Colour is an invitation

I almost always work in two steps. First the line, in ink, on the spot — standing at a facade or sitting on a low wall. And then sometimes, not always, watercolour at home afterwards.

That second part takes an hour. Sometimes longer. It is a different thing entirely from the ten minutes this site is about, and I don't want the two to blur. If you arrive here thinking you need to clear an hour and buy a paintbox, then I have explained something badly.

Because the line drawing is finished. On its own, without a single drop of paint. On the home page those two versions of the same facade sit side by side: neither is the better one. On the left is a drawing. On the right is that same drawing with a layer over it.

That is why the daily prompt sometimes carries a colour line — smaller, softer, with an ochre dot in front of it. Skip it and you miss nothing. Feel like it, and you reach for something: a pencil, a marker, an old box of paint from the cupboard.

Colour is an invitation, never a requirement. The prompt itself stays pencil-simple, and it will stay that way.