Hi michaelcr, your technique is correct and I like the way you have applied the colour in the two still lifes and the portrait. For the landscape I'll give you an advice: before starting, apply a light background colour and let it dry. For example, if you want to paint a forest, put a very transparent green base (it has to be almost white, but this is necessary to avoid the effect of shooting white in places without colour). Instead of painting individual trees, locate the large masses first, the shaded parts, the road in relation to the trees, the lawn, etc. and try to determine the perspective. At this point you only need to define the shapes in more detail, going into more detail as you get closer to the viewer (you don't need to exaggerate the details, the brain automatically completes the patterns), you can also use watercolour crayons or pencils to help you at this stage (with dry colours of course). Doing it this way will give you a more natural result. If you are interested in painting landscapes in watercolour I recommend following James Gurney on Youtube, there is no better person to learn from in this field :)

Lovely paintings @michaelcr !! I looked over the video that you linked -- I think that in your apple painting you replicated the first 50% of the process really well. It looks like the artist (Cha Yeon) then started to add browns, blues, and greens into the shadows of the apple that are much darker than the light side (that bright red that you're successfully painted). I would recommend watching Dorian's Proko video talking about how to shade realistically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vapw6n6FyU and also to really push and exaggerate the shadows (core and cast shadows) of your apple or other still life object, like you've done wonderfully with the first painting. Hope that helps! Happy painting and keep up the great work!!

Hi michaelcr! I really like your drawings, you did a great job! I would recoment to start with cold pressed watercolour paper. Hot pressed paper tends to build "blooms" and the transition between the colours tends to break. On cold pressed paper the blending works much easier. Here is how I aproach my watercolour paintings, maybe there is something at that which might help: 1. Plan your drawing. Before you start make yourself aware of the lights an darks. Also where do you want to blend colours, where do you want to use wet on wet and wet on dry tecniques? Bright highlights can be protected with masking fluid if needed. 2. mix and prepare the colours you need before starting the painting. Than you do not have the struggle to keep your paper longer wet. 3. When you use wet on wet, I highly recomment to use a sponge for wetting the paper. It gives you an even watered surface, no puddles. When you use a brush the paper often starts to dry on one side before I could manage to wet the other side completetly. 4. start with the lightest colour of your reference. Than slowly build up the values and layer the paint, building depth and darker values. In the end you add the details :) Your paintings are reallly beautiful and I'm pretty sure you are going to do a great development in your skills :) Keep up the good work!

Those are looking decent to me. Maybe composition wise the second one is a bit too busy so the shapes are hard to read? Otherwise I don't find much problems, as water will work its own way and you can't really get that much control. The background of that third image maybe could use a bit more blur, which in watercolour you need to dampen that whole area first and brush in those colours I believe. But I'm not that skilled in watercolour though.