Watercoloring a Luna Moth

 So, who knew there was such a thing? ( not me ) I have to tell you this could very well be the hardest thing I have painted in this weekly challenge tutorial to date. I think its mostly a mental thing. I know this is a "real" critter and since I have no idea what it really should look like and the video was hard for me, I did watch it over and over and I painted and blotted over and over. ( So, I have a green paper towel to show for it lol) 

We will not discus how long it took to sketch this. and I knew there should be white highlights and I decided to use this silicone tipped brush with some Windsor & newton masking fluid. and truthfully, I should have practiced that step a million times. it went on gloopy and too thick. but, I decided that it was just a practice notebook so I'd press on because, it took forever to sketch said moth. I did use some rare green earth on some of the pencil lines before I did the masking fluid. ( that may have been the first mistake. it turned out to be a much darker shade of green then all the others that came later.)

what it looked like after the first two or three layers of paint that had multiple steps of blotting going on.

Next layers of paint, was trying to get that darker overlapped wings darker section. the shades of green were just not right. ( well not much like the video anyways) I think this may have been the time when hubs took a glance and said oh, you did a butterfly with frog legs. yeah.

On Monday more paint went over the top. along the shadow edges. not sure. tried to do some of the white feathering but, it mostly just bled into the painting parts. 

later Monday night I really thought I was done with this, tossed the brushes I had been using into the shot and walked away.

Tuesday evening came along and found me adding yet another round of paint and blotting. I think I would be happier with this if I knew more of what I was doing. So, it had a steep learning curve. I assume sometime I will smile later down the road the way the pages of c curves do now. That's about it from me, you can find this challenge here at Splitcoaststampers to play along with us, thanks for stopping by.