Crows!

crow in watercolor on Fluid hot-pressed paper - copyright Jan Gibson

Crows really intrigue  me and I find them very inventive and smart as well as numerous around here!  I've been painting them in different poses and think I've begun to build my mental muscle memory so it's a bit easier to paint them now.

However, I recently got an order which included some Fluid brand watercolor samples which I used for the above crow.  Huge mistake as I fought the paper the whole time.

Hot-pressed watercolor paper is my usual when I use watercolors but this brand did not perform like any other I've used.  I did try some colored pencil on it and it seemed to work well for that.  Too bad I donated all my quality colored pencils to our local high school!  But, good thing I only got 3 sheets of the paper to try!

And here is another watercolor crow:

crow in watercolor on Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper - copyright Jan Gibson

This crow was painted before the first one and was a fun learning experience.  However, I decided the background was too intense and tried to soften it a bit and ruined the painting!  I think the 'bones' of the painting work though and may eventually repaint it with gouache.

Or maybe not as I usually don't like to mess with a painting once I've done it once!