For today’s entry into the 30x30DirectWatercolor project, I’ve ended up using exactly the same two colours as when I started a week ago – lemon yellow and violet. No green this time but I’m not painting wonky lemons.

You can compare it to the source photo I used and you’ll see I’ve taken a fairly loose approach but, remember, this is done without working up a careful sketch first.

If you look, you can see that I did start by ‘drawing’ with the brush, using a dilute neutral mix created from the combination of the two colours. Once I’d got that down in a few strokes, I gave my brush a quick rinse and blocked in some wet areas before adding most of the yellow you can see. That was followed by the violet and then a slower process of refining the piece, sometimes adding paint but just as much lifting it off or encouraging it to move where I thought it was needed. There is a range of subtle touches: ones I engineered, like the indication of my glasses, and ones I can thank the paint, paper and water for, such as where the edge of a wet patch dries with a slightly darker line.

I think the piece could bear more work – my priority would be to soften that very dark eyebrow – but I wouldn’t want to lose the spontaneity so I’ll move onto a new piece for tomorrow.