Watercolors are Hard

I painted this Scarlet Tanager today from photos I had taken at High Island. It's the first watercolor I've done in a very long time. So long, in fact, that some of my paint tubes had completely dried up, and for my blue I had to resort to a tube of gouache, because my cobalt and ultramarine blue watercolor tubes had both solidified. This was an excercise in rendering the bird, so composition and background were given short shrift. Funny part was I had a harder time with the mulberry leaves than I did with the bird.

I find painting birds in acrylic to be much easier, or at least much more forgiving of error. For me, doing detailed work in watercolors is like walking tip-toe along the edge of a precipice - even if you don't slip up and go over the edge, you are constantly aware of just how close that edge is...