This is a picture with many lives. It started with me carefully masking out the tree branches (which takes a considerable amount of time, I might add) and putting a big wash over the top 2/3 of the picture to represent the foliage; which turned out muddy and too dark; which meant turning the paper over and starting again; which meant masking out the tree all over again (which took a little less time because I was getting very good at it). Then came a period of relative peace when I applied a successful background wash and painted the rest of the picture, including the akward figure in the red shirt walking into the scene from the right side. What, you don't see the figure? Oh, that's right; I had to scrub it out because it looked so awful. You know that line from the second Narnia film where someone says "who ever heard of a witch who really died... you can always get them back"? Well, that's my philosophy about white paper: you can always get it back; it just may not be pretty. But then the picture needed something red in that corner. So I added the poppies which helped covered up that not-pretty white spot. End of tale.
Original Watercolor ~ 16/22