Let me give credit to the Alexander Brother's book Step by Step Watercolor Painting for this first painting exercise. It's a rather bold step for me and the dark colors of this painting add to its drama and Old Master appearance.

One of the important concepts of this exercise is the use of washes prior to adding detail. As you can easily see here I washed the entire surface with a heavy mixture of raw sienna followed later by overwash of burnt sienna in the lower section. The treeline was painted with a mixture of blue and red with a touch of olive mixed in at a few points. The stream itself was first washed lightly with raw sienna and later defined with a burnt sienna overwash.

The sky in the painting was supposed to provide a dramatic backdrop to the scene and be luminescent. I played with the sky in several different ways but I was not satisfied with the linear look of the clouds they are much too long and narrow without true cloud-like definition. With some work I think the clouds could be a much more satisfying and dramatic.

I altered the composition of this painting somewhat from the practice exercise and I'm afraid I misplaced an important element; the stream. The exercise painting had the stream coming from the lower right pointing towards the windmill. Instead I placed it below the windmill and it loses its significance in the painting. It is supposed to lead the eye but instead overweighs the painting on the left side. But those are all important parts of the intellectual exercise of understanding and effectively producing an outstanding painting. Like the old saying goes 'painting is 90% planning and 10% execution'!