Thank you Donna and Moscatel.
Moscatel, thank you for joining us here and giving it a whirl! It’s always nice seeing you on a thread.
Going from oil to water colour is a nightmare. I remember that well. All your instincts that work for oil just don’t work for watercolor. It took a lot longer for me to get proficient at watercolor. I can’t tell you how many paintings I ruined. Just can’t play with it like oils. It does have its magic, but it requires a lot of patience to learn. And when I’m moving along quickly, I use a hairdryer. It’s just a very unforgiving medium. There’s way you can pick colour off the paper if you screw up, to a degree. Although some pigments are staining, so it doesn’t matter what you do. You might have to touch up with the acrylic paint. But saving white space or planning for lighter places when you’re doing washes requires planning before hand. Frisket. So I really feel for you. Let me just say you drew the reference well.
I use watercolour both ways- in the very traditional way where you can do washes and such and build. Or I can apply it very thick without meaning to use washes which some people don’t realize you can do with watercolour. I think you’re painting stroke by stroke instead of letting some wash do the work for you. You don’t have to have these huge washes like you think of with big watery watercolours. But they are your friend for creating a background or the base of let’s say the fur / feathers/ tree trunk before you build up. Of course you have to think about if there’s white you need to save. You’re going stroke by stroke by stroke, which is going to be very frustrating. But I am so appreciative that you’re trying. You have the ability -I’ve seen from your work- to be very good at any medium. It’s just watercolour is the trickiest and it’s very opposite to what you know. So it’s not that you can’t do it. You just have to take time to learn the medium. Make the mistakes. You have to go against your instincts if you’ve been working with oil for a long time. And I can tell these are owls. They don’t look like penguins!
Also, the paper you are using is so crappy that it would frustrate even a very strong watercolorist. And when it comes to watercolour the type of paper and the quality makes a huge difference. Even with watercolour papers whether it is hot press and cold press makes a huge difference. I don’t like hot press for instance. Also, the quality of watercolour paints really makes a difference. With the cheaper brand you just don’t have the pigment load. You’re trying to get impact and you’re not getting it. Switch to a more expensive kind and a little goes a long way. Well, I wouldn’t worry about that so much as using proper paper, so you do not get frustrated. You do not want the paper breaking down halfway through. That will make you really frustrated! Been there, done that! You have to play with watercolour -there’s lots of videos and things we can tell you to do to see the wonderful nature of this medium. The difference is so big the 2 mediums that it’s almost like me going into an oil painting class and trying to mix the oil with water to make a wash. You just can’t do it!
I hope you will continue to explore this medium. It has many attributes.
I was when working with gouache 
. 
that I wish I could do something with this medium. Thanks PaintBoss!
.
