How the Modern Empress portrait evolved

This may be of help to some artists working in watercolour. My basic principle is to work from general to detail. Never to get bogged down in one part at the expense of others. It is very tempting to work up the "interesting bits"-face etc and then get depressed looking at all the unpainted background . I feel the best approach is to bring up all the picture together stage by stage .

The finished line sketch on paper, with tones worked out , pinned onto stretched watercolour paper	The first outlines in diluted black watercolour paint to define main areas of tone
Blocking in main areas	gradual definition of blocks of tone
beginning of details to face etc

See finished portrait

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