The First Attempt - Baby Steps

Okay, I've jumped in with both feet so here is my first attempt at Watercolor Painting. I didn't know until I got to class and the teacher explained that watercolor is the most difficult medium to learn. I mean, isn't that little tin of dry paint colors one of the first art supplies you dabble in as a kid? Who knew?!

Anyway, its very interesting and fun to learn some of the methods behind the madness and I refuse to be discouraged, I intend to approach it with child-like wonder and see where it takes me.

First we started with a photocopy of a picture

Then we inserted the picture into a sleeve protector marked with a graph of 1" squares

Next we drew a light outline of the picture onto newsprint paper scaled to 2" squares in order to enlarge the picture. 

Then the enlarged picture is transfered to watercolor paper by using a piece of graphite paper under the newsprint and  tracing the enlarged drawing with a pencil

So here you can see the progression. The painting part is the most difficult for me because I never really had a good art class in school so I'm stumbling my way through learning about shading and how to blend colors to create a dimensional picture.
It really is fun though,

Here is the rest of my progress

Like I said... Baby steps...