YES OR NO

I debated on whether to share this one - another exercise/lesson from the Ewa Karpinska book.  This one, however, did not go well.  I find I can do large shapes in wet-in-wet but when it comes to smaller bits, I overwork and can't stop fiddling until it's dead.  That's what happened with the bowl here.  I didn't get the shape right and then obsessed about the shape - when I should have just let it be a little wonky shape (it is, after all, just a study!!).  So the bowl shape was wrong and the shadow shape was wrong and I finally went in with watercolor pencils to try to fix them.  Didn't work.  I could have grounded the cherries out of the bowl but I kind of like how the bowl is tipped and the cherries look like they are either falling or jumping out of the bowl in mid-flight!

I hope this wet-in-wet practice and study helps me loosen up.  But my personality so often causes me to ruin something because it says, Do it right! Yep, I ruin a lot of things because of that...my personality, I mean.  Perhaps in 2012 I will change my personality.  Can that be done, this late in the game?

So a bad painting to end the year?!?  No, I can't do that! 

So here's another I've begun (still working from the Ewa Karpinska book Wet-on-Wet Watercolour Techniques) and it's looking like more of a success at this stage but more to come...she begins with just the mail vase drawn out and then painted and then the wooden box on the right and the vase on the left and much more to come being painted in without drawing - scary!!