Easy Watercolor Card, Step By Step

In the interest of learning to make a better watercolor card, I decided to make the card for Granddaughter T step by step, drying the card after each step to see what would happen.  It is not a great card, but it is much better than my usual, I think.  Much less muddy colors, in my opinion, which is a result of drying in between steps, the first time I have done this.

The first thing I did was to wet the paper with a 1-inch flat brush.

Next I put in the blue, then green background color.

Since I wanted some clouds in the sky, and since I had failed to bring paper towels to my desk, I scrunched up a Kleenex to make the clouds.  Not really successful. I won't use Kleenex again.  Also I will try to have the color a bit more even...having said that, I do love paper toweled clouds.

Using the 3/8" deer foot brush I dropped in the beginnings of some flowers.

Next I made some grasses and stems.  Not liking the green by itself, I added some lemon yellow and some yellow ochre.  The lemon yellow was supposed to give the impression of perhaps some other kind of low-lying floral entities.  Not sure that was successful.

Since the main flowers seemed a little naked, I found some similar colors to tap in some filler. and perhaps add more background.  At least, that was the idea.

When I showed the previous picture to Daughter M, she suggested maybe some birds or butterflies or something would be good. I liked the idea and went with birds.  I do think they were an improvement and added a more pleasing dimension to the picture.

When it came time to mount the painting on a card,  I went with a rather busy background card stock.  This is a Park Lane card stock.  I would love to find the actual manufacturer of the paper and see if I can order just the card stock that I like best instead of the multi-pack.  I LOVE their green background card stock.