I've been drawing portraits for years and I feel like watercolor so far has the steepest learning curve of all the traditional media I tried (graphite, charcoal, soft pastel, oil pastel, acrylic, colored pencil).

It's fun though, and being able to mix it with my graphite drawing skills is a huge plus that most other media don't have.

This portrait was done for the DrawMe subreddit. It turned out a bit more muddy than I would have liked, probably because I shaded with graphite first and maybe applied a few too many layers of watercolor.

Materials used: HB mechanical pencil 0.5 mm, 6B Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black, Daniel Smith watercolors (Burgundy Yellow Ochre, French Ultramarine, Perylene Red, Neutral Tint) on Hahnemühle Expression cold-pressed cotton paper (24 x 30 cm).

Any tips how I can improve are welcome!