Watercolor Painting Blog - Pebbles 15 x 20 inches

I started a new 15 x 20 watercolor painting and the subject is pebbles.  Drawing the outlines on the watercolor paper is time consuming but fun.  Eevery little pebble is drawn in as individual rocks unless they are hidden under the shadows of some other pebbles.  It took me a long time to get the whole composition right and because of the large pebble on the right hand side, I need to make sure that it does not overp0wer the whole composition.  I started with a wash on the whole painting with a light dilution of colbolt blue.  I use Windsor and Newton colbolt blue and it is a granulating and staining color.  When I do the wash, I am aware of a certain light color in the painting and by wetting the areas first with clean water I have made those areas a lighter shade of blue which is what I am after.  Next I tried to do a few pebbles on the top right corner and decided I would use the spattering technique using a tooth brush because I like the effect of pointillism it creates.  I did that by carefully taping around the pebble I am going to paint and make sure the spatter does not go on to areas I do not want.  Then I have three different mistures of blue, one with diluted cobalt blue, another one with misture of cobalt blue and french ultramarine blue and finally the third one with a mixture of french ultramarine blue, green and alizarin crimson.  With the three mistures I use a tooth brush and spatter on the taped pebble after each layer is dry.   This happens to be a lengthy process and looks like if I am going to do the whole watercolor painting like this, it would really test my patience.  I can only accomplish very little in a given time.