This one was a struggle! My latest watercolor painting, entitled Rack ‘Em Up, is based on a photograph I took at the Salmagundi Club, in NYC, earlier this year. The brightly colored, mismatched assortment of pool balls is what drew my eye. The deceptively simple composition was harder than I thought. The shelving perspective, along with the shadows on the pool balls which made the balls look distorted, was a real challenge to draw. Then, three plus weeks into the painting, I made a big mistake. My brush caught into a glob of pure, undiluted, Alizarine Crimson paint. Not knowing, I painted a large swipe of what I thought was a diluted glaze. As anyone who has ever painted in watercolor knows… this was bad. I tried every trick in the book to remove the paint and failed. I tried disguising the smear with additional coats of paint, but was unsuccessful in that as well. Then came the difficult decision to stop. The next week I started over on a new sheet of paper. Finally the painting is completed, and I’m happy to be done with this one!

Below is the final painting and a slide show of the work in progress (for the 2nd round of painting).