we have to make the best of it.

My Indio blue composition started off looking rough. Blue has a much higher translucency than black, so the effect was much more diffused and muddy in places, which gave rise to the composition; the pine trees were blended into the uglier patches, in a composition I was proud of.

The houses are based on places I have stayed, and the moons are because I love painting watercolour moons. I’ll use this technique again for abstract backgrounds for other projects.