June is "Direct" month

Each June brings with it the 30x30 Direct Watercolor challenge, in which artists paint in watercolor without making an underlying drawing. It achieves two things, at almost opposite ends of the spectrum:

1. It makes you look really carefully at every stroke you make so that you can portray your subject accurately even though you have no lines to guide you;

OR...

2. It allows you to use watercolor in a more spontaneous, unstructured way.

Since I tend to be kind of uptight about my painting, the former works better for me than does the latter. I hope to try both during this month of experimentation, because one of my goals is always to be looser; but I also appreciate that painting without lines really refines your eye for structure, perspective, and detail.

Today's drawing was made from a photograph online that caught my eye; I didn't realize until after I had painted it that my first day of watercolor without lines was of a bottle of ink, which I would normally be using to do my drawing before accenting it with watercolor! So here, for my first day, is "the forbidden" for the rest of the month.

I was pretty happy with the reflections of light that I captured. I didn't get the reflection on the cap quite right—it was an extraordinarily clear echo of some brown wooden cabinets with some bottles sitting atop them, but here it just turned into colorful fuzz. But I do like the contrast that these other colors make with the rest of the drawing.

Paul Jackson watercolors, Escoda Prado brush #10, Bee sketchbook.