I took a week off from posting, painting, and photography, because I was visiting my parents for my dad’s 80th birthday. It was a nice trip, but I’m glad to be back home.

I decided to finish this pond life painting when I got back home. I sketched it about a month ago, but didn’t get a chance to paint it until yesterday.

I like the composition, but I wish I’d stopped painting earlier in the process. “Don’t overwork it!” is a good piece of advice for watercolor painting. I followed this advice for the pebbles and the turtle, but I kept returning to the fish until they lost the luminous glow that they started out with.

The orange one ended up particularly muddy. Unfortunately adding more paint doesn’t help with watercolors.

You can kind of see the original paint quality on the yellow fish’s tail. Both fish would look like that if I’d stopped painting earlier!

I really like the way the pebbles turned out though. I had a very light touch with those, and was patient enough to let each one dry before painting the next one.

Maybe I should trim the painting so it just show the yellow fish’s tail and the pebbles. 😂 But then you’d miss seeing the turtle!

His angry little side-eye glare makes me smile, and making myself smile is one of my biggest motivations for painting.