Lovely water colour painting - work in progress

I have a thing for ink and watercolor. I love how with each brushstroke the colour seeps into the paper and how by adding water to the pigment you can create subtle variations of tone.

I was keen to experiment on the 600 gram hot pressed water colour paper I recently bought from Neils Art Store in Sydney.  The paper is rather expensive but I decided it was worth it to splurge at the annual paper sale.

Setting up my table with ink, watercolours and brushes.

In between tending to my baby and chores I managed to sit down briefly and draw up a very simple image including a landscape with trees, sun, sky and earth. It waited for me for a few days to start blocking in the colour.

Finally, I sat down and started painting. The 600 gram hot pressed paper was so lovely and smooth to paint on. There seemed to be a greater window of time to work the tone with water, pigment and brushwork then with other water colour papers I have used.

The image started taking shape as the sky was blocked in.

Ocher was then added to the trees and shadows.

Then yellow was added to the sky, a sun blocked in and lead pencil cross hatch to execute to tones on the trees.

Then a touch of red to the sky, sun, land and trees.