ahoteinrun wrote:
Are you using hot or cold pressed water color paper? (do you know?) it looks a bit like cold pressed since it's not all that flat. Are you using paper from a pad or are you trimming down a sheet? How big is the original? Are you masking off the edges of your image to leave it clean to the edge? What size of brush are you using? Do you know what weight your paper is? The heavier the paper the less likely it will need to be stretched before use.
Uhh... *points at self* Amateur
I have no idea about the paper - it was just some cheap watercolour pad from which I ripped a sheet. The palette was also cheap and simple, and I think it was primarily meant for kids, heh. Only the brush was of a better quality, I mostly used a very thin one. A bigger one for the lake and the sky.
The original has a width of a vertical A4. I had to glue the painting on an A4 with two other pictures, so I couldn't make it that big. Actually I had to cut a bit from each side, as it wouldn't have fitted otherwise.
ahoteinrun wrote:
It's not a bad painting, it's quite nice. You may want to work on your composition (and do some reading about composition in art, as it's quite important). Your horizon line lies is a bit above center (thats good!) and the general composition does allow for your eye to move around. I'm not sure if it's just the scan/photo quality of the image but that large area of dark does tend to just suck you in. Perhaps you should try working it around a bit in the future so that there's a direct line of movement around the image. The image does tend to be heavy towards the left. It's very nice though and you should definately continue using watercolor. It's a fun medium to work with. And landscapes can be beautiful! Kudos!
Thank you for the advice. As mentioned, I have very little knowledge of composition and watercolour in general, so this was of great help