New tutorial! Painting the Tern in Watercolor

 I just painted this 9x12 watercolor of a tern today, and photographed my process so you can all paint along with me! 

I'll start by showing you my reference photo which I shot on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. 

This is my drawing, on the 140# Hahnemuehle Collection Watercolor paper. This paper comes in Hot, Cold, and Rough -- I am using the Rough because I like the texture that it provides. 

I've laid in some light values of cobalt blue on the tern, and some indigo, sepia, cobalt, and paynes on the piling and in the reflections. 

I've added some darker values to the piling, and then spritzed it with clear water to let it blend and run down to create more reflections. 

It's already starting to look like a piling and reflections. Notice that when I painted the piling, I used a soft brush an a light touch -- this let the texture of the paper leave small white areas that created the look of weathered wood. 

In this photo, I've taken a flat, stiff, damp brush and lifted out a few horizontal lines from the paint below the piling. This adds to the illusion of reflections in the water. I added the darkest values with paynes and indigo, and used new gamboge for the beak with a touch of rose madder to shade it.

Using my soft Raphael squirrel mop, I paint in a very light watery background using lavender with a few touches of sepia and rose madder. 

I leave the water fairly light in value so it stays in the background and won't compete with my subject, but I still have to deepen the values in the piling and add a few more reflections. 

And here's my finished painting -- the tern. I added a tiny bit of verditer blue to a few of the shadows to liven them up, and a few more dark colors to the piling. I need to come up with a good title -- if you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments!