I'm trying to upgrade my process by doing more preliminary work. I'm doing master studies of the three covers Daniel Brereton did for the Legends of the World's Finest mini-series he did with Walter Simonson. These are three small color studies I've done of the covers to work out the colors I'll use as I do the full studies.

I have been procrastinating to sit down with my watercolors for a bit too long. This thread is so inspiring that I needed to do something today. This is a study from a painting that I found on pinterest. After 2 failed attempts, I managed to do some justice to the sky.

More spatter practice. I'm doing my best to build the vocabulary I need to paint watercolor.

I've been studying watercolor online with Julie Pollard for about a year and half now. If I'm honest with myself, I've really only picked up the pace to where it needs to be once I combined my watercolor studies with my figure drawing habit. That said, there are a base set of skills that need to be driven into muscle memory. One of the hardest ones--at least for me--is spattering paint. I'm trying to combine that exercise with my figure drawing, but last night I did a study on nice Arches paper to see how it would look and I'm not disappointed. This is an exercise from Julie Pollard's book, "Watercolor Unleashed".

I've really been loving the posts in this thread, thanks for the positive painting peer pressure! I've been trying to unwind with a watercolor (with a teeny bit of white gouache) on the couch at the end of the day with a focus on minimal setup, minimal expectation, and to loosen up a bit. It's been fun! Clearly I've had sushi on the brain :) Keep slingin pigment!

I did this master study today at the National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico, VA. They do a class there once a month and in today's class we did a master study of WW2 combat art by Robert Moyr in watercolor.

This is a doodle more than anything, but the black parts were done with a Pentel brush pen, which I like a lot. I *think* it's permanent ink but I'm not 100% sure. It allows you to get a lot of ink on the paper fast. In this case, I was using smooth Bristol board, which probably isn't the best match for the the tools I was using, but I want to pull the thread on this approach a little more to see if there is anything worth discovering.

All your watercolors look so pretty!

I'm calling this one done. I'm not quite where I want to be with these, but I'm excited about the improvement I'm seeing.

Here is a watercolor that I'm working on. I think it's maybe 70% done. It's hard for me to tell.

Studied a watercolor painting I found on pinterest. This is my 3rd try.. Happy with how it turned out finally..

Quick rock study and exploring an expanded palette. Up until this point, I've mainly been using four colors--one red, one yellow, and two blues--one light and one for dark values. This palette has a warm and cool yellow and a warm and cool red(ish). This seems to really help with the color mixing. I can get better grays and browns out of this palette. We'll see what comes of it.

Two studies.

A sketch of my neighborhood today after some snow.

Ruined some more paper today ;)

More watercolors from yesterday. I'm considering these a draft. I need to figure out how to take these sketches and use them to build towards more thought out pieces. As sketches go, these are helpful, but I need to continue to develop my process for finished works.

Here are a couple I worked on today. Just a whole lot of frustration.

More form study.. managed to leave the white of the paper for highlights..yay!

Did some simple form study with watercolor..

Preliminary sketch for a longer study. The picture is a mangle of branches, which I find challenging. On the longer study, I'm using masking fluid for the first time. We'll see how it goes!