Watercoloring an Autumn Lake scene

 This week Angie has chosen this watercolor tutorial seen here on YouTube from Ahmadart on doing a Autumn Lake scenery. So, I had some already cut watercolor paper in the drawer and I had a suspicion it was the strathmore (not cotton arches) but, putting down the first layers of water confirmed that and so, I kept painting anyways.

The paper curled instantly taped to the glass mat. and I let this dry like this. 

It actually flattened out when drying so, I did add more tape and do the water part of the scene. 

I did not have the same colors used in the tutorial for the sky/water but, I think the mountain & reflection are the same colors although no matter how much I mixed mine, they just did not have that little bit of water to be more mud like, when I got the paint thicker it dried all the way in the pallet. ( its hot here and the humidity is very low) 

So, when I pulled off the second piece of tape I seen that the water bled into the sky/mountains so, I thought this is just a trial run anyways to see if it will work on this paper.

And  then I had the bright idea to add water to the back side of the painting and the glass mat to let it stick. ( it did not stick like a cotton paper would have) so, I put this into my big shot and smooshed it under the rollers and let it dry there being pressed flatter.

The horizon line is pretty dark here to me but, I also found that none of my brushes are all frayed so, I started with a small flat brush but, that made more lines than splotches so, I just grabbed an Size 6 round and started making dots for the leaves. 

I did add some detailing ( dark) to the shadows of a few of the branches and the trunk and some white lines to the still water and some "highlighted" leaves but, I am not seeing much difference here with it yet. I am waiting for it to be finally dry to decided if it really needs something else. 

I did end up just a few more spots of paint to the previously white lines in the water and the leaves as what was there dried to almost gone so, I touched them up and then mounted this to some very pale blue/grey textured cardstock that was cut to 5 3/4" square in real life. That's about it from me, if you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. thanks for stopping by.