I picked up watercolours about a week ago and have been slowly chipping my way through it. I'm chronicling all the work I do every day on Facebook, it gives me motivation to work and write regularly. Here's the description:

"Day 5: Another self-portrait. Great success! This time I took what I learned from yesterday's portrait and worked really hard on improving it. Specifically, I applied the background wash first this time instead of after painting the face. Additionally I used dry-brushing a lot more, and took a lot more time between layer, reducing the bleeding effect and thereby creating a much softer gradient. Really really pleased with the textures in the hair as well, whips of ink look like calligraphy. Inoue influenced? Probably. Need to work on saturating colours more; black is too overpowering, and once it's applied the other colours pale, particularly the pinks on the lips. Really pleased with highlight on nose though, splotch of white paint helped established the point of light. Area around eyes too dark and flat. Tomorrow I want to try working on a portrait without using thick black outlines to define the outlines; that is, defining them with shading alone."