Beautiful Stella’s Portrait. Her eyes truly captivate me. I select a position showing her curious personality, and begin to render her features. Starting with a sketch of the layout background and my main subject. I note that I do intend to show the beauty of the country she lived in, rural with great rolling hills in the distance just behind the bush she stands in front of.

The wonderful way that watercolor will spread as you drop pools of color into wet areas is fascinating to me. “Wet on Wet” is a technique that I frequently use. I am applying mastic or watercolor resist to protect areas on the paper that I want to keep white. This allows me to paint large “wet-on-wet” background washes without having to worry about avoiding details located in the area.

This mastic application step shows where I want areas to be reserved in white. It is distracting sometimes because it gives the impression that those areas are darker areas. But they are not, it’s a “mind-over-matter” thing to remember as I paint. Those areas with mastic appear dark now, but when I remove the mastic they will be pristine white areas instead.