Watercolor of a House with Process

I got some new watercolors for Christmas that are portable and I decided to test them out by painting a house in my neighborhood. It has some nice trees next to it, and I like painting trees. I've also heard that it's good to paint from life references when possible, so this was an attempt at that. I'm not a fast painter, though, so it was a bit tricky since the shadows kept changing.

First I started with the road and basic house shape.

And tree placement

Painted the trees and made some more details on the house

and the final painting again. I actually added the final touches today while everything else was yesterday.

In the future I think I need to work on giving the land more dimension, maybe making a pencil sketch first to help with perspective, painting faster so my lighting will be more consistent, and I also need to figure out how to take good pictures with my phone. Most of these photos were taken in almost full sun or only slight shadow so it makes me sad that they all look kind of dark, and I think the colors don't show up super well. Also, I started my painting too close to the edge of the paper, so I should have planned for more of a border, or just been less stingy with my use of paper, haha.

The painting is about 4.5 inches / 11 cm tall and 8 inches / 22 cm wide. I think I measured differently for the different units, so they might not convert exactly.

Materials were a Koi Water Colors Pocket Field Sketch Box for watercolors and brush on Strathmore Watercolor paper