I fell in love with watercolor painting years ago.
I think it’s the crisp, vibrant, transparent hues that attract me. Using Carol Jackson’s 80’s system, Color Me Beautiful, I’m a winter colors personality.
I don’t like muted, muddy, drab colors, though I do use acrylics in some projects, like mixed media. When I do, I try to keep the colors clear and bright without a lot of intermixing.
I love using ink and marker to start my watercolor paintings or to accent them afterwards.
There is something about the sharp contrast that excites me!
The hardest thing about watercolor painting is saving the whites. Whatever you want to be white, like snow on trees, reflections on water, a man’s white shirt or the stripes on a cafe awning, must be left not painted, so that the white of the paper shows through. This becomes the white color in the painting because there is no white watercolor. The medium is too transparent for that to work.
As I was teaching myself, (sometimes now) I often painted over an area that I meant to save. It’s disappointing because it’s not easy to repair, if it even can be.
It requires gently erasing the color or lifting it with tape. It often doesn’t remove all of the color and the paper fibers can become rough through over-working.
If all of the color could not be lifted and the area is not too damaged, you could save the painting by dabbing on correction fluid to whiten the over-painted areas.
Whites must be brilliant to highlight the beauty of watercolor painting. You can highlight, in some way, these areas in your sketch. This will help you to remember where they should be so that you won’t paint over them.
You could make the pencil boundaries of the white areas darker. You could also add penciled notes, like skirt front, door, sunbeam, flowerpot, etc. Remember that any heavier marks may need to be erased later if you don’t want them to show in the painting.
Masking fluid can also be painted onto the white areas. It resists any over-painting. Afterwards, it can be gently rubbed off, like rubber cement, revealing the saved white paper space underneath.
I don’t like using masking fluid. I like to remember where my whites are supposed to be. I’m a self-taught artist but I understand that art students also feel this way.
Another challenge in watercolor painting is learning to paint backwards or in reverse. With oils, acrylics and other opaque paints you paint from dark to light. You lay down your darkest colors first. The medium colors are painted next. The lightest colors and whites, or highlights, are painted on last.
With watercolors, it is the opposite. Darker areas in watercolor paintings, tones and shades, are created through painting layer upon layer of the transparent paint. So, the first layer that is laid down is very light. They are often called washes, especially when they cover large areas. In this way, darker areas of the painting will develop as more layers are laid down. The whites become more apparent as more layers of paint are added around those areas that are to be saved.
You can tell that I’m totally fascinated with painting in watercolors!
My paintings from top to bottom are:
Marsh Beach
Marsh Cove
Marsh Inlet
Thanks for looking! 
You’ve never seen purple and orange sunsets? I have, sometimes mixed with other colors as well. I guess the colorfulness depends on the location. My inspiration for Marsh Cove was a magazine photograph. 
Thanks for visiting my post and commenting. See you around the forums. Love it here! 