I love painting animals with watercolor.  After I sketch out the animal, I wet the entire surface of the page.  I love to use the brush as if it is a pencil- sketching almost with the brush, reapplying paint as necessary.  Once I learned to not be afraid of adding lots of paint and lots of water, my paintings felt right.

In this painting, I constantly re-wet the paper.  I used thick applications of paint, and if it was too dark, I added more water and spread the colors out and used them to shade and give the horse depth.

Learning to not shy away from the water aspect in watercolors.

Off to paint an elephant...