Watercolor Sketching

I haven't painted in months!  Well, I do demos at school for my high school art student, but that doesn't really count.  I am taking students to France again this summer. (Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.) We usually spend a week of our trip at a beautiful chateau painting en plain air with oils.  Unfortunately the chateau has closed, so this year we will be on the road for the entire trip and painting on the fly. So that calls for watercolors - my first love.  I painted with some Urban Sketchers in NYC last fall and they introduced me to some new tools and brushes.  I've been wanting to try them out before starting my watercolor sketching classes for my travelers.
Here the brush I used.  It holds water in the handle and is perfect for traveling.

  

And here is the Sakura Koi Pocket Palette.  Isn't it cute.  I have other brands but the Urban Sketchers were using these so I had to try one.

 I didn't think I would like these paints because they seemed a little opaque.  But they worked fairly well, because I tried not to overpaint.  The paper in the sketchbooks I was using did not work well with watercolor, so I'll have to look for something with real watercolor paper. 

I was only going to paint for a short while so I threw some still life objects on a table without much thought.  I wasn't happy with the layout, but I loved drawing and painting together, so I kept going.  I pulled out some photos from my trip to Greece and had fun painting from the computer.  Here are the results of a couple hours of playing with my new art supplies!  I can't wait to try this again tomorrow.  Maybe I can go out in the neighborhood and paint. 

It was a fun few hours and made me realize how much I miss painting.  I've got to make more time for painting.