Sketching - bring a sketch together

Days out give me the chance to do lots of sketching.  At this time of year that often means sitting in the car, but I'm not complaining.  Sat with my sketchbook, pens, paints and a cup of coffee to drink is my idea of bliss.

Here I've done a quick sketch whilst we stopped at a retail park (yes more shopping).

There's a bit of a lesson in this sketch.  The various areas > hills > houses > cars are tending to all be Separate  -  whereas the overall drawing would look better if the areas merged a bit.  So I addressed this issue by adding watercolour to the evergreen tree - it know brings together the hills in the background plus the car below it.  I felt this was enough, sometimes overworking can spoil a piece...it's good to have spaces too.

It only needed a little subtle change to bring the drawing together.

When paint bursts into blooms and cauliflowers

Call them what you will...Watercolour paint will spread and do it's own thing if you are not careful.
Some call them 'blooms' others refer to them as 'cauliflowers'.

Okay, I've already done a blog post on this, but since it is a recurring issue with artists, especially those first learning, I felt it was worth another post here.

In this example painting of a Lighthouse, you'll notice that there is a darker area representing a window on the body of the building.  I did this Whilst the other paint was WET, and yet it didn't spread > bloom > cauliflower. 

This was possible because when I added the window, I used a thicker consistency of paint, thus the weight  of the paint being added was heavier than the paint it was going into, and hence it didn't spread.  

~ I hope this blog post is of help ~