Continuing Watercolor (November/December 2013)

I have been working on the background adding dark shapes, sharpening up edges, working on details on the berries and leaves, etc.

I have added a light area back in (with gouache and watercolor) and added a few more details on some berries.

I have added color to the left of the car by the trunk.

I have added more color and a whole lot of details and values.  I have been sharpening up the edges and making choices about darks and lights to create contrast in the painting (so that the car pops forward visually).

This started with the blue/green (pthalo green and pthalo) background.  I wet the paper and dropped in the color working wet-n-wet.  _ used Oxide of Chromium mixed with aueolin for the cactus shapes.  After that dried I wet the bottom background and put in a yellow color (burnt sienna and aureolin mixture) as well as a little red and blue gray and then I used sanding (watercolor pencils and sand paper).  Then I worked on the lizard adding the blue/green (pthalo green and pthalo blue) and gray (pthalo blue, pthalo green, alizarin, van dyke brown), dropping in some of the yellow background color and then adding salt for texture.  Pay attention to the shadows on the lizard.