Country Fresh Goats in Watercolor

So this is nice that this goat is in this quadrant all by himself. This quadrant not much going on, so maybe I'd have a little light coming through the trees and something like that. I always like to choose three primary colors before I start and I use those primary colors for neutrals. I'm going to use quinacridone rose but you could also use another pink. It could be permanent rose or rose matter genuine or alizarin crimson even. And then for a yellow I think I'm going to use raw sienna for my yellow rather than a bright yellow. For the blue I'll use cobalt. So when I combine that with these two colors and I get a gray. This is kind of a purpley gray. Now I'm looking at this goat and I'm seeing it's kind of a pinky fleshy color with a little of this blue dropped in. So I'm going to start with this mix of mostly pink and yellow, pink and raw sienna. Now I was tempted just now to bring some of this color onto the spool but let's keep in mind if it's light keep it white. So I want to keep in mind where the lights are. I don't want to paint where the sun is hitting his face. I'm going to go right in with this blue making more of a gray. While this is wet I'm doing this. I'm varying the shadow color and I'm bringing some of that shadow color right down here onto this spool he's lying on and letting that color blend with the pinky color. This color comes right down here to the edge of this spool and then I'm going to bring that same color down and this is going to define the edge of this ramp. I'm going to have some nice strong color. I added more pigment so it's a little more purpley. So that really set that ramp off nicely. I like this color. Now I'm going to put a little detail, shadow detail on his face. Keep the white. So I'm going to leave him alone. I could have brought that color out a little bit more here to touch that line but I'm not going to go back. When you think you've made a mistake just keep going. Don't try to fix it. That's my mantra. Otherwise you'll just make things worse. Here I'm going to bring this down, complete this shape of the spool and there's also a board holding this thing up. It's best to make it all one hue for this so that you can make one big shape of it and I'm dipping into that sap green because I want to get a little blending here. So just putting a little grassy shapes here and back to my triad. This bluish purplish color is going to dry lighter and again I'm defining the ramp as I go. Now I'm just going to do a warmer dark for these boards. So I mixed more of the raw sienna and the pink to warm these up. So I'm varying the color here and a little grass color will show through. This is where a number 10 comes in handy because I could make these boards really fast. I can just press down and it releases the paint and the water so I can make these slats really fast. A lot of shadow back here so I'll strengthen my colors. Here I'm going to go into that green again so it blends where those weeds are so there isn't a hard edge between the boards and the grass. Now I'm coming out here for these weeds and with this brush I can press halfway down and I get these very rough spiky little marks. Get a purpley mix here and touch the wet grass that I just put in. Now I am so tempted to just drag this over to here but I think I will wait. Alright so I'm going to get another dish. I'm going to use my mop. I very often just use sap green if I'm too lazy to mix something special. So this is number 12 silver black velvet and so I'm going to wet my paper. So this way when I'm painting around the goats it doesn't matter if I slow down. But I do want a nice hard edge around this ramp. I think I'll leave this kind of dry. So my triad is not going to be dark enough for this black goat. I could just go for neutral tint. Alright so there's neutral tint. Let me just see what it looks like. Alright that's real strong. I'm going to start with my triad. Okay so it's kind of a bluish neutral. It's not as dark as that neutral tint. So I'm going to paint the goat with this color and then drop in the neutral tint. So notice I'm starting at the top and working down because gravity is bringing the paint down. That's how you can avoid blooms. And I'm also going to be dragging this color right into the shadow, the cast shadow. And here's the shadow under the head but it's not touching the head. Now do I go back in with the black right now? No I'm going to let it dry. So I'm going to do my little goat and his shadow. So with this natural bristle brush number 10 I can press down to cover a big area. Really spread it around. Now there was an accidental little dry spot right there but you know what? It's in the perfect spot for the ear. A big part of watercolor is knowing when to leave these accidents. And now for the shadow. So now I'm going to go back to this one with my neutral tint. Very dark. And I'm going to have a smaller brush that's wet. Handy. So maybe what I'll do is I'll wet this up here so that as I go in with this dark it'll have a softer edge where the light's hitting it.