Ink-And-Watercolor Tips

[Jaxilon]

I expect this explains why you see a lot of what I call smokey looking backgrounds. Where instead of blocking in the entire background they do just a little and have it curl away sort of like smoke.

This was my first watercolor painting of any size and besides having the hairs issue mentioned above I had the same problem with blocking in the flower. It's not a complicated image but I learned a lot. For instance, that you can't erase the pencil lines after you watercolor over them. Man! That was just not cool. I could probably improve this image if I was to ink it but I probably won't since it was just an exercise. (I will admit that it looks better irl than the scan here but you can see what I'm talking about).

The background was starting to actually eat away at the page even though I was using watercolor paper so there is a limit to how soupy you can go. I also did not have a good "mop" brush which is what I am keeping an eye out for now but I'm not going to buy any cheapo brush.