Butterfly at Blake Gardens

Watercolor on Arches paper, 11 x 7.5″ (with a touch of white gouache on antennae)
Click here for larger version

(Above) Reference photo I took on Thursday at Blake Gardens.

I have two more days of vacation left and finally I’m really ready to paint. I’ve sorted out the images I want to work from and have some ideas how I want to approach them. This first image seemed to call for watercolor and it felt good to get back to paint again tonight.

But unfortunately today mostly got lost to errands, paperwork and monitor calibration again when I called the company who makes the Eye One calibration tool I bought because of some continuing problems I was having. Their tech support was superb and the patient and intelligent gentleman I spoke to uncovered a number of problems I’d created by messing around with stuff I shouldn’t have been messing with. He helped me undo my mistakes, got everything working properly, and helped me to understand more about the concept of color management.

Now it’s back to managing REAL color on the end of a paintbrush. I’m not panicking too badly about the end of vacation because I only go back to work for one day (Thursday) and then I’m off again for my usual 3 1/2 day weekend.