Measure Twice, Draw Once

I had this drawing of a dancing kiwi bird that I really wanted to turn into a painting. I did a thumbnail sketch that I was really happy with so I set to drawing an outline on a full-sized piece of paper. I don't usually put too much time or detail into my pre-painting drawing because I tend to lose the lines in the paint and I also like to make most of my decisions with the paint rather than a pencil. But for this drawing I was having such a good time that I put a lot of care into it.


Then I went to paint it. It turned out that this fabulous, highly detailed drawing I had done was on the back side of the watercolor paper pad cover and not on actual watercolor paper. I toyed with the idea of painting it anyway but the texture is all wrong and the cover paper is coated so it wouldn't have worked out at all. I thought I would solve the problem by getting upset and never painting kiwi again. So I moved on to another project, a drawing on a piece of sticker paper...which I finished and then realized I had drawn it on the non-sticky side of the paper.

So I learned an important lesson - that no matter how many times I essentially destroy an entire drawing I still don't take the extra second to make sure I'm drawing on the correct surface. I file this in the same category as the fact that I have burned rings into my fingertip multiple times by checking to see if the car cigarette lighter is hot.

I still wanted my kiwi to dance though, so this is the start of me trying again on actual watercolor paper. I don't like the drawing as much, but at least I can paint it.