Okey, dokey, Maurice. I admit it. The plan failed.

Painting with watercolors, for me, has a big choke factor.

When I'm working in my sketch book on inexpensive paper

with no pressure except to play, I can come up with some

pretty loose and appealing material.

This is a study I did from instructions in Watercolor Artist

magazine on carving out lights by painting around them.

Then I go to expensive paper and start on something I hope to put up for sale.

I'm working on a picture of a guy fishing in a lake.

I start with the mountains in the background and lay in

an underpainting of color for the water.

I add the trees and more detail to the mountains.  I'm feeling pretty good

about it, but the next step is to wet the paper and drop in pigment to 

indicate the trees' reflections.  My timing is wrong plus I tried to

keep the purple of the mountains going with the green of the trees.

Long story short, the pigments spread too fast and the colors turned

to mud.  The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got.

I admit it.  The plan failed.

Back to the drawing board.  Same drawing.  This time no purple

to muck up the green.  This time I have the brilliant idea of

putting in the reflections first, then painting the trees to match

instead of the other way around.

I add the trees and more details.  I protect the fisherman

from the wet flow of paint by blocking him out with

liquid masking fluid.

I remove the masking and finish the painting.This time the plan worked!

The plan worked, Maurice!