Watercolor and colored pencil on hot press paper, 11"x14"

I just finished this as a final assignment for my winter semester. I spent five weeks studying art and design in the Rococo period of eighteenth-century France, and the final assignment was to make something inspired by that period. Luckily it was a very open assignment because I got to do some furry artwork!

The early 1700s was when Rousseau started urging mothers to care for their babies instead of sending them to wet nurses. Since giant anteater mothers carry their young on their back, I thought this would fit into those ideas well. I also threw in some visual puns about both giant anteaters and hot chocolate (imported and consumed by the wealthy at that time) both being from South America.

I think I finally figured out what's causing so much frustration for me in my watercolors, and I'm going to do another painting after this and try it out. I tried new brands of paper, new brands of paint, different amounts of water, different brushes, and I would still get a blotchy effect that I didn't like. Now, I think it's how I'm stretching the paper that's the problem. I'm not sure how to stretch it so it DOESN'T give me this problem, but I'm going to try a painting without stretching the paper at all and see if the paint goes back to behaving how it did earlier.

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