This is my second gouache course on Skillshare, and I feel like I'm starting to get some control of the paint and the brush, though I'm still learning from my mistakes. 

Looking back, I can see now that these stripes were pretty predictive of my color palette.

That narrow strip of dark purple-blue happened when I realized I'd accidentally put two rectangles of orange next to each other, but I kind of like it.

Did the first few exercises on multimedia paper, so they kind of buckled. I like how I got the feeling of shadow just by layering the white over the blue. Getting into the groove of adding, adding adding until it looks done.

It was fun playing with different ways of layering and blending.

Salvia from the garden. Took Anne's suggestion, and simplified (by removing leaves) to get a better composition. Got the center line on the leaves by layers of green, instead of a painted line. Layered some white on the stems with a dry brush to try to get the fuzzy feeling. Need to remember to switch to a thinner brush for thinner lines - that branch on the left was supposed to look thin and dry. 

One of the things I'm loving about gouache is how you can keep refining it. For example, the shine on the dark feathers looked all wrong at first, but I just kept blending. Happy with everything but the tail feathers. Once again, forgot to switch to a thinner brush. Also, how do you paint in a straight line?