Step 4
Finishing the first wash with the same colors and slightly darker values and a few highlights of the warm sky color connects the foreground to the rest of the composition. Because the values in the foreground are similar to the values in the middle ground, I was able to keep the edges soft.

Step 5
I let the first wash dry and then used a hair dryer to dry it throughly. The beauty of transparent watercolor is in the layering. Because I want soft edges, I painted this layer the same as the first–very wet using the glycerin and water mixture, hoping that it will form a layer and not mix with the first layer.

Once this layer dried, I removed some of the pigment by scrubbing with a stiff brush which gave definition to the lake and the buildings and a few trees.

Once again I am using Khadi watercolor paper which is very different than all of the other papers that I use. It has very little internal sizing and a lot of external sizing. Because of that, removing paint is very easy.

Step 1
I started by spraying the entire paper with a solution of glycerin and water. Glycerin is the substance in the tube of paint that makes the pigment flow more easily. Adding more glycerin not only allows the pigment to flow more evenly, but as a bonus slows down the drying time.
The extra time allows me to paint more slowly to get the right color and value and keep the edges soft.

Step 2
Painting the middle ground with hills, a lake, trees and buildings needed to be painted while the sky was still wet because I wanted soft edges. Too wet and I would get no edge, and too dry I would get a hard edge.

Step 3
Waiting until the surface was a bit dryer, I created the different colors and edges of the varied subjects i.e. hills, trees, lake and buildings.
Note that the bottom of the middle ground area is a hard edge. That will be softened when I next paint the foreground with darker values.

Almost finished with my latest painting.
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Painting soft edges in transparent watercolor is usually done by painting wet into wet. That works well when painting small. This painting is 16 x 23 inches, and keeping the painting wet and controlling the edges makes it a challenge.
So, I experimented with a different strategy.

Planting a Tribute
For everyone who knew Bill Parks, he does not need an introduction. For those who did not know him, He taught figure drawing at the old American Academy of Art in Chicago. He was a true gentleman, and an excellent teacher, respected by ALL of his students.
He lived near Milwaukee, Wisconsin and traveled to the Academy 4 times a week. His commute was three hours–one way!
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He reduced his teaching schedule when his wife became ill, and when she eventually passed away, reduced his schedule to once a week.
Bill and I had a collection of many plants, lining the sunny windows in our classrooms. During his wife’s illness, and his reduced schedule, he asked me to take care of his plants, especially two of his favorite plants. One was a small maple tree and the other an indoor plant, Hatiora Salicorniodes-bottle cactus.
Bill passed away in 2003 leaving me with his special plants, which I have tended to ever since.

In the winter, I placed the little maple tree under grow lights in the basement. In the summer I gave the tree sunshine outdoors.

This year I decided that the little tree should be free from the confines of its pot. The best time to plant trees is in the late summer or early fall. So, I found a perfect spot, and I just recently planted it. I’m keeping a close eye on it. So far, temperatures have been moderate, and it’s receiving the benefits of lots of lightning-enriched rains. I hope it will get established, and survive the coming winter months as a lasting tribute to my friend, Bill Parks.

Though we were unable to attend the event, my painting "Fishing On the Vermillion" made its way to New York to be displayed in the 155th International American Watercolor Society exhibit. 

Tony Armendariz, who also had a painting juried into the show, attended the event. He graciously took pictures of my painting in its spot in the exhibit.

​I didn't receive an award, but I'm still very proud to have been juried into this prestigious show. 

Correcting “failed” paintings in watercolor can be done with the addition of a little opaque paint. Keep in mind that watercolor paper is flexible and opaque paint is not. Opaque paint added too thickly will eventually crack. I will sometimes use acrylic white paint which remains flexible and can be used more heavily.

This waterfall composition is done on Arches 300lb paper. The final painting is okay, but not as dynamic as I had planned.

To get more contrast, I darkened the darks in the background and changed the shapes of some of the rocks. I also darkened the rock near the center of interest, and added more water flow with the opaque white paint on the left side of the painting.

In the middle ground, I darkened and made the one rock on the left a bit warmer to bring it forward. Paying attention to the flow and movement of the water I added some opaque white.

The most difficult correction is in the large rock in the foreground. It is already very dark and large. Adding too much opaque paint would make it too different in relationship to the rest of the painting. I did darken it enough to break it into some smaller shapes and then lighten the top with some translucent paint for more form.
I darkened the area flowing around the rocks and then added more movement in the water as it flows to the left in the foreground.

The final adjustments are subtle. The white space at the bottom was painted to match what is happening in the flow of the water.
I added more opaque white paint to the highlights making sure that they were not as white as the whites in the center of interest.
The final painting, although not compositionally much different than the original, is much more dramatic.

I submitted this painting into last year’s 2021 TWSA exhibition. However, it was not accepted into the show.
After a fresh look, I had a decision to make: do I let it stand on its own merits, or make some adjustments?
I could see it needed some improvements, so I added some definition to parts of the painting to get a stronger center of interest. That did not work. Major redo is the decision!
The title of the painting refers to the watercolor paper that I used –Khadi, which is hand made in India. This paper is very different than any other paper that I use. It has a lot of surface sizing and almost no internal sizing.

I decided that the “greenery” in the upper part of the painting was too isolated and therefore had to be repeated elsewhere or eliminated. I did not see any logical place to repeat the greenery, so I decided it had to be eliminated altogether. I started by wetting and then blotting the upper right corner of the composition. That removed some of the pigment, but not enough, so I decided to try a more abrasive scrubbing pad which removed most of the pigment.

At that point, I decided that scrubbing the rest of the painting was safe so I did some heavy scrubbing in the top part of the painting and a lesser amount in the bottom portion. I then dried the painting with a hair drier. When throughly dried, I sprayed the entire painting with a strong solution of sizing -gum arabic. Without this sizing, the paper would soak up the paint like a blotter which would make it very difficult to control the edges of the rocks and water.

Without the greenery, the composition needed to be adjusted. I added more and darker rocks and changed their sizes in the upper portion of the composition. At this point, I was no longer concerned about the transparency, so I added some white gouache paint mostly in the water to create more drama and movement.

With the addition of the opaque paint, it gave me the ability to work transparent, translucent and opaque to achieve the movement of the water and the realistic affect of the water as it flows and is interrupted by the rocks.
To achieve the darker values, I used a pigment given to me by my watercolor students–Yeliseyev Indigo, by American Journey. I am always concerned about the permanency of the pigments that I use and checked the label to see what kind of pigment it is.
The Yeliseyev Indigo is a combination of PB27–Prussian Blue, which is permanent, and PV19 –Quinachradone Rose, one of the many new pigments that has been certified as permanent and PBK6 which is Lamp Black.
One note about the color black. I NEVER use black in my paintings and discourage the use of black to my students. To quote Leonardo daVinci:
“Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.”
Why I never use black:

1. to achieve a value that is dark, black is too convenient. Some black pigments are warm and some are cool.
   Unless you use both, all of your darks will be the same temperature.
2. For that reason, you want to use a variety of pigments that are dark in value and have a variety of temperatures., which will give you more variety in your paintings.

The end result is a painting I believe is much better than the original.
Next step is to try this on some of my other failed paintings on different papers.

Final
This final step is always the scariest. After spending hours to get to this point in the painting, this last step can very easily ruin the painting.

The advantage of transparent watercolor is in the layering. The more layers the more the painting will “glow”.  To obtain that glow, I mixed some acrylic Cadmium Yellow Medium with water and sprayed the entire painting with that mixture. After it was totally dry, I used a hair dryer, sprayed another layer, and then a third and final layer. If you compare step 5 to the final you can see how much more intense it is.
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When the final layer was dry, I had to re-establish the white highlights to finish the painting.

Step 4
Next, I established the center of interest near the base of the trees and then added more branches and smaller trees. I used my coolest blue, Manganese Blue for the water to the left of the tree base.

Step 5
I painted the water and the opposite bank of the river first and then worked in all parts of the composition to establish detail and textures.

I scratched highlights in the water and in some of the branches with a mat knife and wire brush.

Every paper is different. The Khadi paper, because it has little or no internal sizing and because it is made with little or no long fibers, tears very easily, revealing a white that is whiter than the surface of the paper. So any scratching into the paper has to be done carefully.