Still Working - watercolour - 16.5cm x 25.5cm - Magnani 300 rough by Gerhard Ritter

This is a superb portrait - just shows how leaving out detail works to advantage. The best one I think.

Impressive work....did you notice the blurred face of a woman in the pale pink part of your drawing...eyes, nose and mouth open?????

Thanks for the comments Alexandra and Cinthia. Even when painting the background the subconcious is still at work. Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? Truth is I couldn't claim to have anywhere near that level of control over a wet in wet blend.

I agree with Alexandra Dawes; the best out of the 29 posted. Whether it's because the painting just 'worked' straight away, or whether it's the subject, I'm not qualified to say, but to my mind it's the latter. This guy has such character and the composition is great. Really like this one.

Not sure it's the best, but it's very good. I would have guessed you don't use black, even if you hadn't said so - there's none of the deadening effect it can so easily have. Did you, I wonder, add touches of white? I hope so, because so many say you can't add white to watercolour, and yet they're prepared to slosh masking fluid all over the place - doesn't need much; just a touch here and there. Be shameless about it, I say.....

Robert - you found me out again - I wonder if occasionally I should post a higher res image. I used a touch of opaque white guache - (the chinese white wc is too translucent). When posting my images I stick to the convention of resampling to 90dpi and then resizing to 550 pixels wide and finally letting the photoshop compression routine 'Save for web and devices'. It allows for a small file size with tolerable results for fast on screen viewing.

great painting, treatment and technique

gerhard excellent portrait