Back to Watercolors

I was at a local bookstore going through the art section when I came across a book from Steven Hanks titled Moving On. I was knocked out of my socks when I started going through the book. He's able to be paint very realistic paintings using watercolor and that's something I've wanted to work towards. (You can view his art here.)

I've always leaned more towards the realistic side of painting. Impressionistic and abstract work just never seemed to impress me that much. I think part of this was from my parents, they were heavily into the art of Aaron Bohrod who was a resident artist here at the UW Madison. Bohrod painted incredibly detailed works of art where you felt like you could actually pick off the items off the canvas.

So this brought me back to thinking about watercolor painting again. I went through my daughter's kitten calendars looking for a good subject to work from and I found something worth trying out. I'm going to do this image twice, once with my watercolor pencils and another with actual watercolor paints. I'm curious as to just how they compare.