Long road trip, what to paint?

Shall I read my Kindle instead, since I have about a dozen novels in progress?

Painting won out, mainly because I’d just popped several new half pan Winsor & Newton watercolors into my travel set: Specifically: Winsor Red, Winsor Yellow and Winsor Orange, which means every color in my travel set is transparent or semi-transparent. No more mud for me!

I love birds for their shape, but I’m not a bird watcher. I just like the concept of painting birds. I painted this little blackbird because we see them often in our backyard, and because I like the water reflections background, and because, well, birds just seem soothing. In reality they’re probably trouble-making ninjas, like cats, but we won’t go into that!

Blackbird, watercolor, 5 x 7

For the darkest darks I used layers of Winsor Blue, Winsor Red and Burnt Sienna, and the greens are layers of Winsor Green, Indian Yellow and Winsor Orange. For the neutral gray/browns in the rock I just muddled all the colors together for variations of warm and cool browns.

Small paintings like this help me practice using watercolor. It’s a matter of knowing how layers of different colors work together, how the paint reacts to the paper, and how much water is needed in the mixtures, along with about 20 other variables, making it almost impossible (for me) to end up with something I’m satisfied with.

But it helped the road trip go by really fast and I like that!