Conversations With Monet But In Waterolor!

Monet's iconic painting "Nymphaes"  or Water Lilies, was a great source of inspirational material for my recent watercolor class.  I figured he is the quintessential impressionist, and in working in watercolor it would help the class loosen up their strokes.  One of the problems I find students have with photos , is trying too slavishly to copy the details of the subject, rather than concentrating on the light , mood , and atmosphere of the place.  A sense of poetry and space get lost in that, thus the emotional involvement in the painting.
Here are the steps I used to arrive at my first example.
 1. First I used a fan brush and laid the masking fluid in with no pencil drawing necessary,.  Just use the corner of the fan brush , stay loose!

• 2. After the Windsor Newton masking fluid is placed and dried, I wash over the paper          with cadmium yellow in the center and progress to the outsides adding purples , two       purples, one leaning blue, one leaning red. 

•  3. Then I start increasing wet into wet washes of other colors such as chrome green,     cerulean or horizon blues blue greens, burnt sienna's, letting them intermix.  

• 4. I started adding more and more color, then finally salt for a bit of texture, but not everywhere.

5. Then I wait till it dries, pat up excess paint from the surface of the masking fluid, and rub off the mask with a rubber cement eraser.