I love watercolor

This girl, Olivia, was supposed to be a gouache painting, but after already doing one today and struggling with it, I decided I would instead try to mimic (more or less) what the artist did in gouache using watercolor.

The biggest obstacle to that, of course, is the purist watercolorist's refusal to use white paint, trying instead to preserve the white of the paper as the lightest light. I have never been the greatest at this, but I wanted to do this picture in watercolor, so I gave it a shot.

I'm fairly pleased with her, although there were a few problems: She was oriented on the page on a slant, but my slant turned out too extreme and now I don't know whether to display the painting vertically, as it's supposed to be, or to turn it to the horizontal. It doesn't really work either way.

I failed to preserve some significant white areas, which would have improved the contrast between the light and shadow sides of the face. The biggest issue is the transparency of watercolor that didn't let me do what Cecile Yadro did with her opaque gouache, which was to blend and mix the hair into the background, letting the blue intrude into the hair randomly, instead of having a defined head area surrounded by blue. I have to admit that it was an effective technique, and maybe I could have pulled it off in watercolor—but I didn't pay enough attention while painting the hair, and ended up with a much more conventional look.

And, as usual, her nose is just a smidge too long, and her eyes a tiny bit too small. Oh well...

I do like the delicate blending I achieved in the face, and that I was able to give sufficient accent to her features without using pen and ink.

"Olivia"—pencil and Paul Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, 9x10.5 inches.