100 Watercolors #95 - Advertisement

I learned a lot by doing this one.  I had knocked in the bright colors of the advertisement, the dark wall and sidewalk, and the rings of shadows in the lower left and felt pretty good about the way it was looking.  I then decided to add similar rings of shadow to the right of the advertisement and at that point I crossed an invisible line and the piece felt overworked.  I had to keep going, to keep things consistent, but with each new shadow layer I liked the piece less and less.

It's a special skill (one that I'm obviously still working on!) to know when a piece is done and to just put down your brush.  Watercolors are so unforgiving.  It's very difficult to make corrections or go back a step.  You always have to keep moving forward, or start over from scratch - something I was not willing to do after spending many hours on this piece.  I might not be totally satisfied with the end result, but I am very grateful for the lesson it taught me.

The next theme: In the Storm!