Painting Backgrounds
If you are going to paint a background, then you need to start working on your background early. Don’t wait until until you finish the foreground to start worrying about background.
The reason you should paint your background first is simple. The natural tendency in watercolor is to make the initial washes in a painting too light because you are comparing your values to the white of the paper. If you establish your background first, you can compare the values in the foreground to the already established value in the background. Reworking a background value later in the painting is generally not as noticeable as reworking the foreground.
In the following example, I worked on the background for days before I dealt with the foreground. Once the background was complete, I painted with figures in the foreground very quickly at the very end of the process.
Background Painted First
