The fireplace in watercolor

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My first version of the fireplace in gouache struck me as dreary and too tiresome for a children’s book, so I did it over in watercolor thinking I’d liven it up. I used my Daniel Smith Ultimate Mixing palette for the first time. Even though this palette will allegedly mix 60 bazillion colors, I managed to mix only two, a dark gray for the inside of the fireplace, and an off-white for the bricks. Plus, I photoshopped the bejezuz out of this image to change the color of the wall using a linear burn mask. In other words, this image doesn’t look anything like the original watercolor. I’m fine with that.

Note to self: Muji gel pens run like crazy with watercolor, but they don’t run with Copic markers.

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Even though I’ve looked at this fireplace thousands of times, I couldn’t draw it accurately from memory. I used a photo reference for this version.