I set out to paint grass.
Just grass. Maybe some lavender. Nothing heroic.
Reference material: memory. The budget kind you collect while driving to work half-awake, watching roadside fields blur by like they’re trying to escape your life choices. Cornfields. Early spring. Scrappy wild lavender in little pockets—wedged between asphalt and agriculture like it’s trespassing on purpose.
The real assignment was light.
How sun hits thin blades. Where shadows stack. How watercolor behaves when you stop hovering over it like an anxious helicopter parent.
Naturally, I hovered anyway.
These are the progression shots except that I was not able to take the picture of the grasses before the hint of lavender flowers showed up:
- grasses (me, being optimistic and yes, no initial photo taken, just picture the moment.)
- lavender shows up; I darkened the lavender weeks later because apparently I needed to learn restraint the loud way.(me, getting cocky)
- close up of the landscape study.
It didn’t make the cut.
But it did teach me a little more about controlling watercolor without strangling it. Which is—annoyingly—the whole point.
Painted on a 5.5 x 8.5 cold pressed 140 lb. paper. Just in case you’re curious.