Watercoloring the king of the African savannah in watercolor

A typical watercolor where you go from light to dark, paying very close attention to keeping your darks and lights in proper balance. In the first photo, you can see how my background was painted in wet-on-wet with no fussy detail. The king is the star of this show and the background is a supporting actor. Yes, I painted in some dark areas in the tree trunk and the lion's rear, but I knew these were areas where I did not have to slowly build up various areas of light, middle, and dark values. The first close up of the head is where I had to build various values from light to dark. In the fifth photo, you can see how I started working on the foreground grass wet-on-dry. The foreground is usually where you want some texture, so . . . background is wet-on-wet and soft looking and the foreground is dry-on-dry, textural, and in sharp focus (along with the lion). In the seventh photo, I painted in my final dark values into the lion's head. Notice how the log in my finished watercolor got lighter. I pulled off paint to lighten it. The log was overwhelming the lion and was not playing a supporting role. In the end, this was a challenging watercolor!