Sunflowers - a watercolor in progress

It has been raining more than sunny over the last couple of weeks - which is quite prefect for doing watercolor paintings! Usually the humidity in Calgary is so very dry that it is hard to keep the watercolor paper damp. Not so today!

So, I wanted to show you a little bit of my process... 

 The first thing I have done is to work up a small sketch of what will be the painting, and determine where my darks, mid-tones and lights will be. I have discovered some great pencils from Derwent, called Graphitone, with which to do this easily. They come in dark (6B), medium (4B) and light (2B). You "color" with them, and then use your watercolor brush to wet the "graphite", which then shows up as dark, mid or light tones. Very cool and no smudging or mess like you get with actual pencils.  

I then sketch the flowers/leaves on 140 lb. Arches watercolor paper.

Here you can see that I have done a color swatch of each of the potential colors I could use for this painting. After looking at each one and at my photo reference, I decide which ones will be the ones I will paint with in this piece. 

I then paint a small swatch of the chosen colors next to the thumbnail sketch in my sketchbook.

Then I begin to paint, using those chosen colors! 

I will post this painting when it is complete.